Nietzsche and the Analytical Ambition

Abstract

Afamiliar view among Nietzsche's admirers whose training is in Anglo \merican is that he would, up to a point, have reciprocated and admired enterprise of analytical philosophy?as far it goes. Richard Schacht, for instance, writes that Nietzsche find no fault with most projects of linguistic-analytical inquiry?as far as they go, but that he would reject idea that such inquiries comprise the sole and entire business of philosophy (1983, 42). I agree with second point: philosophers, says Nietzsche, not simply accept concepts as gifts, but should make and create (WP, 409).1 Philosophy be revi sionary, not just descriptive. I agree, too, that Nietzsche would applaud sev eral virtues often associated with analytical philosophy?objectivity and tough-mindedness, say, and close attention to language, not only to par ticular words but to grammatical structures that, for Nietzsche as for many twentieth-century philosophers, constrain or reflect our thinking. I want to argue, however, that Nietzsche would not applaud an ambition that, it seems to me, has informed and organized practices of analytical philosophers?a master project, as it were, to which various exacting ones mentioned by Schacht typically belong. If that ambition figures in very characterization of analytical philosophy, then Nietzsche, as one of its main critics ante rem, is herald of a post-analytical philosophical stance. The directors of Centre for Post-analytic Philosophy at Southampton are understandably reluctant to specify too closely what it is that we are now post. Nor are entries on analytical in recent barrage of encyclopedias, companions, and dictionaries of much help in illu minating uninitiated. Some of them are simply historical surveys, in which, unfortunately, principles of inclusion and exclusion are left obscure. Others do offer characterizations of analytical philosophy, but ones usually too gen eral or too specific. Describing it as manifesting a central concern for lan guage will not distinguish it from any serious contemporary philosophizing, while representing it as application to philosophical problems of Fregean logic fits only a fraction of projects pursued by paradigmatically analyt ical philosophers.