Nietzsche as a philosopher of law
pp. 639-648
in: Enrico Pattaro, Damiano Canale, Hasso Hofmann, Patrick Riley (eds), A treatise of legal philosophy and general jurisprudence 9-10, Berlin, Springer, 2009Abstract
The notion of "philosophy of law" is deeply problematical in the thought of Nietzsche, since all philosophy (generally) is conceived by him as an ex post facto rationalization of a deeper psychological truth: "Gradually it has become clear to me," Nietzsche says in Beyond Good and Evil, "what every great philosophy so far has been," namely a "personal confession" and "involuntary memoir" in which "desires of the heart" have been "filtered and made abstract," and then "defended with reasons sought after the fact" (Nietzsche 1954c, sec. 5).
