L’homme: animal qui vénère, animal méfiant. (Man: Worshipping and distrustful animal)

Abstract

In order to accomplish the task of supporting and ‘fostering’ human self-understanding, philosophy obviously has to deal with human psychology. The normative dimension of its results, though, depends on whether philosophy regards human psychology in an essentialist or in a historical way, that is, it depends on the anthropological assumptions constituting the background of its inquiry. Through his project of a ‘natural history of morals’, Nietzsche helps clarifying some issues of this framework connecting human ‘nature’, i.e. human physiology and psychology, to morality, norms, and institutions. Exploring these connections through the case of passions (and especially of the amour passion), this paper discusses the anthropological account informing Nietzsche’s project of a ‘natural history of morality’. By doing so, it also aims at clarifying the importance of becoming aware of the (often implicit) anthropological assumptions lying in every philosophical project which seeks a transformation of human self-understanding.