Nietzsche's Anthropic Circle: Man, Science, and Myth (Rochester Studies in Philosophy)

Nietzsche's Anthropic Circle: Man, Science, and Myth (Rochester Studies in Philosophy)

George J. Stack

Language: English

Pages: 287

ISBN: 1580461913

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Nietzsche's Anthropic Circle is an internal analysis and interpretation of Nietzsche's critical uncovering of "anthropomorphic truth" in language and science, as well as his later use of anthropic analogies and transferences in his imaginative perspectival interpretation "a hybrid of art and science" of a universal, immanent "will to power" in nature. Both the relationship of Nietzsche to Kant's analysis of knowledge in the Critique of Pure Reason and his absorption of a dynamic theory of nature are explored in some detail. A crucial distinction between Nietzsche's perspectival concept of knowledge and perspectival interpretation is thoroughly discussed against the background of recurring analyses of his critique of knowledge and truth. It is shown that instrumental fictionalism was adopted by Nietzsche in order to put in question the pure objectivism of science. This links an aspect of his thought to the domain of recent American philosophy of science. The anticipatory relationship between Nietzsche's proto-structuralist analysis of language and recent linguistic structuralism, as well as his affiliation with evolutionary epistemology is explored. In the concluding portion of this inquiry it is contended that Nietzsche's psychology of a will to power in human drives, thought and behavior is at least theoretically defensible. However, it must be segregated from the extension of a will to power to the cosmos. There is a strong concluding argument offered that seeks to demonstrate that the so-called 'metaphysics' of the will to power is an artfully constructed, exoteric fable designed to retrieve a sense of the humanization of the world in face of a de-anthropomorphic world picture. George Stack is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the State University College of New York at Brockport, and the author of several books dealing with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

is felt as true, real and actual” and controvert what “the authentic instinct of life most unconditionally establishes as truth.”29 The Vedantists even deny their own “reality,” “deny belief in one’s ego.” Furthermore, this philosophy negates the senses, appearance, even reason itself. It propounds “a violation of and cruelty against reason.” Finally, with “voluptuous delight” this “ascetic” self-contempt and self-mockery of reason decrees: “there is a realm of truth and being, but reason is

elaborate constructs formed by perceptions, cognitions, psychic processes, culture, history, language, evolutionary change, metaphysical beliefs, etc. 86 Nietzsche’s Anthropic Circle For Nietzsche, there is no nonperspectival knowledge at all and the only “better” or more insightful perspective is one that has considered, thought through, and tentatively adopted a variety of general perspectives and has been liberated from restrictive, one-dimensional cognitive-affective standpoints. Most

interpretiveperspectival activities would not contribute to the dissolution of holistic truth, but rather point to “truth” positively conceived,89 is questionable. That is, an indefinite number of incongruent perspectival “truths” (if they could be known) would, in fact, undermine any unified concept of truth. As a description of how we know and as a method for the accumulation of knowledge by means of different modes of knowing, perspectivalism is pluralistic. What Nietzsche desired to subvert

or fear. The range of this “assimilation” is extensive and whatever is “incorporated” has been subjected to a process of transubstantiation, has already “been anthropomorphically organized.”93 There is an ineliminable “subjective” dimension to the “knowingprocess” (Erkenntnissprozess) that encompasses not only emotive or nonrational factors, but all of our “value-interpretations.” However, the “subject” that Nietzsche and his postmodern followers decenter, displace, or erase is the “metaphysical

different worlds and will continue to live under the sway of emergent cultural, intellectual, and linguistic systems. There is no absolutely “true” world-interpretation because of changes in global perspectives. Each dominant world-interpretation is pervaded by postulates, values, ways of thinking, perceiving, believing, and judging that are preserved by a typically unconscious acceptance of a symbolic, cultural, cognitive-linguistic world-orientation. Most individuals in a sociocultural system

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