Did Nietzsche

do phenomenology? And

could

phenomenology do

Nietzsche?
In the following paper I want to consider whether it might be accurate to
describe Nietzsche as a phenomenologist. This is a claim that has been made
with varying degrees of substantiation by a number of Nietzsche readers. It is a
claim endorsed, albeit with little explanation, by Merleau-Ponty and Paul Ricoeur.
It is also a claim argued for by some of the better known Anglophone Nietzsche
scholars, namely Peter Poellner, Keith Ansell Pearson and Mark Warren. I think it
is far from certain that this claim is true, and I also think we might justifiably
describe it as counter intuitive. But I also think that the claim is more difficult to
refute than we might take for granted. If we dismiss superficial reasons for
denying that Nietzsche did phenomenology reasons such as Nietzsche
predated Husserl and this is a bad anachronism, or Nietzsche, unlike Husserl,
paid little attention to questions of intentionality or of apophantic judgement
then it is not as easy as we might expect to come up with a centre feature of
phenomenology that cannot be found in a modified form in Nietzsches work.
In this paper I will examine the validity of the claim that Nietzsche does
phenomenology. This is of course an exegetical question, a somewhat scholarly
question, and I expect it to be of limited interest. But I will also use this
examination as an opportunity to ask one or two questions about the limits of
phenomenology as a philosophical method. This is not just a Nietzsche paper,
and hopefully Ill be able to bring out a couple of interesting methodological
issues concerning phenomenology.
Phenomenology of Life
Ill begin by taking a quick look at the basic claim of the literature that
maintains that Nietzsche does do phenomenology. There are two central features
of the phenomenologist reading of Nietzsche that I want to briefly explain. The
first regards the supposed shared object of study between phenomenology and
Nietzsche; the second the shared method, and the phenomenological approach
that we supposedly find in Nietzsche.
Regarding the shared object of study, the readings in question maintain
that both Nietzsche and phenomenology give accounts of the conditions for our
mode of being. The idea here is that both phenomenology and Nietzsche offer

claims about the conditions for a meaningful world, or conditions for us to be at

home in the world. This shared object of study will appear in phenomenology
and

Nietzsche

with

very

different

terminology

and

with

very

different

observations. In a phenomenological register we might call the object of study

the life-world, being-in-the-world or perhaps more precisely a care-structure
that characterises our mode of being. In Nietzsche we find this same
phenomenon referred to simply as life; Nietzsche offers a number of
observations about the conditions necessary to our form of life, and also an
account of the conditions that either promote or hinder our form of life.
Most often Nietzsche claims that the condition for human life is our belief
in error. According to Nietzsche, in order to live we need to believe in the false
claims of logic, causal relations, or the persistent identity of discrete objects over
time (as opposed to an ever-changing flux). What were for Kant synthetic a priori
truths are for Nietzsche synthetic a prior errors; but as errors they are no less
necessary to our form of life.
The crucial feature of the phenomenologist reading, however, is the
phenomenological approach it ascribes to Nietzsche. It is important to this
reading that Nietzsche does not only identify the conditions for our mode of
being, but does so while assuming nothing other than what is given in our
affective comportment in the world. At the very least Nietzsche, to be read as a
phenomenologist, must bracket the natural attitude and return to the things
themselves. The readings in question often adduce a particular passage BGE 36
in support of the claim that Nietzsches method is phenomenological.
In BGE 36 Nietzsche attempts to derive a physics of the will to power
solely from our desires and passions. According to the reading in question, this is
an example of Nietzsches phenomenological approach reaching one of his
central theses purely from analysis of how the world is given in terms of our
affects. Nietzsche argues in BGE 36 that we can infer from our desires and
passions an account of physical reality. This account would, as opposed to a
mechanistic account, explain change in the world in terms derived solely from
our passions. According to Nietzsche, on this analysis we would be justified in
positing a common force explaining the presence of our affects and the presence
of physical change. Opting to name this force will to power, Nietzsche claims
we have arrived at a will to power physics by examining the world viewed from
inside,

the

world

defined

and

determined

according

to

its

intelligible

character. This is, according to the phenomenologist reading, a prime example

of Nietzsches phenomenological approach.
These are the basics of the phenomenological reading of Nietzsche. But I think if
we want to take this claim further we must face two issues. The first is the
difference between psychology and phenomenology, and whether it might not
make sense to call Nietzsche a psychologist. The second is whether Nietzsches
genealogical method is compatible with phenomenology.
Phenomenology, not Psychology
The first issue concerns the claim that Nietzsches observations come
solely through phenomenological examination of our desires. A much more
popular reading of Nietzsche will tell us that his examination of our drives,
desires and passions is not a phenomenological study but a naturalistic
psychology. Nietzsche does in fact describe himself as a psychologist and
suggests that a psychology that eschews moral prejudice would be entitled to
usurp metaphysics as queen of the sciences a move similar to that of Kants
usurpation of metaphysics with critical or transcendental philosophy (BGE 23; cf
preface to CPureR). According to the naturalist reading, Nietzsches psychology
observes the behaviour of others and through this observation identifies typefacts about anothers psyche that cause that behaviour.
A naturalist Nietzsche explains both avarice and love, for instance, by
identifying the lust for new possessions that causes both types of behaviour; or
to take another example, the naturalist Nietzsche identifies the collection of
drives that in combination cause scientific thinking. If this reading has any merit,
then the phenomenologist reading could have problems. Husserls development
of a phenomenological method was of course motivated in no small part by a
perceived

insufficiency

in

natural

psychology.

Husserls

methodological

considerations repeatedly distance his work from the natural sciences, and he is
at pains to establish a clear distinction between phenomenology and psychology.
Does Nietzsche, then, fall into the category of psychologist that Husserl excluded
from phenomenology?
The natural sciences that Husserl distinguishes from phenomenology are
characterised by their acceptance of the natural attitude. All varieties of natural
science accept the validity of the natural attitude and take it upon themselves to
investigate a particular region of objects that appear to us in the natural attitude.
This is no less true of natural psychology and the way that natural psychology

considers the psyche. There are, for the purposes of this short reflection on the
difference between psychology and phenomenology, two relevant features of
natural sciences according to Husserl. Firstly, Husserl maintains that all natural
sciences including natural psychology posit the EXISTENCE of objects of
consciousness. Husserls claim that phenomenology does not make this move
rests on a difference between objects of consciousness being present to us, and
objects of consciousness existing. Husserls point about the existence of objects
in the natural attitude is that things that are present to us are also taken to exist,
in some sense of the term. This, of course, is an assumption that Husserl claims
to parenthesise thanks to what he calls a phenomenological reduction.
Phenomenology still takes objects as present to us, but eschews the further
assumption that these objects also exist again, whatever we might mean by
the term existence.
Secondly, natural psychology will maintain that I, the actual human
being, am a real Object like others in the natural world, and that I effect
cogitationes...and these acts...are occurrences within the same natural actuality
[as other natural objects] (Ideas I #33). Husserl explains Ideas I that what he
here calls natural actuality is usually ascribed to the world present to me, such
that this world is assumed to be a univocal spatiotemporal domain occupied by
myself, all objects that are at hand for me, and all other beings like myself. In
other words, the natural attitude assumes a single ontological category
existent natural objects and natural sciences endeavour to better understand
objects that fall within this category.
Husserls dissatisfaction with natural psychology is largely with the way it
treats consciousness and objects of consciousness as natural objects. This is
expressed in fuller form in his critique of natural psychology in his Philosophy as
Rigorous Science essay, in which Husserl insists that a proper science of
consciousness would not be exhausted by an empirical scientific account. One of
his reasons for this is that empirical science will only give causal accounts of
consciousness and its intentional objects i.e. natural psychology would only ever
identify the place of consciousness in a causal chain relating our thought to other
causal processes in the natural world. In short, one of Husserls fundamental
methodological points is that this does not exhaust all we can know and
understand about consciousness. For this reason, natural psychology is at best
insufficient. (And of course Husserl has other much stronger objections to what
he calls the absurdities of natural psychology).

The

question

Im

interested

in

is

whether

Nietzsche

naturalises

consciousness in this sense and whether his psychology is a causal psychology.

For many Nietzsche scholars it is obviously the case that Nietzsche is a
naturalist, and that this applies as much to his drive-psychology as it does to his
critique of morality or his repudiation of philosophical metaphysics. But I think
the reading is problematic for at least one reason Nietzsche is repeatedly
critical of causal explanations. There is a lot we could say about this it is a hotly
debated issue in some work on Nietzsche, partly as a result of the dominance of
the naturalist reading. Im happy to expand on this in the question session, but
for now I want to simply draw attention to Nietzsches objections to causality.
One of the most prevalent of these objections is that causal explanations
are based on an atavistic belief in fatalism, or a belief in the intervention of some
supernatural force whenever something changes in the world. Whereas we once
believed that all change in the world was the result of divine will, we now replace
this belief with the belief that behind all events in the world there must be a
cause necessarily connected to that event. Nietzsche maintains that natural
sciences belief in mechanistic causality is derivative of an outdated fatalism,
and that we should be accordingly suspicious of causal explanations.
The fact that Nietzsche raises this objection to causality gives us, I think,
reason to think that Nietzsche does not intend his own psychology to be a causal
account of our thought. This does not, I think, exhaust the issue of Nietzsches
psychology and its compatibility with phenomenology. But I think that we can at
least say that Husserls rejection of a causal account of consciousness does not
apply to Nietzsche, giving us at least the hope that what Nietzsche calls
psychology might be a proto-phenomenology. (This is a very quick answer to the
second issue and Id happily talk more about this after the paper).
Phenomenology and genealogy
The second issue I want to consider concerns the compatibility of
Nietzsches genealogical method and phenomenology. One of the central
features of Nietzsches work is his historical approach. Ive already mentioned a
historical critique of one synthetic a priori judgement causality. But this is of
course not exclusive to this objection. His psychological analyses of Christianity,
modern morality and philosophy are more often than not supported by historical
accounts. Nietzsches better known genealogies of guilt, bad conscience,

asceticism and modern science consist of historical accounts of the genesis of

modern moral subjectivity.
The question is whether one can be both a genealogist of our mode of
being and at the same time be a phenomenologist. Could there be such a thing
as

phenomenological

genealogy?

Could

there

be

such

thing

as

phenomenological history? And is such a thing the kind of thing that Nietzsche
does? We might have reason to suspect that phenomenology and history are
mutually exclusive. One of the crucial distinctions between a phenomenological
approach to thought and natural psychology is that phenomenology rejects the
naturalistic practice of giving causal accounts of the genesis of a thought.
Phenomenology and as far as I am aware this is not just true of Husserl but of
all self-identified phenomenologists is not concerned with giving a historical
account of the genesis of a conscious species, for the reasons Husserl gives in
Philosophy as Rigorous Science. Phenomenology does not treat thought as a
natural object with causal relations to other natural objects, and is therefore not
interested in giving a natural history of the evolution of the kind of natural being
that would produce the kind of thought that we have.
However, if we turn to Husserl once more we find in his later period work
from the 1930s, Cartesian Mediations and the posthumous Experience and
Judgment an attempt at what he calls a phenomenological genealogy. Much of
the Cartesian Meditations is concerned with a phenomenological account of the
transcendental egos self-constitution or, without the jargon, Husserl here
explains how we come to be aware of a unified ego through the variety of
thoughts we call our own. The egos self-constitution, Husserl tells us, is in
accordance with eidetic laws laws concerning the essential features of
consciousness. Furthermore, Husserl maintains that both poles of consciousness
the ego and the intentional object are generated in accordance with laws that
apply universally to consciousness. Husserl also suggests that these laws apply
not just to the egos self-constitution, but also to a biographical development of
the ego, as he claims that the theorising that I might be capable of later in life
cannot be understood without having a place in a unified life. (CM 36).
The Cartesian Meditations offer us an account of the genesis of the
transcendental ego; complementing this, we find in Experience and Judgment an
account of the origins not so much of the ego but of predicative judgment. In EJ
we find not only talk of genetic phenomenology but also of phenomenological
genealogy (EJ #3). Again, Husserl distinguishes his genealogy from what we

might call natural history in giving a genealogy of logic, he is not interested in

giving a history of the practice of logic or a naturalistic account of the generation
of a species capable of predicative judgment. Husserls account of the origins of
judgement amount instead to an excavation of the fundamental elements of
predicative judgment. In particular, Husserl is concerned with self-evident
judgements, and how such judgements are generated.
Husserls investigation of the origins of self-evident judgement is based on
a logical hierarchy. At the top of the hierarchy we find judgements inferred from
other judgements. The former Husserl names mediate, the latter immediate. So
in my very crude example we could say that the immediate judgement S is not
Q is derived from the immediate judgements S is either P or Q and S is P.
The first stage of a genealogy of logic will take us from the mediate judgements
to the more original (in Husserls terms) immediate judgements. But according
to Husserl, those immediate judgements are based on something more original
still: the substrate of object of the judgement (in my example, the would be S).
Husserl maintains that the self-evidence of a judgement is dependent on the selfevidence of the object of the judgement. Thus the second stage of our genealogy
of logic would be to investigate that most original form of self-evidence; that of
the self-evident givenness of an object.
Setting aside issues of logic, self-evidence, and the transcendental ego,
the lesson we can learn from this later work is that Husserl thinks that such a
thing as a phenomenological history, or alternatively a phenomenological
genealogy, is possible. The question with which I wish to end is whether this is
the kind of historical account we find in Nietzsches work. If Nietzsche does
genealogy, does he do phenomenological genealogy?
My provisional answer to this is no, and my answer is no for the reason
that there is a crucial difference between the kind of history that Husserl is
happy to write, and the kind of history we find in Nietzsche. The fundamental
difference between the two is that whereas Husserl gives us a universal
genealogy an account of the origins of ANY judgment or the genesis of the
constitution of ANY ego Nietzsches genealogies are historically specific.
Nietzsches psychology is historical precisely because it makes claims specific to
modern modes of thought modern morality, modern science, even at times
modern politics (comments, for instance, regarding German Real Politik,
democracy and socialism). This is no small difference between phenomenological
genealogy and Nietzsches work. The difference between the scope of the

histories means that the two accounts differ in modality: Husserls account of the
genesis of the ego refers to all actual and possible concrete egos, as he might
call them, while Nietzsche is solely interested in contingent actuality. As a result
of this, Nietzsches accounts will seek to elucidate, contigent, actual process in
history, as opposed to the necessary, essential and universal genesis that of
Husserls eidetic analyses,
I clearly have, at best, only provisional answers to the questions we can
raise about the affinity between Nietzsche and phenomenology. But to recap, on
the basis of this short paper I think I can claim the following: Nietzsche is
interested in identified conditions for the possibility, and for the promotion, of our
mode of being; we might claim that he does this solely through recourse to the
world in its intelligible character, but I think this is still open to doubt;
phenomenology repudiates naturalistic and therefore causal psychology (no new
observation there); but Nietzsche too is suspicious of causal explanation and
doesnt fall into the category of causal psychologist; Husserl does offer a
phenomenological genealogy, but this is a genealogy of all possible forms of
thought; Nietzsches genealogy, conversely, is particular to a historically specific
form of thought.