Against the expressivist interpretation of Nietzsche’s lightning-flash analogy

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ID: 338341
2026
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Abstract
Abstract This article argues that Nietzsche’s rejection of the doer/deed distinction in the famous lightning-flash passage in On the Genealogy of Morality 1:13 is more radical than Robert Pippin’s influential expressivist interpretation allows. Nietzsche’s target is not merely the causal conception of agency, but a metaphysical picture according to which a bearer of a capacity subsequently actualizes it in action, and thus ultimately the ontological distinction between potentiality and actuality itself. The conventional distinction between strength and expression presupposes a bearer of a capacity that can remain unactualized; Nietzsche’s criticism of precisely this distinction, together with his identification of force with activity and his rejection of the capacity-bearing ‘substratum’, is also directed against the metaphysical structure required by the potentiality/actuality distinction itself.
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openalex_W7225170016 Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors William D. Wood
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Journal The Philosophical Quarterly
Year 2026
DOI
10.1093/pq/pqag079
URL
https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqag079
Keywords Keywords not found

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