Nietzsche's Political Skepticism by Shaw Tamsin;

Author:Shaw, Tamsin;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2008-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 4

Nietzsche as a Moral Antirealist

INTRODUCTION

Nietzsche’s political skepticism, I have argued, derives from the following set of arguments: stable political authority requires normative consensus; this consensus must be manufactured ideologically; and although Nietzsche wants to preserve political authority in some form, he cannot concede to the state this ideological power, for he wants to preserve evaluative freedom. His skepticism, then, can be seen to derive from a perceived conflict between the requirements of political authority and the requirements of normative authority.

The commitment to evaluative freedom implies what we have called a “transcendental” argument for limiting state power.1 So long as the fundamental determinant of our values is held to be something other than the state’s dicta, we cannot coherently cede total ideological control to the state. We must preserve whatever independent source of normative authority we recognize.

However, a broad range of views has been attributed to Nietzsche concerning what this evaluative independence should consist in. It is easy enough to make sense of on a moral realist view. It would consist in the free pursuit of normative truth. But in spite of the fact that his value-criticism often looks very much like a quest for normative truth, most of Nietzsche’s meta-ethical suggestions have an antirealist character. He is therefore generally read as a consistent moral antirealist, where the claim about consistency has to involve a special explanation of the character of the value-criticism.

In this chapter I shall aim to set out the problems that arise for the antirealist in trying to make sense of Nietzsche’s objection to political self-justification. If we want to make sense of his position, I shall argue, we have to see his antirealist tendencies as being in tension with it.

There are several possible models of evaluative independence the anti-realist might adopt. As we shall see, some readers have emphasized the more deterministic elements of Nietzsche’s moral thought, which stress the role of physiological and psychological factors in determining our values. Independence will then consist in a form of authenticity, which rules out some forms of constraint but not others. Others have emphasized the more constructivist elements that are seen to underlie his exhortation to create new values. The most plausible antirealist reading, it seems to me, will be one that can accommodate both elements.2 But there is no antirealist reading that can render his concern for independence completely coherent.

If evaluative freedom or independence does not involve the discovery of truth, we cannot expect others to converge freely on the same norms. Nor do we have at our disposal any rational means of persuading them. Any convergence, unless it is just accidental, will have to be the result of some form of coercion. As an antirealist, Nietzsche can only coherently be recommending that he himself should have evaluative independence and that his own values should, if they are to be effective in societies, be coercively imposed on others.

As we saw in chapters 2 and 3, Nietzsche perceives that philosophers in fact possess no such effective authority. They do not have available to them any special means of rational or nonrational persuasion.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.