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Consciousness, Self-Control, And Free Will In Nietzsche, Bryan T. Russell
Consciousness, Self-Control, And Free Will In Nietzsche, Bryan T. Russell
Philosophy Theses
Brian Leiter is one of the few Nietzsche interpreters who argue that Nietzsche rejects all forms of free will. Leiter argues that Nietzsche is an incompatibilist and rejects libertarian free will. He further argues that since Nietzsche is an epiphenomenalist about conscious willing, his philosophy of action cannot support any conception of free will. Leiter also offers deflationary readings of those passages where Nietzsche seemingly ascribes free will to historical figures or types. In this paper I argue against all of these conclusions. In the first section I show that, on the most charitable interpretation, Nietzsche is not an epiphenomenalist. …
Nietzsche's Causally Efficacious Account Of Consciousness, Bradley Wissmueller
Nietzsche's Causally Efficacious Account Of Consciousness, Bradley Wissmueller
Philosophy Theses
Many interpreters read Nietzsche as an epiphenomenalist. This means that, contrary to everyday “felt” experience, consciousness has no causal influence on our actions. In the first half of this paper I show that an epiphenomenalist interpretation proposed by Brian Leiter is unsupported by Nietzsche’s texts. Further, contemporary research does not conclusively support epiphenomenalism, as Leiter claims. In the second half of the paper I present the novel, causally efficacious view of consciousness that is supported by Nietzsche’s texts. This view of consciousness does not present consciousness as a self-caused faculty that is in some way separate from the rest of …