Moral Psychology with Nietzsche

by Brian Leiter

Overview

Brian Leiter defends a set of radical ideas from Nietzsche: there is no objectively true morality, there is no free will, no one is ever morally responsible, and our conscious thoughts and reasoning play almost no significant role in our actions and how our lives unfold. Leiter presents a new interpretation of main themes of Nietzsche's moral psychology, including his anti-realism about value (including epistemic value), his account of moral judgment and its relationship to the emotions, his conception of the will and agency, his scepticism about free will and moral responsibility, his epiphenomenalism about certain kinds of conscious mental states, and his views about the heritability of psychological traits. In combining exegesis with argument, Leiter engages the views of philosophers like Harry Frankfurt, T. M. Scanlon, and Gary Watson, and psychologists including Daniel Wegner, Benjamin Libet, and Stanley Milgram. Nietzsche emerges not simply as a museum piece from the history of ideas, but as a philosopher and psychologist who exceeds David Hume for insight into human nature and the human mind, repeatedly anticipates later developments in empirical psychology, and continues to offer sophisticated and unsettling challenges to much conventional wisdom in both philosophy and psychology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199696505
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	05/21/2019
Pages:	212
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 6.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Brian Leiter, Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the Center for Law, Philosophy & Human Values, University of Chicago

Brian Leiter is Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the Center for Law, Philosophy and Human Values at the University of Chicago, where he teaches and writes about moral, political, and legal philosophy in both the Anglophone and Continental European traditions. His many publications include Nietzsche on Morality (2002; 2015), which has been called "the most important book on Nietzsche's philosophy in the last twenty years" (Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 2010).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Nietzsche's Naturalistic Moral PsychologyPart I: Metaphysics and Epistemology of Value1. Nietzsche's Anti-Realism about Value: the Explanatory Arguments2. Nietzsche's Metaethics: Against the Privilege Readings3. Moralities are a Sign-Language of the Affects4. Anti-Realism, Value, PerspectivismPart II: Freedom, Agency, and the Will5. Nietzsche's Theory of Agency: The Will and Freedom of the Will6. A Positive View of Freedom? 7. The Case for Nietzschean Moral Psychology (with Joshua Knobe)

Editorial Reviews

"Brian Leiter's second book on Nietzsche brings together ideas and arguments that have already had a significant influence on the field through their earlier formulations in his articles from the past two decades. It is thus indispensable reading for anyone interested in Leiter's evolving project of showing that Nietzsche has the correct naturalistic approach to issues in moral philosophy and moral psychology. As usual with Leiter's scholarship, this monograph is extremely clear, densely argued, and philosophically sophisticated." — Paul Loeb, Journal of the History of Philosophy

"Leiter is one of the most important and influential Nietzsche scholars in the Anglosphere today, so this volume is a must-read for Nietzsche scholars...[I]t should also interest a more general philosophical audience...Anyone coming from contemporary analytic philosophy will appreciate the forthright, unpretentious style and argumentative rigor, as well as the broad aim not to simply re-mouth Nietzsche's phrases but rather to articulate the Nietzschean perspective." — Alexander Prescott-Couch, European Journal of Philosophy

"engagingly written and philosophically adroit...[a] philosophically rewarding book" — Andrew Huddleston, Journal of Nietzsche Studies

"readers looking for a reading of Nietzsche that is rich in philosophical argument and places Nietzsche's moral psychology in conversation with contemporary Anglo-American philosophy will not be disappointed. I personally found Leiter's book to be a stimulating read that encourages us to resist moralizing interpretations of Nietzsche and opens up new avenues for situating Nietzsche in contemporary debates." — Matthew Meyer, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

From the Publisher