Nietzsche on the nature and necessity of a psychological critique of metaphysics

The present dissertation attempts to elucidate the meaning of Nietzsche\u27s claim that a new, psychological critique of metaphysics is necessary. Nietzsche regards \u27metaphysics\u27 as the quest for an absolute or aperspectival representation of the world and of the good life. His attack on metaphysics develops in two successive stages. In the first stage, Nietzsche argues that the metaphysical ideal of absolute knowledge is incoherent. He accepts, and sometimes develops, the thoroughgoing scepticism of his late modern predecessors toward metaphysics but goes on to argue that such a scepticism tells more against the intelligibility of the metaphysical ideal that underlies it than against the capacity of the human mind to achieve knowledge. In the second stage, Nietzsche investigates the origin of the metaphysical ideal of absolute knowledge and discovers that its pursuit is motivated by a particular psychological condition which he identifies as ressentiment against life and which is left unaffected by the denunciation of the incoherence of the ideal it motivates. A psychological critique capable of addressing the hidden motivation of the metaphysical quest is therefore necessary. The aim of Nietzsche\u27s psychological critique is not, as might be assumed, the removal of non-epistemic (i.e. psychological, or affective) obstacles to epistemic coherence, but the restoration of psychological health. Ressentiment is an inherently pathological condition: it breeds self-deception and thus corrupts the unity of the self in terms of which Nietzsche characterizes his ideal of psychological health. Epistemic coherence and truthfulness are not ends in themselves, but means to ensure psychological health