Nietzsche’s Theory of the Will

Abstract

©  Brian Leiter I     that Nietzsche has provocative views about the nature of the will and free will. It is less often appreciated that his views on these topics have considerable merit. Nietzsche not only anticipates and lends argumentative support to the new wave of non-libertarian incompatibilism defended by philosophers like Derk Pereboom () and Galen Strawson () — the view that free will is incompatible with “determinism” and that there is no credible account of free will as outside the causal order in the ong — but his theory of the will also wins some support from recent work on the will in empirical psychology (see Wegner ). As a philosophical naturalist, Nietzsche thought of his theoretical endeavors as proceeding in tandem with empirical inquiry (Leiter : –). As befits his self-designation as “the first psychologist”, it turns out that Nietzsche anticipated results that psychologists only arrived at a century later. In section  of Daybreak, Nietzsche sets out the primary issues that shall occupy us here in trying to understand his theory of the will. Nietzsche writes: