Nietzsche the Kantian? Reading Nietzsche and Kant on the Sovereign Individual, Freedom and the Will 11-12 February 2011 Institute for Philosophy, Leiden University Lipsius building, Cleveringaplaats 1 This workshop is the first of a series on Nietzsche s relation to Kant to be held in various European universities. It aims to illuminate the relations between Nietzsche and Kant in the field of ethics by engaging with recent debates in the English- language literature over their conceptions of sovereignty, freedom and the will. It will respond critically to the currently popular idea that, despite his criticisms of free will, moral responsibility, intentional causality and the subject itself, Nietzsche affirms a Kantian sense of agency that admits certain positive senses of freedom, responsibility and intentional causality and bases a positive ethics on it. The workshop will concentrate on Nietzsche s later writings and will challenge the current emphasis on the sovereign individual passage of On the Genealogy of Morality by opening up the discussion to Nietzsche s treatments of will, freedom and sovereignty elsewhere in his published and unpublished work. The workshop will also attempt to correct the caricature of Kant that Nietzsche himself and his commentators often present and to thus provide for more sophisticated and fruitful engagements with Kant and Kantian positions. It will consist of 30-45 minute presentations of papers, some of which will be pre- circulated among participants at the beginning of February, followed by an open discussion guided by chairs. The workshop is free and open to all interested persons. However, since places are limited, please contact Herman Siemens (hwsiemens@hotmail.com) if you wish to attend. For abstracts, pre- circulated papers or any other information, please contact the organizers, Herman Siemens (hwsiemens@hotmail.com) and Tom Bailey (tbailey@johncabot.edu). The venue can be found on this map. The workshop was made possible by the generous support of the Institute for Philosophy, Leiden University. Nietzsche the Kantian? On the Sovereign Individual, Freedom and the Will 1
Confirmed speakers: Dr. Tom Bailey: Department of Philosophy, John Cabot University, and Center for Ethics and Global Politics, LUISS Guido Carli, Rome Prof. Marco Brusotti: Department of Philosophy, University of Berlin, and Department of Philosophy, University of Salento Prof. João Constancio: Department of Philosophy, New University of Lisbon Prof. Paul Katsafanas: Department of Philosophy., Boston University Prof. Luca Lupo: Department of Philosophy, University of Calabria Dr. Sieriol Morgan: Department of Philosophy, Bristol University Dr. Simon Robertson: Department of Philosophy, University of Stirling Dr. Herman Siemens: Institute for Philosophy, Leiden University Nietzsche the Kantian? On the Sovereign Individual, Freedom and the Will 2
Provisional programme Friday 11 February Lipsius room 130 14.00-15.15 Marco Brusotti (Berlin/Salento), 'Nietzsche on Action and the Will' 15.45-17.30 Tom Bailey (John Cabot and LUISS, Rome), 'Nietzsche's Kantian Will', & Herman Siemens (Leiden), 'Kant's "Respect for the Law" as "Feeling of Power": On (the Illusion of) Sovereignty' Drinks 19.00 Dinner Saturday 12 February Lipsius room 148 9.00-10.15 Paul Katsafanas (Boston), Nietzsche and Kant on the Passions 10.45-12.00 Simon Robertson (Stirling), Nietzsche versus Kant on Moral Psychology and Normativity Lunch 13.15-14.30 João Constancio (Lisbon), 'Nietzsche on Freedom as Autonomy' 15.00-16.15 Sieriol Morgan (Bristol), Naturalism and the First- Personal Foundations of Kantian Ethics' 16.45-18.00 Luca Lupo (Calabria), 'Willing and Time in Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols' Drinks 19.00 Dinner Nietzsche the Kantian? On the Sovereign Individual, Freedom and the Will 3
Biographies and s 1. Marco Brusotti, Nietzsche on Action and the Will Department of Philosophy, University of Berlin, and Department of Philosophy, University of Salento This paper presents a reading of Nietzsche s theory of action in the Genealogy, and considers its relation to Kant s conception of the will. In particular, it examines the employment of Kantian terms such as responsibility, autonomy, free will, and the categorical imperative in this text, with a view to determining how far Nietzsche might be considered to endorse Kant s conception of the will, how far he reformulates aspects of it in opposition to Schopenhauer s conception of the blind will, and how far he rather parodies Kant s conception, in the technical sense of using Kantian terms to give them a radically new meaning. The paper thus engages with recent debates over Nietzsche s understanding of action and the will, and his critical relation to Kant in this regard. 2. Tom Bailey, Nietzsche s Kantian Will Dr. Tom Bailey studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Oxford and gained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Warwick. He taught at Warwick and the Open University before moving to Italy, first as a researcher at the University of Pisa and now teaching philosophy at John Cabot University and LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome. He specialises in the history of modern political philosophy and in contemporary moral political philosophy, and particularly in Kant and post- Kantian philosophers of the nineteenth- century. Dr. Bailey s recent publications include Nietzsche s Engagements with Kant, in Ken Gemes and John Richardson (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche (Oxford University Press, 2011), and Analysing the Good Will: Kant s Argument in the First Section of the Groundwork, in the British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2010. This paper argues that Nietzsche endorses a Kantian conception of the will as the ability to realize conscious intentions and an associated Kantian ethics of autonomy and respect, and that this position coheres with his criticisms of the freedom, responsibility, consciousness, and substantive nature of the agent. On these grounds, it is argued that recent interpretations of Nietzsche the Kantian? On the Sovereign Individual, Freedom and the Will 4
Nietzsche as affirming a positive sense and ethics of the will are insufficient, particularly insofar as they attribute to him unconscious senses of agency and individualist senses of autonomy. In support of this reading, the paper will examine Nietzsche s account of the sovereign individual in the second essay of the Genealogy and relate it to his treatments of the will elsewhere in his later writings. 3. Paul Katsafanas, Nietzsche and Kant on the Passions Paul Katsafanas is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Boston University. He works in nineteenth- century philosophy, ethics, and philosophy of action. His research focuses on questions at the interface between ethics and philosophy of mind, including the way in which normative claims might be justified, the nature of self- consciousness, and the nature of agency. His most recent publications include: The Concept of Unified Agency in Nietzsche, Plato, and Schiller, forthcoming in Journal of the History of Philosophy, and Deriving Ethics from Action: A Nietzschean Version of Constitutivism, forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. He is currently completing a book entitled Autonomy and Power: A Nietzschean Foundation for Ethics. 4. João Constancio, Nietzsche on Freedom as Autonomy João Constâncio is Auxiliary Professor of Philosophy at the New University of Lisbon, where he is also director of a research project on "Nietzsche and the Contemporary Debate on the Self". He has published several papers on Nietzsche and is currently working on a book on Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. He is co- editor of the forthcoming volume, Nietzsche On Instinct and Language (De Gruyter). This paper argues that for Nietzsche freedom is autonomy in the literal sense of giving oneself one s own law, and that for him this law must be individual. Those who are autonomous, that is, are those who become individuals and are thus supramoral. Nietzsche thus opposes Kant s notion of autonomy as obedience to a universal law of practical reason. It is further argued that Nietzschean autonomy is not that of an agent with a free will in the traditional sense that is, a being whose actions stem from its rational, conscious willing. Rather, Nietzsche considers the autonomous, or sovereign, individual to be distinguished by its having values that are truly its own, such that the organism as a whole, and not just an ego, creates its own Nietzsche the Kantian? On the Sovereign Individual, Freedom and the Will 5
law. For Nietzsche, then, giving oneself one s own law means creating one s own law, and freedom as autonomy means self- creation in the sense of the creation of individuality. 5. Seiriol Morgan, Naturalism and the First- Personal Foundations of Kantian Ethics' Seiriol Morgan is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Bristol, having previously been Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Leeds. He works primarily in moral philosophy, and has published on topics in metaethics, moral theory and applied ethics, in particular on sexual morality. He also has extensive interests in the history of philosophy, especially the work of Augustine, Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. During the academic years 2010-2011 Seiriol will be on research leave, to work on a project entitled 'Kant's Moral Psychology of Wrong- Doing'. He is currently working on two books, one on philosophy and sex, and the other on Kant on wrong- doing and evil. 6. Simon Robertson, Nietzsche versus Kant on Moral Psychology and Normativity Simon Robertson is currently a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Stirling. He completed a PhD at the University of St Andrews (2005) and then held a lectureship at the University of Leeds (2005-7), followed by a postdoctoral research fellowship working on the AHRC funded project Nietzsche & Modern Moral Philosophy at the University of Southampton (2007-10). Simon s research interests currently fall into two main areas: contemporary ethics (normative ethics, metaethics, practical reason, value theory, moral psychology); and Nietzsche (especially his significance for contemporary ethics). He has published a dozen or so articles across both fields, in journals and edited collections. He is the editor of Spheres of Reason: New Essays in the Philosophy of Normativity (Oxford University Press) and co- editor of Nietzsche, Naturalism and Normativity (forthcoming with Oxford University Press). Outside of philosophy, Simon s abiding interests lie in various mountainous pursuits. In this paper I focus initially on one aspect of Nietzsche s engagement with Kant s moral theory namely, his opposition to a pivotal move Kant makes in both his derivation of the Categorical Imperative from the motive and concept of duty (Groundwork Ch.I), and then the justification of morality via rational autonomy (Groundwork Ch.III). I ll then connect Nietzsche s objection to a set of moral- psychological commitments that differ markedly from Kant s; and I ll Nietzsche the Kantian? On the Sovereign Individual, Freedom and the Will 6
show how this in turn yields rather different views about the nature and scope of normativity. The aim of this paper is in part expository; but I ll also draw some substantive conclusions about the veracity of the views discussed. 7. Luca Lupo, Willing and Time in Nietzsche s Twilight of the Idols Luca Lupo is Researcher and Assistant Professor in Moral Philosophy and Applied Ethics at the University of Calabria. His research focuses primarily on the textual and philosophical analysis of the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, focussing particularly on Nietzsche s ethics and anthropology. His broader interests include the relationship between epistemology and ethics in particular, the relationship between forms of knowledge and forms of life and the theory of will and action with particular attention to the problem of weakness of the will. He is a member of the Interdepartmental Centre for Nietzsche Studies for Nineteenth- and Twentieth- Century Studies at the University of Salento, the Seminario permanente nietzscheano and the Groupe International de Recherches sur Nietzsche. His publications include Le colombe dello scettico. Riflessioni di Nietzsche sulla coscienza negli anni 1880-1888 (ETS, 2006), Il pozzo e la scala. L umorismo etico di Wittgenstein, in P. F. Pieri (ed.), Perché si ride. Umorismo, comicità ironia (Moretti e Vitali, 2007) and La deriva come meta. Etica e grammatica della serendipity in P. Napoli (ed.), Serendipity e ripetizione (Rubbettino, 2011). This paper attempts to explain Nietzsche s apparently contradictory understanding of the will in Twilight of the Idols. There he repeats his rejection of the traditional sense of the will as the principle of action of a subject and introduces the notion of the innocence of becoming to emphasise his insistence on the non- subjective origins of action. Yet he also continues to use the term, will, and attempts to rethink it in terms of a distinction between strong and weak wills that recalls the Aristotelian distinction between enkràteia e akrasìa. The paper argues that Nietzsche thus provides a sophisticated account of the relation between will and time. This account is illuminated in terms of the ability to make and keep promises, and thus to determine future action, that Nietzsche attributes to the sovereign individual in the second essay of the Genealogy. It is also compared with Kant s conception of the will, with a view to showing that Nietzsche differs radically from Kant in considering willing to be an immanent process one that excludes both a supersensible and atemporal origin of action and any distinction between the plane of intention and that of the realization of action. Nietzsche the Kantian? On the Sovereign Individual, Freedom and the Will 7