Introduction: Nietzsche and the Ethics of Naturalism
Author(s): Keith Ansell-Pearson and Christian J. Emden
Source: Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Spring 2016), pp. 1-8
Published by: Penn State University Press
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2 Keith Ansell-Pearson and Christian J. Emden
into problems best dealt with by cognitive psychology or neuroscience, from
Paul Churchland to recent trends toward an “experimental philosophy,” but they
can also imply a physicalist reductionism of the biological kind.6 Either way,
traditionally speaking naturalism thus always entails a set of methodological
commitments, or epistemic norms, that are seen as derived from the inductive
approach of the physical sciences, such as inference to the best explanation.
Moreover, these epistemic norms are themselves regarded as uniform across all
sciences, providing a unity to scientific knowledge. Since such norms cannot be
natural kinds, it is necessary to ask, however, how and under what conditions
anything can become normatively binding. A more traditional philosophical
naturalism would claim in response that the epistemic norms we live by are
merely the result of a “normative judgment” in terms of an “attitude” toward the
world, grounded in “logical inferences” and the “inductive method in empirical inquiry,” as Brian Leiter suggested—there simply is no such thing as “real
normativity.”7 Although Leiter is correct in claiming that “real normativity”—in
terms of a space of reasons detached from human experience—does not exist,
it appears philosophically unsatisfactory to claim that normative is whatever
works, from airplane design and quantum mechanics to moral claims, as long
as the latter can be shown to be justified within a uniform space of reasons.
In the background of such claims stands what Huw Price describes as “object
naturalism,” and such object naturalism, as John McDowell aptly put it, is a
“bald naturalism.”8 At the heart of the latter, even though this is rarely fully
articulated, we can find the claim that language and logic mirror what there is,
in both ontological and epistemological terms. This, in short, is a naturalism
that looks at what there is from outside, bringing its own normative commitments to bear on the world it claims to represent, as though these normative
commitments are not themselves tied up with the world under observation.
Normativity is, on this account, ultimately detached from the world in which
we live, as a standard external to this world.
For philosophical naturalism, the source of normativity, that is, the question of
how something can gain normative force within the arbitrary world we happen to
live in, is a persistent problem. The autonomy of reason does not seem to cut it,
and more recent interventions into philosophical naturalism suggest that neither
the autonomy of reason, nor a kind of representationalist form of naturalism
is able to deliver a convincing account of normativity. Indeed, as Price noted,
we need a different kind of naturalism, “subject naturalism,” which first of all
recognizes that norms, of whatever kind, are held by human beings that are a
constitutive part of the world in which they happen to live.9 Naturalism proper,
as it were, begins not with the knowledge we have about, say, mental states,
bacteria, and electrons, but with the understanding that we have this knowledge,
and that having this knowledge says something about us and about the manifold
ways in which we engage in the world within which we live. As Price points
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Introduction 3
out, this is close to the position that Nietzsche holds, and Joseph Rouse, placing
greater emphasis on the emergence of normativity through scientific practices,
further underlines that it will be necessary to rethink philosophical naturalism
along the lines of a “Nietzschean commitment.”10
For Nietzsche, to be sure, the question of normativity primarily arises in the
context of ethics and morality. As such, Nietzsche does not stop with the claim
that human beings hold certain things to be normatively valid because they are
natural beings with a specific moral psychology; rather, he begins to wonder
how it is possible that such human beings, regardless of their psychology, are
able to hold anything as normatively valid in the first place.11 For Nietzsche,
the question of normativity is concerned not with norms, but with what makes
norms possible. It is also in this respect that Nietzsche’s philosophical naturalism extends well beyond the psychological questions raised by most analytic
commentators. Perhaps, then, it is also time to give up on the historically
contingent distinction between analytic and continental philosophy, at least
as far as Nietzsche is concerned. Putting Nietzsche into a tradition of naturalism that reaches from Hume to Quine and beyond underestimates that there are
also other naturalisms, for instance, a tradition that stretches from Spinoza to
Deleuze and beyond.12
Seen against this background, the essays collected in this special issue conceive of naturalism in a much broader sense than Hume or Quine ever imagined.
The “ethics of naturalism,” thus, also refers to two claims that are difficult to separate. First of all, if Nietzsche’s philosophical thought really is best understood
along the lines of naturalism, and if Nietzsche’s naturalism constitutes something
akin to Price’s “subject naturalism,” then this has profound implications for his
understanding of the conditions under which epistemic and moral norms are
able to emerge. Second, naturalism, as such, not only is connected to a specific
understanding of ethics and morality, but also entails ethical commitments that
are reflected in the way in which it intervenes in the world philosophically. While
Nietzsche’s repeated demand to translate humanity back into nature reflects the
first claim, his demand to live philosophically attributes to naturalism a certain
ethos. The ethics of naturalism, thus, refers both to naturalism’s implications
for morality and to the ethos of naturalism itself. While Christian J. Emden’s
and Vanessa Lemm’s articles reflect the former meaning of the ethics of naturalism, Rebecca Bamford’s and Keith Ansell-Pearson’s contributions reflect
the latter aspect of the ethics of naturalism. Nietzsche’s naturalism, however,
does not develop over night, and Jeffrey Church and Anthony Jensen focus on
two distinct periods in Nietzsche’s career in which naturalism appears to be a
contested and ambivalent position: focusing on Nietzsche’s earlier work from
the 1870s, Church argues that, during this period, Nietzsche’s relationship to
what is now described as naturalism is far more ambiguous than often assumed,
while Nietzsche’s encounter with the work of Julius Bahnsen, the subject of
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4 Keith Ansell-Pearson and Christian J. Emden
Jensen’s essay, forces him to rethink the problem of the will along increasingly
naturalistic lines that begin to shift the perspective of his philosophical project
as a whole. Extending the problem of Nietzsche’s naturalism, and the latter’s
ethical commitments, into the context of the twentieth-century critical theory,
Peter Sedgwick outlines the fundamentally political implications of Nietzsche’s
naturalism. It is against this background that a much fuller, and perhaps more
contentious, picture of Nietzsche’s naturalism begins to emerge. This picture of
Nietzsche’s naturalism, moreover, underscores why and how his work continues
to be relevant for the humanities today.
Since the articles collected in this special issue all complicate our understanding of Nietzsche’s naturalism, it will be wise to give the reader a short overview
of the contributions. In her article Rebecca Bamford approaches issues of naturalism by focusing on Nietzsche’s experimentalism. Her focus in particular is on the
texts of the middle period, notably Dawn and The Gay Science. Nietzsche’s commitment to experimentalism is often invoked in the literature but rarely subject
to probing examination. Bamford suggests that it works in Nietzsche as both a
strategy of philosophical engagement and a form of virtue. In addition, she seeks
to demonstrate the importance of experience within Nietzsche’s experimentalism, and to this end she deploys John Dewey’s distinction between empirical
and scientific thinking. For Bamford experimentalism is a key component in
Nietzsche’s conception of a philosophy that engages with life and unburdened
by the presumptions of customary morality. Not only does this approach serve
to illuminate core ethical aspects of Nietzsche’s thinking, it also shows that his
naturalism is of the “artful” kind (as argued by Christa Davis Acampora): it is
a naturalism that has recourse to the powers of art and the aesthetic dimension.
In his contribution Christian J. Emden approaches issues of naturalism and
normativity in Nietzsche by focusing on what is without doubt the most contentious aspect of his thinking, namely, the doctrine of the will to power. He
skillfully shows two things: (a) that in spite of the risks of falling into biologism
a notion of biology is crucial to Nietzsche’s project; (b) the extent to which the
will to power does not work as a vital principle and as part of some ill-conceived
philosophy of life. On Emden’s reading there is no need for readers of Nietzsche
to be baffled by his reliance on such a seemingly “metaphysical” concept and
attempts to dismiss it as an exercise in extravagant metaphysics are far too shortsighted. What needs our attention and explication, according to Emden, is the
relation between will to power and normativity, and the challenge of his essay
is to insist that this requires accepting the privileging of biology, or a doctrine
of life, in Nietzsche’s thinking. To demonstrate this it is necessary to attend to
the historical and intellectual contexts of Nietzsche’s thought as it develops
in the 1880s. It then becomes possible to conceive Nietzsche’s naturalism not
as primarily oriented toward the cognitive psychology of our moral and epistemological commitments, but rather as rooted in discussions about biology.
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Introduction 5
“Biology comes first, psychology second,” Emden writes. This is to move the
debate not only beyond the Heideggerian critique (biologism) but also beyond
the dismissal of the will to power in some analytical circles and as being little
more than an unwelcome exercise in extravagant metaphysics.
In her provocative contribution Vanessa Lemm aims to present a more complete picture than she finds in the literature to date of what Nietzsche says about
plants: in contrast to the contentions of Brian Leiter in his “type-facts” interpretation of Nietzsche, the examples of the life of plants found in Nietzsche’s
texts reveal, according to Lemm, the secret of human freedom and creativity.
What we learn from the study of plants is not the extent of our determination by
biology and by cultural inheritance but how and in what ways we can practice
a creative freedom and so become the future value creators Nietzsche has in
mind. Nietzsche aims to promote the exotic and the eccentric: as one Nachlass
note reveals, the kind of plant he has in mind is like the one cultivated by the
Chinese that grows roses on one side and pears on the other. Lemm argues, and
contra the argument of Patrick Wotling, that Nietzsche’s references to plants and
the vegetal world are not simply metaphorical, and such a claim opens up the
possibility of a new approach to how the philosophy of life works in Nietzsche,
one that is able to show the continuity of the human animal with the rest of
nature. Lemm states her provocative point succinctly: human value creation is
continuous with value creation in animals and plants, and if we wish to learn
about what it means for human beings to create values, we need to begin with
the study of value creation in the life of animals and plants.
Focusing on Nietzsche’s early writings, Jeffrey Church, in contrast to both
Lemm and Emden, remains skeptical whether Nietzsche’s position can easily
be subsumed under the heading of naturalism. As Church suggests, at least
in his early writings Nietzsche does not seem to adopt the kind of naturalistic Aristotelian ethics that is often attributed to his later publications. Given
the sources and broader intellectual environment within which Nietzsche finds
himself during the 1870s, his ethical stance—centered on what it means to lead
a good life, also in the Greek sense—should rather be seen as reflecting neoKantian preoccupations. Indeed, it is the broader rediscovery of Kant in the
second half of the nineteenth century that allows Nietzsche, as Church shows,
to counterbalance our enslavement to nature and animality with an ethical need
for redemption. The latter is particularly reflected in Nietzsche’s conception of
culture, itself notoriously contested concept at the time, and Nietzsche’s reception of neo-Kantianism complicates our understanding of his later naturalism.
The neo-Kantian background of many of Nietzsche’s arguments during the
1870s, and beyond, is indeed all too often underestimated in analytical reconstructions of Nietzsche’s naturalism that, often to their own detriment, underplay
or ignore the crucial importance of the wider intellectual context that shapes
Nietzsche’s ideas.
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6 Keith Ansell-Pearson and Christian J. Emden
It is precisely this context that takes center stage in Anthony Jensen’s detailed
account of the development of Nietzsche’s theory of the will. Initially influenced
by Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, Nietzsche begins to reassess his theory of the
will as soon as he discovers the work of Julius Bahnsen, whose writings are
less known in English-speaking scholarship. Himself a neo-Schopenhauerian,
Bahnsen allows Nietzsche to realize that Schopenhauer’s own assumption of a
transcendent will is not necessary, and at any rate not sufficient, for the description and explanation of human agency. Agency should rather be understood as
the outcome, or manifestation, of a complex and fluid dynamics of drives and
strivings. Neither entirely random, nor marked by any strong determinism, this
dynamics of drives and strivings both enables and constrains what kind of human
agency is possible. As soon as Nietzsche, thus, abandons Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of the will, he begins to opt for an increasingly naturalistic explanation
of human behavior, but this turn toward naturalism was also highly critical of the
reductionist approaches that Nietzsche could witness in nineteenth-century scientific materialism. Nietzsche’s naturalism, focused on human agency, therefore
also begins to adopt a perspective that can be understood in terms of a philosophical anthropology, and such a move, as the next essays render obvious, has lasting
implications for the ethical and political dimension of Nietzsche’s naturalism.
In his article, Keith Ansell-Pearson seeks to make a contribution to our understanding of naturalism as a “joyful science” by focusing on how Nietzsche
and Deleuze appropriate an Epicurean legacy. The aim is to show that both
thinkers belong to an Epicurean tradition in which the study of nature is to
guide ethical reflection on the art of living. Nature is studied, then, not as end
in itself but as a way of better understanding how we can promote a flourishing
life. In the case of Nietzsche the focus is on the middle period writings, and
Ansell-Pearson takes his cue from an especially revealing aphorism from Mixed
Opinions and Maxims. For Ansell-Pearson, Nietzsche unequivocally states his
naturalist-minded agenda when he refers to the need to combat “fear, imagination, indolence, superstition, and folly” (AOM 184). Nietzsche is shown to be
espousing a number of Epicurean commitments, such as the focus on a worldly
wisdom of our mortal life. Deleuze is an important figure, it is shown, since he
ably demonstrates how physics and ethics intersect in the Epicurean doctrine.
For Deleuze our being in the world is not to be guided by myths and illusions,
especially of a supernatural kind, but rather by the affirmation of the positive
power of an immanent and multiple nature and by the joy that results from recognizing the diversity of its elements. The goal of the project is the production
of pleasure and the defeat of sadness, and where sadness equals the diminution
of our powers of action. Conceived as a joyful science and wisdom naturalism
is, therefore, to be appreciated as a distinctly ethical project.
Peter Sedgwick’s contribution is guided by a thought-provoking question: Is
Nietzsche’s naturalism best understood as exemplifying the principles of scientific
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Introduction 7
method and the spirit of Enlightenment? If not, then what are we to make of its
implications? He seeks to address these questions by taking seriously Eugen Fink’s
contention that Nietzsche’s reliance on strategies of “naturalism” should be taken
as hyperbole. With this point in mind, he engages critically with Enlightenmentorientated readings offered by Walter Kaufmann, Maudemarie Clark, and Brian
Leiter. He shows that such readings have serious problems to them and so turns for
a different appreciation of Nietzsche’s naturalism to the work of Richard Schacht.
On this conception human beings are not mere pieces of nature susceptible to being
described solely in scientific-methodological terms. Nietzsche does not, then, slavishly emulate the empirical sciences. Sedgwick endorses this approach but in terms
that seek to take more seriously the implications of Fink’s point about the figural
and even hyperbolic aspects of Nietzsche’s “naturalistic” discourse and that even
the “extended naturalism” approach underplays. According to Sedgwick, if we take
the hyperbole point seriously, then this has significant implications for understanding his status as an Enlightenment thinker as well as the political significance of
his thought. A hyperbolic naturalism is seen to offer theoretical possibilities that
we cannot arrive at through the application of a “method” derived from the paradigm of the sciences. Inspired by the approach adopted by Theodor Adorno and
Max Horkheimer in their appreciation of the dialectic of Enlightenment, Sedgwick
argues that Nietzsche’s so-called naturalistic take on morality is best appreciated
as a form of “disturbing and disruptive political intervention,” one that aims to
unsettle our confidence in the prevailing discourse of modernity, namely, the liberal
discourse of scientific Enlightenment.
Several of the contributions in this special issue originated at the workshop
“Nietzsche and the Ethics of Naturalism,” held at Rice University on January 11,
2014. This workshop was an extension of the Rice Seminar on “Materialism and
New Materialism Across the Disciplines.” As fellows of the Rice Seminar in
2013–14, we would like to express our gratitude, once again, to Rice’s School of
Humanities, the Department of Philosophy, the Department of German Studies,
and Houston’s Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany, which
generously funded the workshop. For critical comments and interventions we
should also like to thank Christa Davis Acampora, Dan Conway, Steven Crowell,
Sarah Ellenzweig, John Richardson, and John Zammito.
Notes
1. See Willard Van Orman Quine, “Epistemology Naturalized,” in Ontological Relativity
and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 69–90.
2. See Bernard Williams, “Nietzsche’s Minimalist Moral Psychology,” in The Sense of the
Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy, ed. and introduction by Myles Burnyeat (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2006), 299–310.
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8 Keith Ansell-Pearson and Christian J. Emden
3. See, most prominently, the contributions in Christopher Janaway and Simon Robertson,
eds., Nietzsche, Naturalism, and Normativity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Ken
Gemes and Simon May, eds., Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2009); and Brian Leiter and Neil Sinhababu, eds., Nietzsche and Morality (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007).
4. See Hilary Putnam, “Why Reason Can’t Be Naturalized,” in Realism and Reason:
Philosophical Papers, Volume 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 229–47.
5. See, for instance, Barry Stroud, “The Charm of Naturalism,” Proceedings and Addresses
of the American Philosophical Association 70 (1996): 43–55, and the contributions in Mario De
Caro and David MacArthur, eds., Naturalism in Question (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2004).
6. See Paul Churchland, Matter and Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984), and
the volumes of Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols, eds., Experimental Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2008–13).
7. Brian Leiter, “Normativity for Naturalists,” Philosophical Issues 25 (2015): 64–79, 75–76.
8. Huw Price, Naturalism without Mirrors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 186, and
John McDowell, Mind and World, new ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996),
xviii–xxiii.
9. Price, Naturalism without Mirrors, 186–87.
10. See Price, Naturalism without Mirrors, 186, and Joseph Rouse, How Scientific Practices
Matter: Reclaiming Philosophical Naturalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 3–4,
302–3, and 308.
11. See Christian J. Emden, Nietzsche’s Naturalism: Philosophy and the Life Sciences in the
Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 184–204.
12. See the broad overview of Keith Ansell-Pearson and John Protevi, “Naturalism in the
Continental Tradition,” in The Blackwell Companion to Naturalism, ed. Kelly James Clark
(forthcoming 2016).
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