Causation and Force in Nietzsche

Abstract

Nietzsche’s ideas on causality are at the very centre of his reflections on epistemological and ontological problems in the final phase of his philosophical activity. Remarks on this topic can be found both throughout his later published writings and in the notebooks of the 1880’s.¹ In what follows I shall offer an interpretation of the prominent “sceptical” line of thought expressed in these remarks and of its relation to Nietzsche’s sometimes perplexing criticisms of the “so-called purely mechanical forces of attraction and repulsion” (WP 621) introduced into modern physics by Newton and Boscovich. It would be presumptuous to claim that the considerations I shall endeavour to isolate and partly to re-construct represent all Nietzsche has to say on the subject of causation — for one thing, his remarks concerning volitional causation will only superficially be touched upon — but they do seem to me to contain some of his most interesting insights into the nature and limitations of the modern scientific enterprise, and they form the immediate background to his own prima facie ontological ideas which figure so conspicuously in the notebooks of the 1880’s.