Abstract:
This paper aims at clarifying the concrete use Nietzsche makes of the biological vocabulary in his work. Instead of conceiving biology as the undifferentiated sum of the life sciences, which is an anachronism in view of the fragmented situation of these sciences in the second half of the 19th century, I take into consideration Lynn Nyhart’s work on the rise of the biological perspective in Germany, to highlight the narrower sense in which Nietzsche speaks of “biology”. The first part of the paper identifies the interlocutors Nietzsche explicitly characterizes as “biologists”. I then try to ascertain the type of evolutionary biology that is at stake, to be able, in a last moment, to explore the epistemological and aesthetic ramifications of the Nietzschean biological discourse.
Keywords:
Nietzsche; Spencer; biology; evolutionary epistemology; evolutionary aesthetics; axiology