Title: Internal Normative Authority under Naturalism: Reconstructing Nietzsche’s Account of Evaluation and Agency
Dissertation Abstract: In my research, I investigate how Nietzsche’s philosophy can account for the creation and authority of values after the rejection of traditional metaphysical and moral foundations. The project focuses on the relation between evaluative agency, drives, will to power, self-overcoming, and the formation of normative commitments. It asks how values can emerge from embodied and historically situated agents and acquire authority without that authority resting on objective moral facts independent of human life or on arbitrary subjective preferences.
A central aim is to reconstruct Nietzsche’s account of valuation as a dynamic process through which agents interpret, organize, rank, and transform their drives and commitments. Through close readings of Nietzsche’s published works and critical engagement with contemporary interpretations, the project examines whether his account offers criteria for distinguishing between better and worse forms of valuation. Particular attention is given to whether these criteria allow agents to question and revise their existing values, rather than merely explain why they hold them. This inquiry brings Nietzsche into dialogue with contemporary analytic debates in metaethics and moral psychology, particularly concerning the relation between naturalistic accounts of agency and normative authority.