João Constâncio - Böcker

This volume consists of the revised and expanded versions of the papers presented at the International Conference “Nietzsche On Instinct and Language”, held at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal) in December 2009. The list of contributors includes top Nietzsche scholars, like Werner Stegmaier, Patrick Wotling, and Scarlett Marton. The volume as a whole represents a fresh look at Nietzsche’s attempt to connect language to the instinctive activity of the human body. Four of the papers focus on Nietzsche’s early Nachlass notes and writings, including The Birth of Tragedy and On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense; the other seven deal with his mature views on this important subject, especially in Beyond Good and Evil, The Gay Science, and the Nachlass. In focusing on how Nietzsche tries to dissolve the traditional opposition between instinct and language, as well as between instinct and consciousness and instinct and reason, the different papers consider, from this viewpoint, such Nietzschean themes as morality, value, the concept of philosophy, dogmatism, naturalization, metaphor, affectivity and emotion, health and sickness, tragedy, and laughter.

Nietzsche's metaphor of the spider that spins its cobweb expresses his critique of the metaphysical use of language - but it also suggests that ‟we, spiders‟, are able to spin different, life-affirming, healthier, non-metaphysical cobwebs. This book is a collection of 12 essays that focus not only on Nietzsche's critique of the metaphysical assumptions of language, but also on his effort to use language in a different way, i.e., to create a ‟new language‟. It is from this viewpoint that the book considers such themes as consciousness, the self, metaphor, instinct, affectivity, style, morality, truth, and knowledge.The authors invited to contribute to this volume are Nietzsche scholars who belong to some of the most important research centers of the European Nietzsche-Research: Centro Colli-Montinari (Italy), GIRN (Europhilosphie), SEDEN (Spain), Greifswald Research Group (Germany), NIL (Portugal). In 2011 João Constâncio and Maria João Mayer Branco edited Nietzsche on Instinct and Language, also published by Walter de Gruyter. The two books complement each other.

Nietzsche's critique of the modern subject is often presented as a radical break with modern philosophy and associated with the so-called ‘death of the subject’ in 20th century philosophy. But Nietzsche claimed to be a ‘psychologist’ who was trying to open up the path for ‘new versions and sophistications of the soul hypothesis.’ Although there is no doubt that Nietzsche gave expression to a fundamental crisis of the modern conception of subjectivity (both from a theoretical and from a practical-existential perspective), it is open to debate whether he wanted to abandon the very idea of subjectivity or only to pose the problem of subjectivity in new terms.The volume includes 26 articles by top Nietzsche scholars. The chapters in Part I, “Tradition and Context”, deal with the relationship between Nietzsche's views on subjectivity and modern philosophy, as well as with the late 19th century context in which his thought emerged; Part II, “The Crisis of the Subject”, examines the impact of Nietzsche's critique of the subject on 20th century philosophy, from Freud to Heidegger to Dennett, but also in such authors as Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida, or Luhmann; Part III, “Current Debates - From Embodiment and Consciousness to Agency”, shows that the way in which Nietzsche engaged with such themes as the self, agency, consciousness, embodiment and self-knowledge makes his thought highly relevant for philosophy today, especially for philosophy of mind and ethics.

This volume consists of the revised and expanded versions of the papers presented at the International Conference “Nietzsche On Instinct and Language”, held at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal) in December 2009. The list of contributors includes top Nietzsche scholars, like Werner Stegmaier, Patrick Wotling, and Scarlett Marton. The volume as a whole represents a fresh look at Nietzsche’s attempt to connect language to the instinctive activity of the human body. Four of the papers focus on Nietzsche’s early Nachlass notes and writings, including The Birth of Tragedy and On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense; the other seven deal with his mature views on this important subject, especially in Beyond Good and Evil, The Gay Science, and the Nachlass. In focusing on how Nietzsche tries to dissolve the traditional opposition between instinct and language, as well as between instinct and consciousness and instinct and reason, the different papers consider, from this viewpoint, such Nietzschean themes as morality, value, the concept of philosophy, dogmatism, naturalization, metaphor, affectivity and emotion, health and sickness, tragedy, and laughter.