Beyond Essentialism and Relativism: Nietzsche and Peirce on Reality

Abstract

Nietzsche and Peirce offer us a perspective on reality that is more adequate than the essentialist and relativist approaches. The problem of the essentialist is that he precludes the possibility of real novelty, and fails to account for the dynamic connectedness of the world. The relativist is not capable of doing justice to the elements of brute force and regularity, which are aspects of reality that cannot be simply reduced to particular standpoints or frameworks. Nietzsche’s and Peirce’s worldviews are discussed on the basis of the notions “possibility”, “struggle”, and “regularity”. The paper ends with confronting Nietzsche’s view with that of Peirce.