Nietzsche's naturalism
science and belief
pp. 91-100
in: Babette Babich (ed), Nietzsche, epistemology, and philosophy of science II, Berlin, Springer, 1999Abstract
Nietzsche is one of the great nay-sayers concerning ontology. He denies the existence of the following: abstract objects such as universals (he favours a strong nominalism); souls, spirits and personal self-identity; Kantian things-in-themselves and any kind of noumenal or other-worldly realm (he lampoons the idea of other-worldly realms advocated from Plato and Christianity to Kant);1 substances, self-identical objects and atoms (understood as ultimate indivisible continuants); anything in the world that our truths could represent. Since he often says that there are no truths, it is a contentious matter to say what Nietzsche's views on truth are; however he maintains that no belief can represent any feature of the world and that the world has no items that could serve as truth-makers for our beliefs. So, what does exist?
