Rehabilitating positive freedom : an exploration of the value and relevance of Nietzsche’s conception of freedom

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the philosophical question of human freedom. Broadly speaking, ‘freedom’ is one of the most exhaustively treated questions in Western intellectual history, and also one of the most controversially contested. I focus on one particular and often neglected philosophical position: the peculiar positive freedom of Friedrich Nietzsche. This introductory chapter will show that philosophical arguments about the meaning and nature of human freedom have concrete implications for many significant elements of everyday human life. These implications, far from being merely the objects of academic curiosity, continue to shape the foundations of our contemporary socio-political context. It is my contention that Nietzsche’s ideas on freedom, which have been largely dismissed within the established historical debate, contain valuable resources for philosophical reflection on freedom and are especially relevant in our contemporary intellectual context of growing globalisation, valuepluralism, and scientific explanations of reality.