PresentaciónRichard Fonseca
Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil/Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Alemania
Doctoral student
Master’s degree in modern philosophy (UERJ). He is doing research on Nietzsche’s ethics and practical philosophy with Volker Gerhardt at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. Author of Science as Interpretation in Nietzsche’s Thought (2003), Will as Will to Power in Nietzsche (2001) and Freedom and Power in Foucault (2007). He presented papers at the Nietzsche Society (2005) and the Nietzsche–Gesellschaft (2004).
Abstract
Ethics, Life and Truth: Nietzsche and the Problem of the Foundation (Begründung) of Morals
The aim of this paper is to investigate the concept of life in Nietzsche’s critique of morality. My main idea is to analyze Nietzsche’s treatment of the problem of the «foundation of morality» in modern philosophy, using his concept of life to find an answer to the following question: what are the theoretical and practical consequences that emerge for moral philosophy assuming a dynamic as opposed to metaphysical concept of life? I will emphasize the inner connection between Nietzsche’s view of «morality» in Human All Too Human and the meaning of «life as will to power» in The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals. I will concentrate on the last mentioned book, focusing on Nietzsche’s critique of metaphysics and the idea of «life as will to power». As described by Nietzsche, the historical process of the development of metaphysics as «will to truth» reveals metaphysics to be restricted to the inner transcendental structure of the moral subject or rather to its relation to the exterior world through moral acts. Since metaphysical truth could not result from a moving and changing world —«from this transitory, seductive, deceptive, paltry world» (Nietzsche, KSA 5, JGB, 2, p. 16) —it had to be imagined as a world of regularity. Therefore, both a «true world» and a «moral subject» are established in order to grasp regularity. Moreover, Nietzsche excludes that the determination of the moral acts, based on the assumption of a real world, follows from a search for truth and regularity, but rather this determination is an escape from the movement and illusion of becoming. In other words, morality is an escape from the will to power as the essence of life. Nietzsche’s critique of morality does not deny the possibility of «truth» in favor of relativism but rather allows for a new access to the definition of morality and a «moral subject» in the epoch of nihilism. I will show with the help of Volker Gerhardt’s thesis that Nietzsche’s criticism contributes not only to deny our dogmatic moral feelings, but also to show what morality produces in its last stage: «the sovereign individual» as the «free spirit». How is it possible to talk about a philosophical «moral subject» facing an increasing devaluation of rationalization? Nietzsche’s answer to this is that morality, truth, acts, man and world are nothing else than «will to power».