Nietzsche Workshop: McNeill

David McNeill presented a paper, 'Moral Psychology and Transcendental Philosophy', in which he argued for a transcendental interpretation of Nietzsche. On this view, Nietzsche holds that morality is a subjective condition of experience as such. In particular, 'bad conscience' is a condition of the possibility of the experience of temporal succession. David argued that the Genealogy is not intended as a historical account for, as such, it is clearly circular. Rather, it is a demonstration of the impossibility of stepping out of morality. The arguments of the Genealogy present transcendental conditions on the possibility of life. Nietzsche cannot be a (methodological) naturalist given the absolute primacy he accords to evaluative interpretation.

The discussion was very wide ranging, I shall just mention a couple of points that came up. First, it seemed to some that Nietzsche's claims can be read in a non-transcendental way - as expressing ineliminable aspects of the natural human condition that are not, however, necessary conditions of the possibility of experience per se. Second, and in a related vein, the concern was expressed that morality, and more specifically bad conscience, is too ephemeral a human phenomenon to plausibly act as a necessary condition of experience. On the other hand, it was agreed that the view that experience has a necessarily normative element has a long pedigree.