ABSTRACT
The field of metaphysics divides into two sub-fields: ontology, which studies the basic categories of existence; and modality, which studies the nature of necessity and possibility. This chapter discusses Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical criticisms of metaphysics. Nietzsche attacks the real world-apparent world distinction, substance-attribute metaphysics, the relation of identity, the soul, causation and necessity with sophisticated philosophical arguments. He focuses primarily on transitive consciousness, in which a subject is aware of something, either something in the mind, such as another thought, or something outside of the mind, such as a rock. In his various works, he argues directly against the Cartesian ego, the Kantian transcendental ego and the Schopenhaurian subject, among others. From Nietzsche's position that a thing is a bundle of properties, it also follows almost immediately that there is no diachronic identity. That is, synchronic identity is a property of the world that experience, not of the world behind experience.
