Moralistes darwiniens: les psychologies évolutionnistes de Nietzsche et Paul Rée

International audienceThis paper explores Paul Rée’s philosophical influence on Nietzsche at the time of Human, All Too Human. I do not interpret this influence in an analytic way, namely by declining it in distinct themes or aspects, but in a synthetic way: I argue that Nietzsche draws an inspiration from the original research program defined by Rée in the Psychological Observations, which performs a synthesis of the French moralist tradition and the Darwinian theory of evolution. This „moralist-Darwinian” program does the groundwork for one of the first 19th-century evolutionary psychologies. Nietzsche and Rée share the goal of discerning an evolving human nature, which cannot be understood independently of history. But the different ways in which they combine psychology and evolution characterize two incompatible modes of reasoning, between which the philosopher has to choose