That we are efficacious beings, forces, this is our fundamental belief. (NL 34[250], KSA, 11, 505) * I would like to thank audiences at King's College (London) and Oxford, as well as the members of the Philosophical Research Colloquium based at the Cambridge Faculty of Philosophy, for helpful discussion on earlier versions of this paper. I would also like to thank referees for Nietzschefor schung, as well as Paul Katsafanas, Richard Raatzsch, Marco Brusotti, Helmut Heit, Margaret Clare Churchill Ryan and the participants of the 20th Nietzsche-Werkstatt Schulpforta for invaluable comments and criticism.

When we encounter a resistance and have to give in, we feel unfree, when we do not give in but compel it to give in to us, free. I.e., it is this feeling of our increase of force, which we name 'freedom of the will': the conscious awareness that our force compels, in relation to a force that is compelled. (NL 1885, KSA 11, 34[250]) 1 I can handle myself in the same way as a gardener his plants: I can distance motives from myself, in distancing myself from a place and company [Gesellschaft], I can place motives in my proximity. I can cultivate the propensity [den Hang], to proceed against myself in this gardener-like way, artificially [künstlich] or let it wither away. (NL 1880, KSA 9, 7[30]) 1 IntroductionThe aim of this article is to show (1) that freedom and agency are among Nietzsche's central concerns, (2) that his much-discussed interest in power in fact originates in a first-person account of freedom, and (3) that this novel understanding of the phenomenon of freedom informs his 'theory' of agency. I will argue that while Nietzsche questions the weight philosophers have given to the first-person perspective and consciousness, these remain essential not only to his initial analysis but also to his later conception of freedom and agency. While his rejection of metaphysical free will and moral desert has had a significant impact on contemporary ethics, the sense in which Nietzsche continues to use the term 'freedom' affirmatively remains largely unnoticed. He develops a sophisticated drive-driven psychological 1 Throughout I use standard abbreviations for Nietzsche's works. Nietzsche's posthumously published writings (NL) are cited by year, KSA (Nietzsche 1988) volume number, followed by notebook and fragment number. For NL 1885, KSA 11, 34[250] I also use division IX of the KGW (Nietzsche 2001-), which offers Nietzsche's late notebooks in diplomatic transcriptions that reveal his revisions, additions, and cancellations. I have relied on, and at times modified, existing translations of Nietzsche's texts. motivational account: reflective judgement and reasons can motivate by means of the affects or affective orientations agents have due to their drives; he claims that due to a strong preference-we could say with Mele, a 'standing desire' for freedom (it will soon become clear what Nietzsche means by 'freedom')-agents can generate the necessary motivational affects to unify their drives in view of (certain) long-term goals. Thus, when in his later philosophy Nietzsche envisages free agents who not only feel free but whose belief in their agency is justified, he has replaced the metaphysical picture (of agents who are mysterious, noumenally free, causa sui agents) with a naturalized, drive-driven psychological view of agency that he thinks has the resources to cope with the problem of affirmation that arises under nihilism conditions.Let me clarify some terminology first. 'Drive' and 'affect' are key concepts for Nietzsche. 2 He uses 'drives' in the sense of relatively fixed and recurring tendencies tha...

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This article examines what Nietzsche might mean by the proposition that “values are created”. It further raises the issue whether there is a “hard problem of value” analogous to the “hard problem” in the philosophy of mind. Nietzsche could be seen as a philosopher who tried to shift people’s views about values away from any realist-objectivist intuitions. He was optimistic that these views could be eliminated, and that eventually most or all would come to conceive of values as perspectival and created. It is shown first that Nietzsche rejects value realism in favour of a compelling anti realist conception of value, which he takes to be superior due to one specific property of values, their “aliveness”. If there is a “hard problem of value”, however, i.e. that for the realist any created value simply does not count as a value, it is unclear if Nietzsche’s conception is constructive.

This paper considers three general dilemmas that tend to undermine successful configurations of unity: the either/or dilemma, the synthesis dilemma and the relativism dilemma. It further argues that, in his aesthetic writings, Schiller's critique of Kantian dualisms leads him to an adualistic conception of unity that operates with a different, more inclusive approach to opposition and unification. In order to clarify Schiller's innovative and often misunderstood position, the paper draws on the disjunctive logic recently developed by Friedrich Kümmel. An den Dichter Laß die Sprache dir seyn, was der Körper den Liebenden; er nur Ists, der die Wesen trennt und der die Wesen vereint.1