Moral physiology and vivisection of the soul: why does Nietzsche criticize the life sciences?

Abstract

Recent scholarship has shown Nietzsche to offer an original and insightful moral psychology centering on a motivational feature he calls 'will to power. ' In many places, though, Nietzsche presents will to power differently, 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, it is argued, is a widespread and (contra many interpreters) 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 insights from that description. The paper concludes 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.

Nietzsche's Concept of Health

“…Above all something living wants to release its strength [Kraft]-life itself is will to power-: self-maintenance is only one of the indirect and frequent consequences of this. (BGE 13) While there has been some debate about his precise target in passages like this one, 18 I show in Dunkle (2018) that Nietzsche is here rejecting the long prevailing view described above by Ends.…”

“…As I discuss in Dunkle (2018), the thesis, Ends, had near consensus in Nietzsche's day and, indeed, long before. One finds it clearly espoused in the work of Kant, the German Idealists, and Schopenhauer; in J.S.…”