«Se penso alla mia genealogia filosofica», Nietzsche. I: Forme di vita ed estetica

In a note of 1884, Nietzsche comments the genesis of his own thought, identifying in it three turning points: the objection to teleology; the adhesion to mechanism (denying at the same time the matter); the body as common thread of philosophical inquiries. Nietzsche interpret the important debate that had developed in Germany between the 1830s and 1860s in the medical- physiological sphere, from which he extracts a few key inputs of criticism of some traditional concepts: individuality, esprit, matter, the self etc. The first questioning of philosophic and scientific teleology is carried out in a group of young notes on the vision of the organism included in Kant’s Critique of Judgment. For Nietzsche, the elimination of teleology has a practical rather than a theoretical value: it clears life and the world from the assumptions of moralization. But, at the same time, teleology also has a political value as it works as a controlling device of the forms of life.