Nietzsche on Natural Causality: Translating the Human Back into Nature

In this article I examine the character of Nietzsche's naturalism by highlighting the role of natural causality in his efforts to translate the human being back into nature. Although it has been claimed that an emphasis on natural causality commits him to a scientistic naturalism that excludes the human being (Schacht 2012. ‘Nietzsche’s Naturalism.’ Journal of Nietzsche Studies 43 (2): 185–212. https://doi.org/10.5325/jnietstud.43.2.0185), I argue that Nietzsche critically engages with the natural sciences to offer a distinct metaphysical naturalism that is not opposed to but includes the human. I show that Nietzsche accuses the dominant scientific-mechanistic account of causality of eliminativism regarding the causal to which he responds by proposing a dispositional account that avoids the eliminativist threat. Nietzsche's naturalism is metaphysical because dispositional powers that are instantiated in nature are also metaphysically real by virtue of being causally potent. His metaphysical naturalism, I contend, incorporates the human by understanding normativity, in the guise of the causality of human willing, in the same dispositional sense as the rest of nature. The argument is defended from the potential objection that Nietzsche's explanation of normativity in terms of organic purposiveness presupposes a superfluous teleology that compromises his efforts to understand normativity naturalistically.