NIETZSCHE, EPISTEMOLOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Editors JURGEN RENN, Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science and KOSTAS GAVROGLU, University ofA thens ROBERTS. COHEN, Boston University Editorial Advisory Board THOMAS F. GLICK, Boston University ADOLF GRZNBAUM, University of Pittsburgh SYLVAN SL. SCHWEBER, Brandeis University JOHN J. STACHEL, Boston University MARX W. WARTOFSKY t (Editor 1960-1997) VOLUME204 NIETZSCHE, EPISTEMOLOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE NIETZSCHE AND THE SCIENCES II Edited by BABETTE E. BABICH Fordham University in cooperation with ROBERT S. COHEN Boston University SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. A C.I.P Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-90-481-5234-6 ISBN 978-94-017-2428-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-2428-9 Printed an acid-free paper AII Rights Reserved © 1999 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1999 No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. In memory of Marx W artofsky 1928-1997 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix List of Abbreviations Used Xl ALASDAIR MACINTYRE I Preface XV INTRODUCTION BABETTE E. BABICH I Truth, Art, and Life: Nietzsche, Epistemology, Philosophy of Science 1 Section Summaries 14 ANALYTIC PERSPECTIVES: TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE RICHARD SCHACHT I Nietzsche: Truth and Knowledge 25 ROBERT C. WELSHON I Perspectivist Ontology and de re Knowledge 39 R. LANIER ANDERSON I Nietzsche's Views on Truth and the Kantian Background of his Epistemology 47 PAUL J.M. VAN TONGEREN I Nietzsche's Symptomatology of Skepticism 61 ANALYTIC PERSPECTIVES: ATOMISM, REALISM, NATURALISM, POSITIVISM ROBIN SMALL I We Sensualists 73 ROBERT NOLA I Nietzsche's Naturalism: Science and Belief 91 JONATHAN COHEN I Nietzsche's Fling with Positivism 101 DANIEL CONWAY I Beyond Truth and Appearance: Nietzsche's Emergent Realism 109 NIETZSCHE'S EPISTEMOLOGICAL DARING BARRY ALLEN I All the Daring of the Lover of Knowledge is Permitted Again 12 3 JUSTIN BARTON I How Epistemology Becomes What It Is 141 vii Vlll TABLE OF CONTENTS DUNCAN LARGE I Hermes contra Dionysus: Michel Serres's Critique of Nietzsche 151 BELA BACSO I The Will to Truth 161 DAVID OWEN I Science, Value, and the Ascetic Ideal 169 DAVID B. ALLISON I Twilight of the Icons 179 PERSPECTIVES ON NIETZSCHE'S PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE GREG WHITLOCK I Roger J. Boscovich and Friedrich Nietzsche: A Re-Examination 187 PATRICK A. HEELAN I Nietzsche's Perspectivalism: A Hermeneutic Philosophy of Science 203 CARL FRIEDRICH VON WEIZSACKER I Nietzsche: Perceptions of Modernity 221 PAUL VALADIER I Science as New Religion 241 WALTHER CH. ZIMMERLI I Nietzsche's Critique of Truth and Science: A Comprehensive Approach 253 ANDREA REHBERG I Nietzsche's Transvaluation of Causality 279 PETER POELLNER I Causation and Force in Nietzsche 287 NIETZSCHE AND THE SCIENCES SCOTT H. PODOLSKY AND ALFRED I. TAUBER I Nietzsche's Conception of Health: The Idealization of Struggle 299 ERIC STEINHART I The Will to Power and Parallel Distributed Processing 313 PETER DOUGLAS I The Fractal Dynamics of a Nietzschean World 323 ULLRICH MICHAEL HAASE I Nietzsche's Critique of Technology: A Defense of Phenomenology Against Modern Machinery 331 Selected Research Bibliography 341 Notes on Contributors 359 Table of Contents of Volume One: Nietzsche, Theories of Knowledge, and Critical Theory: Nietzsche and the Sciences I 365 Index 367 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The publisher's permission to translate Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker's essay, "Nietzsche: Art, Science, Power" in Wahmehmung der Neuzeit, (Hanser Verlag 1983) is gratefully acknowledged. Richard Schacht's "Nietzsche, Truth and Knowledge," derives from Schacht's Nietzsche, ©Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983, and appears here with the permission of the publisher. I take the happy opportunity to herewith affirm my respect and admiration for RobertS. Cohen and I thank him for suggesting and encouraging my work on this volume, as well as for the range of his contributions to its scope. As always, too, Patrick A. Heelan has my constant gratitude for his insight, critical advice, and indispensable personal support. I am also inspired by his enthusi asm for philosophy and the breadth of his continuing, current research interests. The institutional support provided by the Graduate School of Georgetown University is herewith also gratefully acknowledged because the practical labor on this collection was in pa11 supported by the research project, Hermeneutic and Phenomenological Approaches to the Philosophy of Science, directed by William A. Gaston Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University, Patrick A. Heelan. In an important way, this work first began when as a doctoral student I visited a conference on the topic Nietzsche: Kunst und Wissenschaft in the Spring of 1985 at the IUC in Dubrovnik in the former, peacefully united Yugoslavia with the aid of a Fulbright Fellow's small travel grant. There I immediately recognized the need for a book which might adumbrate the key differences and points of contact between the German language reception of Nietzsche's philosophy and Anglophone approaches to Nietzsche - especially with regard to formal and epistemic issues. Particularly influential were Gunter Abel, Tilman Borsche, Volker Gerhardt, Friedrich Kaulbach (t), Wolfgang MOller Lauter, Birgitte Scheer, and Josef Simon. In addition to my own response to the challenge of thinking between English and German reflections in Nietzsche's Philosophy of Science (1994), the current collection represents some of the many different voices and scholarly perspectives to be heard in this tradition, as broadly various in the Anglophone as they are in the German contributions below, a range also including other voices and languages- here presented in English to facilitate the communication that remains still to be broadened between different language traditions and different scholarly formations. lX X ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Beyond the direct personal trajectory of this collection, the tradition of reading "Nietzsche and the Sciences" dates from Nietzsche's earliest interpret ers. Supplementing the pioneering insights of Hans Vaihinger and Abel Rey, Alwin Mittasch, Oskar Becker, and, more recently, Milic Capek, must be acknowledged. Contemporary currents continue with Robin Small's work on recurrence and the theory of time and Angele Kremer-Marietti combines research on Nietzsche with a special expertise on Comte. Walther Ch. Zimmerli's influential paper on Nietzsche's critique of science, published here for the first time in the present volume, as well as for the broader work of Jean Granier, Reinhard Low (t), and Dieter Henke (with reference to theology and Darwinism), and the still-as-yet untapped insights of Dieter Jiihnig' s reflections on the problem of science as a philosophic problem with regard to the origins of art in history and culture encourages further research on the themes collected here. Further: the new and growing interest in Nietzsche and truth (and including science, metaphysics, and epistemology) on the part of new scholars, especially those hailing from analytic philosophical quarters, may well be expected to enhance the project of understanding Nietzsche's thinking while at the same time highlighting a theme that both invites and supports the possibility of continental/analytic dialogue. I express deepest personal thanks to David B. Allison, Richard Cobb-Stevens, Theodore Kisiel, Alexander Nehamas, Tracy B. Strong, and Marx Wartofsky (t). Alasdair Macintyre has my special gratitude for his kind encouragement as well as my appreciation of the contemporary and ongoing engagement with the problem of science represented in his Preface to this collection. And, I thank Holger Schmid for his assistance with both collections and for working with me to correct literally every one of the translations from the German, especially for philosophic conversation in Nietzsche's own spirit on the esoteric kernel of antiquity, language, poetry, and music. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED In general, references to Nietzsche's works are abbreviated and included in the body of the text. References to all other works are listed in the notes to each individual contribution, though this may vary with different authors. In addition, because this collection is not intended for the specialist reader alone, an effort has been made to keep references as general as possible. Specialists will not find this rigorous but it is hoped that by the same token, nonspecialists may find the discussions less forbidding. This is an overall guide. Some essays will employ individual conventions. NIETZSCHE'S WORKS:GERMAN EDITIONS GOA Werke. Groj3oktav-Ausgabe, 2nd. ed., (Leipzig: Kroner, 1901-1913). KGB Briefwechsel. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. by. G. Colli and M. Montinari, (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1975 sqq.). KSA Siimtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe (Miinchen/Ber1in, New York: DTV/ Walter de Gruyter, 1980). Cited as KSA followed by the page number. Some authors include notebook volume and number. KGW Nietzsches Werke (Kritische Gesamtausgabe) (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1967 ff.) Cited as KGW followed by the page number. NIETZSCHE'S WORKS: ENGLISH EDITIONS The following abbreviations refer to in-text references to English translations of Nietzsche's works. The original date of publication is listed in parentheses. The manner of citation, whether to essay and section number or to section number alone, or to specific page numbers in the translated edition is also noted in the notes to each essay. Citations have been standardized only where possible and references are not always to the same translation. Where more than one current translation of the same original work is used in the essays to follow, listings are given below in order of citation frequency. The specific reference is also listed whenever possible in notes to each essay. PT Philosophy and Truth. Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870's, (1872-3), ed. and trans., Daniel Breazeale (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1979). Das Philosophenbuch, originally published in xi