Nietzsche and Théodule Ribot: Psychology and Overcoming Metaphysics

Abstract

Although Nietzsche does not mention in his writings the French philosopher and psychologist Théodule Ribot, there are some similarities between them: a proposal for a new psychology (a no metaphysical psychophysiology); the continuity among the physical, the biological (physiology) and psychological (morality and culture) phenomena; the multiplicity of the body, the will and the "ego"; the health as the presence of a center of coordination; etc. The aim of this paper is the proposal of a new psychology or a psychophysiology to overcome the metaphysical psychology, i.e., to reject the investigation of the soul and its faculties. However, there is an ultimate difference between Nietzsche and Ribot: the French psychophysiology is a morphology of nervous states (physicalchemical processes, and thus material processes), and the Nietzschean psychophysiology is a morphology of will to power, which is a process of increase of power, and thus no bodily or spiritual process.