While Kaufmann highlighted significant similarities between Nietzsche and James, he argued that Nietzsche’s experimentalism was a better means than James’s pragmatism for achieving the vibrant chiaroscuro that both thinkers so desperately sought. He characterized James’s pragmatism as a form of utilitarianism that regards a belief as true if it is useful for the person who holds that belief. In his reading of James’s “right to believe,” an idea is true if it helps us to make our way in the world.82 Kaufmann asserted that Nietzsche would have rejected (what Kaufmann once again identified as)
...more
