Defending Nietzsche's Constructivism About Objects
DOI: 10.1111/ejop.12267 Defending Nietzsche’s Constructivism about Objects Justin Remhof Abstract: Nietzsche appears to adopt a radical Kantian view of objects called constructivism, which holds that the existence of all objects depends essentially on our practices. This essay provides a new reconstruction of Nietzsche’s argument for constructivism and responds to five pressing objections to reading Nietzsche as a constructivist that have not been addressed by commentators defending constructivist interpretations of Nietzsche. In the tradition of Kant and post-Kantian philosophy, Nietzsche was attentive to questions concerning the nature of objects. His texts often address questions concerning the existence and non-existence of objects, the relation of objects to human minds, and how different views of objects impact commitments in many areas of philosophy—not just metaphysics but also epistemology, semantics, science, and even ethics. I have argued (Remhof 2015a), along with Nehamas (1985: Ch. 3), Anderson (1998), and Cox (1999: 152–163), that Nietzsche adopts a radical Kantian view of objects called constructivism.1 This view holds that all objects are socially constructed. Specifically, the existence of all objects we can encounter, such as rocks, trees, and planets, depends essentially on the application of concepts to the world relative to our needs, interests, and values. Nietzsche writes that ‘A “thing” is the sum of its effects, synthetically united by a concept’ [Ein ‘Ding’ ist die Summe seiner Wirkungen, synthetisch gebunden durch einen Begriff] (KSA 13:14[98]), and asserts that ‘it is enough to create new names […] in order to create new “things”’ [es genügt, neue Namen […] um auf die Länge hin neue ‘Dinge’ zu schaffen] (GS 58, see also KSA 12:2[77], 2[150]).2 ‘Thing’ is presumably scare-quoted because constructivism is unorthodox.
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