The middle period works attest to what a careful, sensitive analyst of moral life Friedrich Nietzsche could be, offering a range of nuanced and delicate analyses of the psyche. The exaggeration, extremism, overstatement, and reductionism that characterize some of the later Nietzsche’s thought are far less evident in the works of the middle period. The ancient pursuit of self-knowledge emerges as an ideal in these texts, but it is wedded to a conception of the self as complex, multiple, and changeable. In this chapter’s exploration of the middle period’s analysis of psychology, Nietzsche’s critique of free will is examined, and its link with his aesthetic approach to the self is scrutinized.
Keywords: Nietzsche, morality, moral life, reductionism, self-knowledge, free will