Nietzsche's System.

Conrad, Mark T.

Richardson, John. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. xii + 316 pp. Cloth, $35.00--The debate continues as to whether Nietzsche is a proto-postmodernist, who rejects truth, metaphysics, and objective values, or a thinker still part of the philosophical tradition, offering us a picture of how the world is actually put together. Richardson enters this fray with an ambitious project to lay out the implicit system running through Nietzsche's work. The system consists in an ontology around which his other views are organized. A key problem here is making such claims to knowledge about the world cohere with Nietzsche's perspectivism, the idea that any viewpoint is limited, partial, and necessarily interested.

The first two chapters detail what Richardson takes to be Nietzsche's ontology. Being, as will to power, is a becoming, understood in terms of "process and context": what exists are not states (of things), but processes, which are not self-identical things, so much as relations. A "thing," a drive, is only its relations to other drives. The basis unit of reality, then, is a will or a drive, which wills power by growing and expanding at what it is a drive towards. Persons are complexes of drives, and the values inherent in this ontology have to do with activity/reactivity, whether a drive pursues power in its own natural end or is subordinated to the will of another, and with complexity and unity: persons are ranked according to whether the drive complexes which make them up are complex or simple, unified or scattered. Though much of this is familiar, the detail with which Richardson systematically connects will to power as an ontology with other prominent Nietzschean ideas is impressive.

While some of Richardson's discussion of ontology is a bit forced in order to fit the pieces into his system, major problems begin in the third chapter, "Value," which is comprised of three main issues: (1) How can Nietzsche's claims about the perspectival character of values be reconciled with the metavalues of power and activeness, which derive from the power ontology. Here the problems about the relation between perspectivism and ontology begin: even though perspectivism does apply to Nietzsche's metavalues, these values somehow provide the basis for an objective ranking of viewpoints. (2) How to ease our concerns with Nietzsche's anti-egalitarian, inhumane, misogynist attacks. Richardson rather tritely suggests that though we cannot accept Nietzsche's crude view of women, we can see that he also has a feminine side: he has the empathetic ability to appreciate many points of view. (3) Whether Nietzsche's writings contain advice to an "Anonymous Reflective Agent," that is, principles according to which we should act, which is what we expect of a value theory. This odd quest for principles of action arises either from Richardson's forcing of a system upon Nietzsche (he must have an ethics), or from his conflating value theory and ethics proper: when Nietzsche talks about values, this means ethics, and an ethics must have principles of action.

The last chapter deals with perspectivism as a "new truth form." Given the contextuality of all things, and the necessary interestedness of any subject, the kind of knowledge that is possible is achieved when the knower takes up a number of other viewpoints, so that he mirrors the larger structure of reality. Truth, according to Nietzsche, is empirical, hypothetical, and partial. However, Nietzsche himself "aspires" to a transcending, nonpartial view in the form of his ontology and its values.

But do Nietzsche's aspirations pay off? Richardson ends on the essential question: Does perspectivism apply to the ontology, or is the ontology meant to be a transperspectival, objective statement about the way the world is? In trying to have it both ways, Richardson says that "the empirical truth method does apply to the ontological claims as well" (p.288), meaning that they are merely perspectival; however, Nietzsche does not take these claims to be merely local, narrowly perspectival truths. "He guesses at essential-external truths, and his hopes for internal success depend on this: these truths will be progressively confirmed by experience" (p. 289).

Richardson straddles the fence on the issue of the nature of the ontology: it is an accurate picture of the way the world is put together, but it is subject to perspectivism which denies any kind of true correspondence between subject and object. Further, Richardson's idea that will to power as an ontology is something confirmed by experience is untenable.

Richardson has a wide grasp of the texts, and his system is ingenious at points, but he too often forces the system on Nietzsche's ideas. Ironically, the main lesson which we may learn from the clarity and detail of this exposition is perhaps that Nietzsche's writings remain on the surface contradictory, and that we must dig deeper into the transcendental presuppositions behind the works in order to discover the metaphysics.