Doer and Deed: Responses to Acampora and Anderson

Abstract

ABSTRACT Under the press of questions and comments by Christa Davis Acampora and R. Lanier Anderson, I attempt here to clarify the understanding of human agency that I attribute to Nietzsche in my book, Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy. A central issue concerns what Nietzsche means in Genealogy I:13, in his famous “lightning-flash” metaphor. I argue that the task posed to us by this passage is to understand it in a way that is consistent with Nietzsche's genealogies and critiques, all of which involve psychological explanations, and so suggest a psychological model of motivated agency, consistent with what appears to be GM I:13's denial of the basic presupposition of the notion of agency: a distinction between the doer, as instigator of the bodily movement, and the deed. Against objections, I defend the claim that Nietzsche proposes an “expressivist” account that preserves the notion of agency.