In Chapter 1 we saw that, according to Nietzsche, Kant's constitutive account of knowledge results in the sceptical idealism that Kant wants to avoid. Nietzsche thinks that this difficulty can be resolved by rejecting Kant's constitutive epistemology in favour of a regulative and interest-directed conception of knowledge. The resulting Nietzschean view is that knowledge is anthropocentric but realist; empirical reality, he claims, is mind-independent but knowable.

In this chapter I investigate Nietzsche's argument supporting the view that we can have objective knowledge of mind-independent reality by examining his perspectivism and interpreting it as a rejection of metaphysical realism, the general Kantian view that there is a thing-in-itself. Nietzsche's concerns with metaphysical realism are twofold: first, Kant contends that the thing-in-itself, although mind-independent, is non-empirical and unknowable to beings with our specifically human cognitive constitution, and, second, if so, there is an epistemic gap that opens up between self and world, a gap that induces scepticism. Nietzsche rejects this scepticism and the metaphysical realism that provokes it. In this chapter we investigate his reasons for doing so, focusing on his later writings from Human, All Too Human onwards.

This investigation is divided into three sections. The first sets up the problem of metaphysical realism and outlines the requirements that Nietzsche must meet if he is to overcome it. The following two sections address the extent to which Nietzsche satisfies these requirements, concluding that his anti-metaphysical realist position, which I describe as internal realism, holds that our perspectives are rooted in empirical reality and constrained internally from within our practices of contextually seeking out the best reasons for and against our epistemic claims.