Justin Remhof is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Old Dominion University and the author of Nietzsche’s Constructivism: A Metaphysics of Material Objects. His new book, Nietzsche as Metaphysician, examines aspects of Nietzsche’s thought that have received little attention in the literature, including his view of what makes metaphysics possible; his metaphysics of science; his naturalized metaphysics; how he appeals to the intuitions of readers; how he employs a priori reasoning; how he uses metaphysical grounding explanations; and how metaphysics is intertwined with topics central to his philosophical thinking, including his understanding of becoming, ethics, nihilism, life, perspective, amor fati, and eternal recurrence. In this Recently Published Book Spotlight, Remhof discusses Nietzsche as a metaphysical constructivist, his work as a neo-Kantian, and, in short, why we should view Nietzsche in a new light.
What is your work about?
This book defends the controversial view that Nietzsche should be read as a metaphysical philosopher. I offer a metametaphysical treatment of Nietzsche’s writings to show that for Nietzsche the questions, answers, methods, and subject matters of metaphysical philosophy are not only perfectly legitimate, but also crucial for understanding the world and our place within it. Nothing like this exists in the literature—in fact, commentators often argue quite the opposite! The far and away standard view is that Nietzsche is some kind of antimetaphysical thinker.
Why did you feel the need to write this book?
This book was inspired by various skeptical remarks I’ve received over the years to the effect that understanding Nietzsche’s metaphysics is a lost cause. The response can be summarized like this: “Nietzsche is not a metaphysician, so we should not be trying to discern Nietzsche’s metaphysical commitments—at the very least, doing so begs the question against those who deny that Nietzsche is a metaphysician.”
I have always been puzzled by this view. It seems clear to me that Nietzsche is a metaphysician—and, I should add, an extremely original, thought-provoking metaphysician. At the same time, however, while numerous commentators have attempted to illuminate Nietzsche’s first-order metaphysical views, there are no commentaries dedicated to defending the view that Nietzsche deserves to be read as a metaphysician from the start. And the view that Nietzsche wants nothing to do with metaphysics is all over the place in the literature. It then seems reasonable to think Nietzsche is not a metaphysician.
But, I argue, this is a mistake—a metametaphysical mistake. Those who deny that Nietzsche is a metaphysician are not primarily interested in arguing that his apparent metaphysical remarks are, say, false or unjustified, but that they do not matter—that Nietzsche is a deeply antimetaphysical thinker, end of story. The current manuscript, then, hopes to convince naysayers by offering a metametaphysical reading of Nietzsche’s works.
What effect do you hope your work will have?
I would like readers to leave with the impression I had when starting—yes, of course, Nietzsche is a metaphysician—while also coming away with metametaphysical guidelines for how to understand the nature of his metaphysical philosophy. I would like this book to reinvigorate scholarship on Nietzsche and metaphysics, and in turn I aim to open new possibilities for understanding Nietzsche’s thought at large. As I see things, there is simply no way of understanding what Nietzsche is doing as a philosopher if we do not understand him as a metaphysical thinker.
Can you elaborate on what sort of insights viewing Nietzche as a metaphysical thinker can offer understanding his thoughts at large?
Yes indeed! I have long argued that Nietzsche embraces metaphysical constructivism, the controversial neo-Kantian view that our representational activities bring all macroscopic concrete objects into existence by solidifying determinate conditions of identity of objects. I suggest that metaphysical positions like constructivism significantly affect Nietzsche’s practical philosophy. Perhaps the most important example is this: Nietzsche partly embraces constructivism as a way to diagnose and overcome nihilism.
Nihilism primarily looms as a consequence of embracing certain metaphysical positions—Nietzsche is clear about this in the notes, where he mostly discusses nihilism. For Nietzsche dividing the world into “appearance” and “reality,” like we see in Plato, Christianity, Kant, and Buddhism, is nihilistic. We tend to posit these non-empirical worlds—what he calls “true worlds”—to escape the problems of this world. If we tie our highest valuations to the true world, however, we end up embracing values that cannot, in fact, be realized in the conditions of this world. For Nietzsche we are starting to see that our values have become “devalued,” and we start to find the world meaningless.
On Nietzsche’s view, I think, commitment to metaphysical constructivism is vital for overcoming the meaninglessness that sets in upon the recognition that our highest values cannot be satisfied in the conditions of this world, specifically when it comes to sound philosophical and scientific inquiry. I suggest that embracing constructivism has practical-existential consequences for transforming the nature and meaning of scientific and philosophical inquiry by helping humanity avoid falling into forms of nihilism derivative of the true world. Commitment to constructivism exposes nihilistic values essentially associated with the true world and provides a life-affirming alternative to inquiry after such values have become devalued.
I have a chapter on how constructivism can help overcome nihilism in my first book. In my new book, I expand on this basic picture. I suggest that if we read Nietzsche as an antimetaphysical thinker then we will have no way of intelligibly understanding his conceptions of becoming, metaethics, nihilism, life, perspective, amor fati, and eternal recurrence. For Nietzsche, I argue, metaphysical views are inextricably intertwined with these other concepts, such that we must grant that Nietzsche is a metaphysical thinker to understand his philosophical positions in general. In short: metaphysics is non-eliminable.
How does this fit in with your larger research project?
A lot of my publications, including my first book, examine metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of science in Nietzsche’s thought. For these readings to be taken seriously, we need to first establish that he deserves to be interpreted as someone systematically interested in theoretical philosophy—that he is much more than just an ethicist, say, or a moral psychologist. That’s where the new book comes in. And I draw from contemporary analytic metaphysics quite a bit to bolster my conclusions.
What topics do you discuss in the work, and why do you discuss them?
In the first chapter I lay out a variety of reasons for why commentators might come to an antimetaphysical reading of Nietzsche, and I present my strategy for challenging this reading wholesale. The second chapter looks at Nietzsche on the question of opposites and presents Nietzsche’s unique neo-Kantian view of what makes metaphysics possible.
The third chapter presents my characterization of what metaphysics is and explains how this characterization affects the debate over whether Nietzsche is a metaphysician. The fourth chapter argues that Nietzsche’s work satisfies the characterization I provide—that Nietzsche is indeed a metaphysician. This chapter examines some key features of what I take to be Nietzsche’s metaphysics of science and Nietzsche’s naturalized metaphysics.
The fifth chapter investigates how Nietzsche’s work relies on metaphysical methods such as appeals to intuition, a priori justification, and metaphysical grounding. The sixth suggests that metaphysics is intertwined with central topics in Nietzsche’s thought, including his understanding of becoming, metaethics, nihilism, life, perspective, amor fati, and eternal recurrence, such that understanding Nietzsche in general requires taking his metaphysics seriously.
The final chapter summarizes my reading and presents metametaphysical guidelines for how to understand Nietzsche as a metaphysician.
Which of your insights or conclusions do you find most exciting?
The book covers a bunch of topics that have received little-to-no attention in the literature, including Nietzsche’s view of the possibility of metaphysics, his metaphysics of science, his naturalized metaphysics, and his surprising use of appeals to intuition and a priori reasoning to justify views he believes are correct. I think these are all rich areas of Nietzsche’s thought that could be explored in much more detail in the future.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you check it out!
Justin Remhof
Justin Remhof is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Old Dominion University. He specializes in Nineteenth-Twentieth Century European Philosophy and Metaphysics. He is the author of Nietzsche’s Constructivism: A Metaphysics of Material Objects (Routledge, 2018). His work has appeared in journals such as the European Journal of Philosophy, History of Philosophy Quarterly, Journal of the American Philosophical Association, Inquiry, The Southern Journal of Philosophy, The Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Nietzsche-Studien, and the British Journal for the History of Philosophy.
Richard B. Gibson is Editor of the Current Events in Philosophy and the Bioethics series. He is a bioethicist with research interests in human enhancement, emergent technologies, novel beings, disability theory, and body modification.
