The Nietzschean Self: Moral Psychology, Agency, and the Unconscious

Paul Katsafanas presents a clear, systematic study of Nietzsche’s moral psychology. He analyzes Nietzsche’s distinction between conscious and unconscious mental events, explains the nature of a type of motivational state that Nietzsche calls the ‘drive’, and examines the connection between drives, desires, affects, and values. He explores Nietzsche’s account of willing unity of the self, freedom, and the relation of the self to its social and historical context. And he argues that Nietzsche’s account enjoys a number of advantages over the currently dominant models of moral psychology–especially those indebted to the work of Aristotle, Hume, and Kant–and considers the ways in which Nietzsche’s arguments can reconfigure and improve upon debates in the contemporary literature on moral psychology and philosophy of action.