Nietzsche's psychology as a refinement of Plato's
Nietzsche's psychology as a refinement of Plato's
In their recent book The Soul of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, Maudemarie Clark and David Dudrick claim that Nietzsche takes Plato’s theory of the soul to be ‘a hypothesis, which his own psychology is an attempt to refine’. This essay accepts that claim, but argues for a more streamlined account of the relation between Nietzsche and Plato than Clark and Dudrick give. (1) There is no justification for their suggestion that Nietzsche diagnoses an ‘atomistic need’ as responsible for what he objects to in Plato’s model. (2) The claim that ‘reason’ is a motivationally inert set of cognitive capacities is not necessarily a point of disagreement with Plato. (3) Nietzsche’s psychology does not require a generalized ‘will to value’ as a counterpart to the will to truth. (4) Clark and Dudrick fail to recognize the Platonic soul-elements as drives, and that the element which for Plato should govern in the best of souls can be interpreted as closely analogous to Nietzsche’s will to truth.
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Janaway, Christopher
61c48538-365f-416f-b6f7-dfa4d4663475
2014
Janaway, Christopher
61c48538-365f-416f-b6f7-dfa4d4663475
Abstract
In their recent book The Soul of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, Maudemarie Clark and David Dudrick claim that Nietzsche takes Plato’s theory of the soul to be ‘a hypothesis, which his own psychology is an attempt to refine’. This essay accepts that claim, but argues for a more streamlined account of the relation between Nietzsche and Plato than Clark and Dudrick give. (1) There is no justification for their suggestion that Nietzsche diagnoses an ‘atomistic need’ as responsible for what he objects to in Plato’s model. (2) The claim that ‘reason’ is a motivationally inert set of cognitive capacities is not necessarily a point of disagreement with Plato. (3) Nietzsche’s psychology does not require a generalized ‘will to value’ as a counterpart to the will to truth. (4) Clark and Dudrick fail to recognize the Platonic soul-elements as drives, and that the element which for Plato should govern in the best of souls can be interpreted as closely analogous to Nietzsche’s will to truth.
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Nietzsche's Psychology
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Published date: 2014
Organisations:
Philosophy
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Local EPrints ID: 359435
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/359435
ISSN: 0968-8005
PURE UUID: 9e55d0c9-391f-4e50-b816-bbd673464748
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Date deposited: 01 Nov 2013 14:36
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:11
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