Narziss

In Progress:

“Nietzsche on Actions and Properties”
In two passages of Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche claims that our idea of thinghood and our whole substance ontology has its roots in our belief that the will has causal efficacy.  Nietzsche believes that we derive the relationships of cause-effect and of substance-property from the relationship of subject-willing, as perceived and understood through our first-person experience.  I explain the details of Nietzsche’s argument. 

“Nietzsche and the Affirming, Strong Will”
Contrary to Schopenhauer’s suggestion that we should deny our drives because denying our drives would provide us with unmediated access of the world, Nietzsche suggests that our drives actually allow us to better comprehend the world.  Thus according to Nietzsche, the worst type of will is a weak will (a will constituted by a disorganization of drives), but even still the strong will is not necessarily an advantage.  That is because there are two types of strong will: the ascetic and the affirming.  Both types of strong will are possessed of a master drive that focuses the individual, but the ascetic, strong will is possessed of a master drive that denies the subservient drives, while the affirming, strong will is possessed of a master drive that sublimates the subservient drives.  Thus, even among types of strong will, Nietzsche prefers the affirming over the ascetic due to the affirming will’s ability to supply us with drives with which to offer us perspectives in deliberation for our capacity for practical reason.

Completed:

Narziss, Carlos (2011) “Nietzsche on Agency and the Will”
Nietzsche writes certain things that may lead us to believe that he denies the existence of agency and the causality of the agent’s will.  Contrary to these deflationary readings of agency and the will, I argue that taking a closer look at what Nietzsche writes leads us to understand that he is only trying to qualify our concepts and instead provide us with a revisionary account of agency and willing. (I plan to expand this essay with empirical support from contemporary work in psychology.)

Narziss, Carlos (2010) “The Role of Consciousness in Schopenhauer” 
In The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer presents us with reasons for denying our passions and drives. The main reason to deny our drives, according to Schopenhauer, is that denying them (and hence denying the will) would allow us to have unmediated access to the world.  I present the details of Schopenhauer’s argument and follow with four objections from Nietzsche.