Does the concept of metaphysic involve some form of faith in a transcendent domain or is this a too limited conception? In chapter XII of Secular Religion Hans Kelsen stresses the anti-metaphysical feature of Nietzsche’s thought through the argument that Nietzsche, alongside with the Enlightenment tradition, refused every belief in non-empirical entities, whether of Judeo-Christian or Platonic heritage. In this paper it is argued that the anti-metaphysical feature of Nietzsche’s thought lies beyond this. Indeed if it is possible, as Nietzsche argued, to speak about a “faith in science” it seems that in order to reach a non-metaphysical conception, something more than the physicalist conception of the science itself is needed. It is perhaps in the difference between the heritage of the Enlightenment and Nietzsche – particularly his conception of the subject – that we may recognize the terms for a more radical conception of the anti-metaphysical struggle.
