Defending Nietzsche's Soul

ABSTRACT We respond here to criticisms of our book, The Soul of Nietzsche's “Beyond Good and Evil” offered by contributors to the Symposium on it in JNS 45.1 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jnietstud.45.1.0031]: We defend our interpretation of Plato's soul, and of Plato's reason as “atomistic,” and argue that these points help explain how Nietzsche's theory of the soul can be a refinement of Plato's tripartite account. We defend our account of what we call “the will to value” against a misunderstanding shared by Janaway and Katsafanas, and we compare the latter's account of Nietzsche's self unfavorably to our “two-level” account. Finally, we defend our interpretation of the relation between Nietzsche's philosophy and Kant's on several points but do recognize one error in it. Responding to Leiter's criticism of our interpretation of BGE 11, we change one detail of that interpretation, which strengthens our overall interpretation and makes Nietzsche even more Kantian. Unless otherwise noted, page numbers refer to contributions as they appear in the earlier publication.