The Science and Philosophy of the "Thermodynamic School" of Evolution
This book was written by Timothy McWhirter and published in 2025. It examines the relation between the maximum power principle developed by Alfred Lotka and H. T. Odum and the concept of the will to power developed by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It discusses the work of the scientists and philosophers that influenced the…
This book was written by Richard Joyce and published in 2024. It is the third in a series of books Joyce has written that explore the relation between morality and evolution. The promotional materials provided for this book state the following. We make moral judgments about all sorts of things, both mundane and momentous. But…
This book was written by Richard Joyce and published in 2007. This is the second book in a series Joyce has written that explore the relation between morality and evolution. The promotional materials provided for this book provide the following description. Moral thinking pervades our practical lives, but where did this way of thinking come…
This book was written by Richard Joyce and published in 2007. Joyce is an International Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sydney that has written a series of books that focus on investigating the relation between morality and evolution. In this book, Joyce argues that moral discourse is hopelessly flawed. At the heart of…
This paper was written by Paul Katsafanas and published in 2011. In this paper, Katsafanas develops a unique interpretation of Nietzsche’s metaethical position based on a version of constitutivism: the view that we can derive substantive normative conclusions from an account of the nature of agency. The abstract states: “This paper has two goals. First,…
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This paper was written by Brian Leiter and published in 2000. Leiter argues that philosophers that argue that Nietzsche criticizes moral values from a position that is privileged in some way, using a form of realism or a non-realism, are incorrect. Leiter concludes that in his revaluation of moral values “Nietzsche’s own evaluative perspective in…
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This article was written by Nadeem Hussain and published in 2013. In it Hussain revises the view of Nietzsche’s metaethical position that he described six years earlier, in his article “Honest Illusions: Valuing for Nietzsche’s Free Spirits.” He reviews the different metaethical positions he and other philosophers have attributed to Nietzsche and he finds them…
This paper was written by Nadeem Hussain and published in 2007. It outlines the textual challenges for accurately interpreting the metaethical position implied by Nietzsche’s critique of morality. He illustrates the problems with the interpretation that holds the will to power is, itself, a fundamental moral value. He describes this as a form of moral…
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This paper was written by Christian Emden and published in 2016. The abstract states: “The ‘will to power’ remains one of Nietzsche’s most controversial philosophical concepts. In this article I argue that the will to power ties in directly with Nietzsche’s naturalistic discussion of normativity. The link between the will to power and normativity cannot…
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This book was written by John Richardson and published in 1996. It provides one of the most comprehensive and detailed discussions of the ontological version of Nietzsche’s concept of the will to power. Most philosophers in the secondary literature on Nietzsche find this version of the will to power empirically implausible, and they instead tend…