In Hume and Nietzsche. Peter Kail and Paolo Stellino (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Claims that once we recognize the genealogical form taken by Hume’s and Nietzsche’s methodological pragmatism, we can see how both manage to avoid cruder views that identify the meaning, truth, or value of things with their effects.
genealogy, methodological pragmatism, Hume, Nietzsche, 18th century, truth
PDF coming soonEuropean Journal of Philosophy 31 (2): 501–508. By invitation. 2023. doi:10.1111/ejop.12874
Reconstructs Reginster’s account of Nietzsche’s critique of morality as a “self-undermining functionality critique” and raise three problems for it.
functionality, function, genealogy, genealogical debunking, metaethics, morality
Download PDFInquiry 66 (7): 1335–1364. Proceedings of the International Society of Nietzsche Studies. 2023. doi:10.1080/0020174X.2022.2164049
While Nietzsche appears to engage in two seemingly contrary modes of concept evaluation—one looks to concepts’ effects, the other to what concepts express—this article offers an account of the expressive character of concepts which unifies these two modes and yields a powerful approach to practical reflection on which concepts to use.
conceptual ethics, conceptual engineering, genealogy, naturalism, revaluation of values, expressivism
Download PDFThe Philosophical Quarterly 71 (2): 286–307. 2021. doi:10.1093/pq/pqaa026
Highlights enduring epistemic and metaphysical difficulties for any project of evaluating and improving the values we live by, including contemporary work in conceptual ethics and engineering, and argues that attempts to sidestep these difficulties fall prey to “Saint-Just’s illusion”—the mistake of believing that a set of values from one political context can be successfully transplanted into a different political context.
conceptual ethics, conceptual engineering, conceptual change, genealogy, 19th century, 20th century
Download PDFArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 103 (2): 341–63. 2021. doi:10.1515/agph-2018-0048
Based on various posthumous fragments, the article reconstructs Nietzsche’s little-known early genealogical account of how the value of truth and the cultivation of the virtue of truthfulness originated not from a pure love of truth, but from the practical necessity of social cooperation.
genealogy, 19th century, Nietzsche, continental philosophy, truthfulness, social cooperation
Download PDFThe Monist 102 (3): 277–297. 2019. With Damian Cueni. doi:10.1093/monist/onz010
Argues that contrary to popular belief, Nietzsche’s genealogical method does not seek to subvert by revealing immanent and lowly naturalistic origins—quite the opposite: Nietzsche is a critic of genealogical debunking thus conceived, on the grounds that it threatens to make a universal acid of reflection in a world increasingly disenchanted by scientific advances. Instead, Nietzsche advocates an outlook which makes room for naturalistic understanding and redraws the contrast between vindicatory and subversive genealogies within the space of naturalistic origins.
genealogical debunking, genealogy, metaethics, naturalism, continental philosophy, 19th century
Download PDFBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 25 (4): 727–49. 2017. doi:10.1080/09608788.2016.1266462
Examines Nietzsche’s view that the ideal of justice is a contingent political development emerging only when parties of roughly equal power need a system of exchange and requital to avoid mutually assured destruction, meaning the applicability of norms of justice is originally tied to distributions of power. This perspective reframes justice as a human-made solution to the recurring problem of social order. Understanding these origins vindicates justice as an indispensable invention for social life.
genealogy, power, political philosophy, 19th century, justice, Nietzsche
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