The first section of this chapter explores Nietzsche’s attempt to explain the origins and continued prominence of metaphysical philosophy in terms of the utility it produces. It argues that Nietzsche takes seriously Schopenhauer’s diagnosis of ‘humanity’s metaphysical need’, but explains this more precisely as a form of narcissistic impulse. The second section of the chapter aims to address Nietzsche’s seeming ambivalence over whether ‘humanity’s metaphysical need’ is a fundamental and static feature of the human condition, or whether it is acquired and, therefore, in principle eradicable via a new naturalistic and ‘historical’ philosophy. The final section of the chapter situates Nietzsche’s views on science, suffering, and progress in the context of the ‘social question’, arguing that the Nietzsche of the late 1870s is closer to the likes of Marx and Dühring in taking suffering to be capable of being significantly reduced, thus ejecting the need for art and religion to endow it with meaning.

This chapter explores how Nietzsche’s shift towards a naturalistic methodology in the late 1870s offers him an axiological and epistemic apparatus that radically alters his philosophical articulation of pessimism, and consequently affects his attitude towards it. The chapter argues that contemporary Nietzsche scholarship has largely overlooked the importance of Human, All Too Human as a crucial stage of Nietzsche’s development in approaching the question of the value of existence. By exploring the influence of Paul Rée, Eugen Dühring, and the neo-Kantians, it introduces Nietzsche’s own ‘frame of reference’ argument against pessimism as a metaphysical view, and distinguishes between different possible interpretations of it.

Chapter 9 examines Kant’s critique of metaphysics in the Critique of Pure Reason. We discuss transcendental realism and its relation to transcendental idealism and then argue that rejecting transcendental realism does not presuppose transcendental idealism. Next, we will see that even on its most general level, Kant’s critique of metaphysics does depends not on transcendental idealism but on the much more specific claim that human cognition is limited to sensible objects. Finally, we will distinguish between different interpretations of Kant’s account of transcendental ideas and argue for a radical reading according to which, when viewed in a purely speculative context, ideas of reason fail to represent (really possible) objects, which accounts for the third level of Kant’s critique of metaphysics. Our result will be that Kant develops a challenging critique of speculative metaphysics that does not presuppose his transcendental idealism.