Nietzsche’s Naturalised neo-Kantianism: Frame of Reference Arguments Against Evaluations of Life

Nietzsche’s philosophical career took place at the peak of the Pessimismusstreit or ‘pessimism controversy’: a dispute concerning whether life as such was good and affirmable, or bad and lamentable. In the late 1870’s, Nietzsche came to endorse a more broadly naturalistic methodology, and he took this to have implications for the integrity of judgements of life as a whole. Developing lines of thought from existing neo-Kantian critiques of metaphysical speculation, Nietzsche came to offer an epistemic critique of both pessimism and optimism: we can never be in a position to know the value of life, because value judgements are necessarily idiosyncratic. Such judgements always take place from a particular perspective, and hence are always ‘unjust’ or ‘impure’ (HH,§32). This talk seeks to elucidate the nature of this argument, and how to interpret Nietzsche’s specific version of it in the wider context of its use across the 19th century. Lastly, it will briefly explore how this dispute set the stage for Nietzsche’s notorious ‘perspectivism’ about knowledge which develops into the 1880’s.

Patrick Hassan (Cardiff University)

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