Is this a problem? Foot (1978), for example, thinks not: she says that we can dismiss Nietzsche (or at least most of Nietzsche) due to the dependency his project has on his doctrine of ‘will to power’. She thinks that any wholesale description of human motivation is bound to fail, and she casts doubt on someone like Nietzsche (the solitary genius) having any great insights into the motivations of the general population. I have doubts over Foot’s ‘get out of jail free’ card she is playing here. I think her real problem is captured in the following quote: ‘a confrontation with Nietzsche is a difficult thing to arrange [because] [w]e find it hard to know where we could meet him because of the intrinsically puzzling nature of a project such as his’ (Foot 1978, p. 82).
What I am exploring—and I would love some feedback on this—is what sort of confrontation there might be between analytic philosophers and Nietzsche. In particular, I am thinking of the confrontation between Nietzsche and Leiter’s (1997, p. 285) Anglo-American philosophers (in the quote below):
It would be neither surprising nor unreasonable for Anglo- American philosophers to express doubts about their competence to undertake or assess such a critical project: such a "philosophical" undertaking—if that is what it deserves to be called—brings to mind a very different conception of philosophy, in which reflection is manifestly not a priori and analysis is not merely "conceptual" or, in this post-Quinean world, simply the a posteriori handmaiden of the natural and social sciences. In its Nietzschean incarnation, philosophy quickly crosses the line into psychology, cultural anthropology, and social critique—territory now occupied (regrettably) almost exclusively by literary theorists.
So I am thinking of the analytic philosopher as one who is mainly concerned with conceptual analysis. And I see that there might be a confrontation between Nietzsche and the analytics in this regard. For if Nietzsche has done anything it is to (re-)identify some (or perhaps most) of our value-concepts. So, say I, it is by concentrating on this aspect of Nietzsche that a direct confrontation between him and the analytics can be forged.
I have more to say on this, but I would love feedback, so I shall keep it short for the consumer! So consider what I say in the next two paragraphs as an example of Nietzsche’s ‘conceptual analysis’:
Nietzsche has a lot to say about pity (mittleid), especially in Daybreak (see sects. 131-139). His primary target is Christianity (132), and its influence on European thinking. He mentions Schopenhauer in this regard, saying that Schopenhauer thought pity was ‘the source of each and every moral action’ (133). The idea being that pity impels one to help another, for one is, at that moment, not thinking of oneself (133). But this is a mistake, Nietzsche thinks, for ‘pity’ is a ‘polyphonous… being’ (133). For Nietzsche, there are two stages in pity. In the first stage, when one sees another suffering (leid) one is not ‘thoughtlessly moved’ to assist them, but one is thinking of oneself ‘very strongly unconsciously’. This is due to our innate desire to imitate things (142). But then one enjoins the sufferer to some degree, so that the pitier, too, is suffering (cf. 134). This suffering is different from, but isomorphic to, the one who is pitied. But as one is unconsciously moved to promote one’s own well-being (cf. 108), one attempts to relieve one’s own, peculiar, suffering in some way. This is the second stage of pity, where the pitier attempts to relieve their suffering by exacting some sort of malevolent revenge on the one who is pitied (133, for a slightly different perspective, see 138). Both these stages of pity can be cashed out in many different ways (see 133 for details), such is the polyphonous nature of the value-concept: pity.
Something approaching conceptual analysis of other value-concepts is scattered throughout the Nietzschean corpus, such as love (e.g. GS 14, 345, BGE 268, Z, The second dance song), courage (D, 277, 419, 551), selfless action (e.g. D, 148, GS 21, 338, BGE 260), friendship (GS 14, BGE 27, 260), to mention a few. What complicates matters is the manner in which these critiques occur, for often a certain value-concept is critiqued as a sub-argument in a larger argument. This causes a logistical problem, rather than a logical one. But this does not destabilise the point that I have been making: there is something that verges on conceptual analysis in Nietzsche in which the analytics can (and must) engage him. I have only mentioned one such value-concept, viz. pity, and have not considered what follow-on effects such a ‘conceptual re-definition’ may have. Nietzsche certainly points to these follow-on effects, and it is these follow on effects that pose not only a cultural, but a theoretical, critique, contra Leiter.
Maybe I haven’t said enough to motivate the point, or maybe you think I have said enough but there just isn’t a point to be made. Either way, I would love some comments on this.
Have a great Christmas!
