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Nietzsche, nature, nurture

Nietzsche, nature, nurture
Nietzsche, nature, nurture
Nietzsche claims that we are fated to be as we are. He also claims, however, that we can create ourselves. To many commentators these twin commitments have seemed self-contradictory or paradoxical. The argument of this paper, by contrast, is that, despite appearances, there is no paradox here, nor even a tension between Nietzsche’s two claims. Instead, when properly interpreted these claims turn out to be intimately related to one another, so that our fatedness (and our acknowledgement of our fatedness) emerges as integral to our capacity to become self-creators. The paper also offers, in the course of undermining a false alternative that is deeply entrenched in the philosophical tradition, a reading of Nietzsche’s doctrine of amor fati that actually – and perhaps uniquely – makes full sense of section 276 of The Gay Science, the chief source for this aspect of his thought.
0966-8373
129-143
Ridley, Aaron
64d82169-aa92-4352-975d-2ef8bb3f2cc7
Ridley, Aaron
64d82169-aa92-4352-975d-2ef8bb3f2cc7

Ridley, Aaron (2017) Nietzsche, nature, nurture. European Journal of Philosophy, 25 (1), 129-143. (doi:10.1111/ejop.12190).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Nietzsche claims that we are fated to be as we are. He also claims, however, that we can create ourselves. To many commentators these twin commitments have seemed self-contradictory or paradoxical. The argument of this paper, by contrast, is that, despite appearances, there is no paradox here, nor even a tension between Nietzsche’s two claims. Instead, when properly interpreted these claims turn out to be intimately related to one another, so that our fatedness (and our acknowledgement of our fatedness) emerges as integral to our capacity to become self-creators. The paper also offers, in the course of undermining a false alternative that is deeply entrenched in the philosophical tradition, a reading of Nietzsche’s doctrine of amor fati that actually – and perhaps uniquely – makes full sense of section 276 of The Gay Science, the chief source for this aspect of his thought.

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Accepted/In Press date: 14 March 2016
e-pub ahead of print date: 23 October 2016
Published date: March 2017
Organisations: Philosophy

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 390200
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/390200
ISSN: 0966-8373
PURE UUID: 51b2b3ec-27c8-4549-9c4b-7c01f8cad0a5

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Date deposited: 22 Mar 2016 10:08
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 05:26

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