Nietzsche was persistently concerned with what an object is and how different views of objects lead to different views of facts, causality, personhood, substance, truth, mathematics and logic, and even nihilism. Yet his treatment of objects is incredibly puzzling. In many passages, he assumes that objects such as trees and leaves, tables and chairs, and dogs and cats are just ordinary entities of experience. In other places, he reports that objects do not exist. Elsewhere he claims that objects exist, but as mere bundles of forces. And sometimes he proposes that we bring all objects into existence. Nietzsche’s writings, then, appear to support various secondary readings, which are jointly inconsistent. My chief aim is to present and defend the reading that Nietzsche embraces constructivism about objects, the neo-Kantian view that all objects are socially constructed. I first explain this view and argue that all non-constructivist readings are not supported by Nietzsche’s texts. I then present Nietzsche’s object constructivism, reconstruct his argument for the position, and defend it from an internal objection. I finish by suggesting that Nietzsche might have embraced such a radical conception of objects because it plays a crucial role in overcoming nihilism.

Nietzsche's presentation of the eternal recurrence in Gay Science 341 is often viewed as a practical thought experiment meant to radically transform us. But exactly why and how we are supposed to be transformed is not clear. I contend that addressing these issues requires taking a close look at the psychological setting of the passage. The eternal recurrence is presented in our “loneliest loneliness.” I argue that facing the eternal recurrence from a state of profound loneliness both motivates self-transformation and contributes toward helping us succeed at that project.

Nietzsche appears to adopt a radical Kantian view of objects called constructivism, which holds that the existence of all objects depends essentially on our practices. This essay provides a new reconstruction of Nietzsche's argument for constructivism and responds to five pressing objections to reading Nietzsche as a constructivist that have not been addressed by commentators defending constructivist interpretations of Nietzsche.In the tradition of Kant and post-Kantian philosophy, Nietzsche was attentive to questions concerning the nature of objects. His texts often address questions concerning the existence and non-existence of objects, the relation of objects to human minds, and how different views of objects impact commitments in many areas of philosophy-not just metaphysics but also epistemology, semantics, science, and even ethics. I have argued (Remhof 2015a), along with Nehamas (1985: Ch. 3), Anderson (1998), and Cox (1999: 152-163), that Nietzsche adopts a radical Kantian view of objects called constructivism.1 This view holds that all objects are socially constructed. Specifically, the existence of all objects we can encounter, such as rocks, trees, and planets, depends essentially on the application of concepts to the world relative to our needs, interests, and values. Nietzsche writes that 'A "thing" is the sum of its effects, synthetically united by a concept ' 2 'Thing' is presumably scare-quoted because constructivism is unorthodox. After all, commonsense intuition strongly suggests that many objects are not socially constructed. But I am not concerned with the truth of constructivism here. Rather, my primary aim is to address objections to reading Nietzsche as a constructivist about objects, specifically objections that other constructivist readers have overlooked.The paper unfolds as follows. I first provide a new reconstruction of Nietzsche's argument for constructivism. The bulk of the essay then addresses five problems with reading Nietzsche as a constructivist. Briefly, here are the objections. First, in a famous passage, Nietzsche appears to embrace the eliminativist view that objects do not exist. Second, constructivism appears to involve taking the world to have human features, and Nietzsche is famously critical of anthropomorphism. Third, if constructivism were true, then, given the diversity of language users,

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In this article, I begin to develop Nietzsche's scientific fictionalism in order to make headway toward resolving a central interpretive issue in his epistemology. For Nietzsche knowledge claims are falsifications. Presumably, this is a result of his puzzling view that truths are somehow false. I argue that Nietzsche thinks knowledge claims are falsifications because he embraces a scientific fictionalist view according to which inexact representations, which are false, can also be accurate, or true, and that this position is not inconsistent.