Nietzsche and the Principle of Charity

Abstract

ABSTRACT Nietzsche’s ambiguous and allusive style of writing creates special problems for the principle of charity, the idea that we should work to understand philosophic statements in the way that will yield the strongest and generally most convincing arguments. We want to reconstruct Nietzsche’s philosophy in the best way, but too much charity may distort his actual beliefs in important ways. In the first section of the article I address the relation between Nietzsche’s statements and our contemporary sense of what would now make for the most cogent philosophy. I discuss different ways that Nietzsche’s thought can be interpreted in the light of such developments and how to do so consistently. In the second section I consider whether Nietzsche rejects the principle of non-contradiction and so the entire logical, philosophical, and scientific edifice built upon it. I consider two ways in which he might do so, and conclude that there are problems with using either as an interpretive key to his writing.