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BOOK
(Under contract) Nietzsche on Health
Elements in the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
eds. K. Creasy & M. Meyer | Cambridge University Press
Nietzsche fiercely criticizes values, social practices, political arrangements, religions, art, persons, and even “morality” itself—all in the name of health. In his later works he also seeks to treat human health by offering his own “healthy morality” (or normative ethical framework). While much scholarly debate exists over Nietzsche’s critical and positive projects, very little attention has been paid to how he understands health and what precise role it is meant to play in these projects. This Element will mark the most in-depth treatment of the subject to date. In it, I collect and outline Nietzsche’s central uses of health and its cognates (Chapter 1); survey, organize, and critically evaluate existing interpretations (Chapter 2); and defend my original reading (Chapters 3-4). I argue that Nietzsche implicitly employed a formal notion of good health as the ability of the individual to realize the behavior they are motivated toward. I argue that we can speculate on how he reached this view by noticing his objections to a view popular then, as now, according to which good health consists in the suitedness of the individual to survive and reproduce by virtue of their physiological processes. In the final chapter (Chapter 5), I raise and sketch an answer to the question of why Nietzsche holds health to be particularly valuable.
Journal Articles
[9] (forth.) Disability and Achievement
Journal of Medicine and Philosophy
In this article, I explore the impact of disability on one of life’s goods: achievement. Contra Campbell, Nyholm, and Walter, I argue that construing the magnitude of achievements in terms of subjective effort trivializes what it means to achieve. This poses a problem for the authors’ argument that disability, in general, does not reduce access to this good. I draw on an alternative construal of achievement I have developed elsewhere in order to show that, indeed, many disabilities do not restrict access to achievement. I defend this argument against an objection that my argument problematically relativizes the achievements of persons with disability, and I close with general lessons for future work.
[8] (forth.) The Comparative Achievement Explanation of Artistic Value
The Southern Journal of Philosophy | PhilPapers Entry
There is broad agreement in aesthetics that some artworks are greater than others despite bearing equivalent (or lesser) aesthetic value. One explanation of this difference in artistic value is that creation of the greater artwork represents a greater achievement. The aim of this paper is to refine this explanation and to defend it against recent criticisms. First, I present a prima facie case in favor of the achievement explanation. Second, I draw on the history of photography to motivate three objections to it: viz, that it wrongly excludes (1) lucky, (2) easy, and (3) failed creations from being artistically great. Third, I present my refined version of the achievement explanation and show how it avoids these objections. On my view, an artistic achievement consists in creating a work it would have been especially hard for comparable artists to create. Finally, I raise and address several additional objections. In responding these objections I argue, among other things, that my explanation of artistic value enhances our understanding of good-bad art: specifically, it allows us to see how good-bad art is artistically great despite being aesthetically flawed.
[7] (2022) Nietzsche’s Concept of Health
Ergo 8(34): 288-311 | PhilPapers Entry
Nietzsche assesses values, moralities, religions, cultures, and persons in terms of health. He argues that we should reject those that are unhealthy and develop healthier alternatives. But what is Nietzsche’s conception of health, and why should it carry such normative force? In this paper I argue for reading Nietzsche’s concept of health as the overall ability to meet the demands of one’s basic motivations. I show that, unlike other interpretations, this reading accounts for his rejection of particular features of a prevailing, then as now, model of health; for his association of health with strength and with psychic unity; and for his claim that health is compatible with, and can even be enhanced by, functional impairments such as those from which he personally suffered. Throughout I draw connections to recent literature on health and disability.
[6] (2022) Growth and the Shape of a Life
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 103(3): 581-605 | PhilPapers Entry
Why does it seem better to be a pauper who becomes a king rather than a king who becomes a pauper even when each life contains an equivalent sum of goods to the other? Many argue that only the pauper-to-king life can be told as a redemption story and that it is good for you to live a redemption story. This paper calls that explanation into question and proposes an alternative: upward-trending lives reveal growth. I argue that growth is a valuable feature of a life, that redemption is not, and that growth explains intuitions cited in favor of redemption.
[5] (2022) Morality as Cure and Poison in Nietzsche’s Genealogy
Journal of Nietzsche Studies 53(1): 34-58 | PhilPapers Entry
Nietzsche argues in the Genealogy of Morality (GM) that key aspects of modern European morality arose as “cures” for widespread human sickness but are ultimately making us sicker (“poisoning” us). This article provides a systematic overview of how Nietzsche believes morality has functioned as a cure and poison for European humanity. Drawing on my own previous work on Nietzsche’s concept of health, I sketch an overview of the (1) sicknesses, (2) treatments, and (3) pathogeneses discussed in each of the three treatises in terms of a single (and plausible) concept of health. The result is a systematic interpretive overview of the core polemical argument in GM.
[4] (2020) On the Normativity of Nietzsche’s Will to Power
Journal of Nietzsche Studies 51(2): 188-211 | Submitted MS | PhilPapers Entry
A prominent tradition in Nietzsche scholarship reads his views about will to power as a psychological thesis and reads his claims about the value of power as an attempt to derive normativity from psychological necessity. This paper shows that these interpretations have failed to articulate a cogent or accurate reading and casts doubt on such an approach. I argue that there is a mismatch between the psychological hypothesis these interpreters attribute to Nietzsche and the normative implications they draw from it. I also argue that these interpreters mischaracterize the content of Nietzsche’s psychological hypothesis. These criticisms bear not only on how we read Nietzsche, but on the viability of Katsafanas’ brand of ethical constitutivism. After presenting these critical arguments I propose an original interpretation of will to power in terms of the motivation to grow. This revised interpretation, however, still fails to support the tradition’s derivation of normativity. We should, I conclude, look elsewhere for Nietzsche’s normative argument.
[3] (2019) The Competition Account of Achievement-Value
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 100(4): 1018-1046 | PhilPapers Entry
A great achievement makes one’s life go better independently of its results, but what makes an achievement great? A simple answer is—its difficulty. I defend this view against recent, pressing objections by interpreting difficulty in terms of competitiveness. Difficulty is determined not by how hard the agent worked for the end but by how hard others would need to do in order to compete. Successfully reaching a goal is a valuable achievement because it is difficult, and it is difficult because it is competitive. Hence, both virtuosic performances and lucky successes can be valuable achievements.
[2] (2018) Moral Physiology and Vivisection of the Soul: Why Does Nietzsche Criticize the Life Sciences?
Inquiry 61(1): 62-81 | PhilPapers Entry
Recent scholarship has shown Nietzsche to offer an original and insightful moral psychology centering on a motivational feature he calls ‘will to power.’ Nietzsche often presents will to power differently, however, as the ‘essence of life,’ an account of ‘organic function,’ even offering it as a correction to physiologists. This paper clarifies the scope and purpose of will to power by identifying the historical physiological view at which Nietzsche directs his criticisms and by identifying his purpose in doing so. Nietzsche’s criticism, I show, is directed at a widespread and pre-Darwinian description of the basic dispositions of organisms and their internal processes. The purpose of this criticism is to undermine the efforts of Herbert Spencer and Arthur Schopenhauer to derive moral-psychological conclusions from that description. I conclude that Nietzsche’s proposal to conceive of ‘organic function’ in terms of will to power is of little import for his moral psychology besides clearing away competing views.
[1] (2013) Morality Makes Me Sick
Journal of Nietzsche Studies 44(3): 446-460 | PhilPapers Entry
In this article, I reconstruct and raise a criticism against Brian Leiter’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s criticism of conventional morality in Nietzsche on Morality. Leiter’s interpretation falters because it attributes to Nietzsche an implausible combination of positions. First, Nietzsche is said to be a value antirealist. But he is also said to defer to the value of the flourishing of his audience, who are limited to a certain subset of “higher” humans. I argue that, in spite of Leiter’s attempt to defend this view, he ultimately fails to explain how Nietzsche can be confident in the normative force of the higher humans’ flourishing and, in turn, of his criticism of morality. I conclude with a brief sketch of a plausible alternative.