The Ethos of Inquiry: Nietzsche on Experience, Naturalism, and Experimentalism

In this article I examine Nietzsche's experimentalism, treating this as a naturalist feature of his wider philosophical concerns. I focus predominantly on Nietzsche's presentation of remarks on experimentation in Dawn and in The Gay Science. Through analyzing the role played by the concept of experience within Nietzsche's experimentalism, I show that experimentalism is both a strategy for philosophical engagement, and a form of virtue. In so doing, I clarify the relevance of experimentalism to scientific inquiry and to ethics in Nietzsche's wider philosophy.