Nietzsche’s concept of man from an (anti-)anthropological point of view

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to analyze and disprove five key arguments presented by a number of modern opponents of the anthropological approach to Nietzsche’s philosophy. These arguments are: the terminological argumentum ad nomen; the argumentum ad hominem which is related to Foucault’s thesis of Nietzsche’s overcoming of Kant’s fourth question; the argumentum ad methodum, which is used to justify the idea of a non-anthropological nature of Nietzsche’s critique of the anthropologies of the 18-19 centuries; the argumentum ad traditionem, which excludes Nietzsche from the anthropological tradition of European philosophy and the argumentum ex negativo regarding the fruitfulness of the anti-anthropological interpretation of his ideas. The first three arguments are examined from the perspective of contextual analysis of Nietzsche’s aphorisms and fragments. The refutation of the fourth and fifth arguments is based on references to several published and unpublished texts of Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner and Michel Foucault.