Post-Kantian European Philosophy Seminar (Tuesday - Week 4, MT26)

Abstract: The status of the human condition—whether our acts are necessary or free, determined or contingent—is a decisive question for modern philosophy, once a direct integration of human existence into an ordered cosmos can no longer be taken for granted. This question creates a particular tension in Nietzsche’s thought. On the one hand, he rejects free will and repeatedly emphasizes the necessity of what happens. On the other hand, his conception of tragic wisdom requires the possibility of revaluating values, affects, and forms of life. What conception of necessity makes such tragic wisdom possible? Can everything that happens be necessary without being predetermined, and can such a necessity be compatible with the revaluation of values?

Taking as its main reference the first chapter of Beyond Good and Evil—especially §22—this lecture argues that the difficulty arises from identifying necessity with determination. Nietzsche allows us to conceive necessity as immanent in the exercise and interaction of forces: given an actual configuration of forces, its consequences are necessary, although that configuration need not itself have been predetermined. I call this a tragic conception of necessity. On this basis, tragic wisdom can itself be understood as an intervention within the interplay of forces, capable of revaluating the affects and values through which human existence takes shape.

Registration: If you do not hold a university card, please contact the seminar convenor or admin@philosophy.ox.ac.uk at least two working days before a seminar to register your attendance.

Post-Kantian European Philosophy Seminar Convenors: Jack Wearing, Manuel Dries, Joseph Schear, Kate Kirkpatrick and Mark Wrathall.