Nietzsche's project of revaluing all values (Friedrich Nietzsche)

In order to make Nietzsche relevant to philosophical discussions, many Nietzsche scholars attempt to construct from his texts a theory of truth, a moral or ethical theory, or a political philosophy which can then be measured against competing positions staked out in the history of philosophy. The virtue of this approach is that it presents Nietzsche and his work as continuous with the western tradition. The obvious drawback to this approach, however, is that the cleaned-up version of Nietzsche tends to be quite sterile. The disruptive force of his philosophical critiques is often lost and his positive work is generally reduced to anticipations of positions more fully articulated by later philosophers.; By focusing on Nietzsche's project of overcoming and creating new values, I give a more philosophically engaging reading of Nietzsche that emphasizes the transformative implications of his work for contemporary discussions of truth, value, free will, and agency. I argue that Nietzsche problematizes our relationship to, and tradition of articulating and defending, universal principles. In place of universal principles, Nietzsche suggests a provisional epistemology in terms of perspectivism, a metaphysics based on will to power and eternal return, and a conception of human agency in terms of the domination of strong drives over weaker ones. Nietzsche thereby reconceptualizes philosophy itself as the experimental retheorization of principles and concepts, or the revaluation of values.; Although Nietzsche does not leave us with final accounts of his philosophical positions and even demands their critical reevaluation, I argue that Nietzsche's teachings of will to power and eternal return have important implications for how we think about ethical and political life. Nietzsche's deconstruction of the unified and free willing subject, taken together with his understanding of the world as becoming, supply an alternative to Enlightenment based conceptions of rationality, the good, and the just. The reading of Nietzsche I seek to defend is based in a close textual analysis designed to show how his writings perform a violent disruption of traditional philosophical conceptions of truth, rationality, and the practice of philosophy itself.