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Nietzsche's Metaphilosophy: The Nature, Method, and Aims of Philosophy
by Paul S. Loeb Matthew MeyerRecent Anglophone scholarship has successfully shown that Nietzsche's thought makes important contributions to a wide range of contemporary philosophical debates. In so doing, however, scholarship has lost sight of another important feature of Nietzsche's project, namely his desire to challenge the very conception of philosophy that has been used to assess his merits as a philosopher. In other words, contemporary scholarship has overlooked Nietzsche's contributions to metaphilosophy, i.e. debates around the nature, methods, and aims of philosophy. This important new collection of essays brings together an international group of distinguished scholars to explore and discuss these contributions and debates. It will appeal to anyone interested in metaphilosophy, Nietzsche studies, German studies, or intellectual history.
Nietzsche's Moral Psychology
by Mark AlfanoNietzsche, a trained philologist, frequently urges his readers to interpret him carefully. In this book, Mark Alfano combines detailed close reading with digital methods (corpus analysis and semantic network visualization) to reframe our understanding of this major figure. He argues that virtue is a neglected concept in Nietzsche's writings, and sets out a fresh interpretation of Nietzschean virtues as well-calibrated drives. As different people embody different constellations of drives, so virtues differ from person to person. For Nietzsche himself, Alfano argues, five virtues are essential: curiosity, courage, a sense of humor, and pathos of distance (that is, contemptuousness) toward one's self and toward one's society. This innovative and original book will be invaluable for historians of philosophy, contemporary researchers in moral psychology and virtue theory, and philosophers interested in the fast-growing methodologies of the digital humanities.
Nietzsche's Naturalism
by Christian J. EmdenThis book explores Nietzsche's philosophical naturalism in its historical context, showing that his position is best understood against the background of encounters between neo-Kantianism and the life sciences in the nineteenth century. Analyzing most of Nietzsche's writings from the late 1860s onwards, Christian J. Emden reconstructs Nietzsche's naturalism and argues for a new understanding of his account of nature and normativity. Emden proposes historical reasons why Nietzsche came to adopt the position he did; his genealogy of values and his account of a will to power are as much influenced by Kantian thought as they are by nineteenth-century debates on teleology, biological functions, and theories of evolution. This rich and wide-ranging study will be of interest to scholars and students of Nietzsche, the history of modern philosophy, intellectual history, and history of science.
Nietzsche's Orphans
by Rebecca MitchellA prevailing belief among Russia's cultural elite in the early twentieth century was that the music of composers such as Sergei Rachmaninoff, Aleksandr Scriabin, and Nikolai Medtner could forge a shared identity for the Russian people across social and economic divides. In this illuminating study of competing artistic and ideological visions at the close of Russia's "Silver Age," author Rebecca Mitchell interweaves cultural history, music, and philosophy to explore how "Nietzsche's orphans" strove to find in music a means to overcome the disunity of modern life in the final tumultuous years before World War I and the Communist Revolution.
Nietzsche's Philosophical Context: An Intellectual Biography
by Thomas H BrobjerFriedrich Nietzsche was immensely influential and, counter to most expectations, also very well read. An essential new reference tool for those interested in his thinking, Nietzsche's Philosophical Context identifies the chronology and huge range of philosophical books that engaged him. Rigorously examining the scope of this reading, Thomas H. Brobjer consulted over two thousand volumes in Nietzsche's personal library, as well as his book bills, library records, journals, letters, and publications. This meticulous investigation also considers many of the annotations in his books. In arguing that Nietzsche's reading often constituted the starting point for, or counterpoint to, much of his own thinking and writing, Brobjer's study provides scholars with fresh insight into how Nietzsche worked and thought; to which questions and thinkers he responded; and by which of them he was influenced. The result is a new and much more contextual understanding of Nietzsche's life and thinking.
Nietzsche's Philosophy of History
by Anthony K. JensenNietzsche, the so-called herald of the 'philosophy of the future', nevertheless dealt with the past on nearly every page of his writing. Not only was he concerned with how past values, cultural practices, and institutions influence the present - he was plainly aware that any attempt to understand that influence encounters many meta-historical problems. This comprehensive and lucid exposition of the development of Nietzsche's philosophy of history explores how Nietzsche thought about history and historiography throughout his life and how it affected his most fundamental ideas. Discussion of the whole span of Nietzsche's writings, from his earliest publications as a classical philologist to his later genealogical and autobiographical projects, is interwoven with careful analysis of his own forms of writing history, the nineteenth-century paradigms which he critiqued, and the twentieth-century views which he anticipated. The book will be of much interest to scholars of Nietzsche and of nineteenth-century philosophy.
Nietzsche's Philosophy of Life Affirmation: Experimenting with Art and Science to Transfigure Humankind
by Michael J. McNealThis anthology broadly examines the interrelated roles of art, science, and experimentation in Nietzsche's philosophical project. It is divided into two parts, the first organized around the theme of experimentally reconceiving our world, the second investigating the aforementioned subjects in Nietzsche’s “free spirit” or “middle period” works. Together, the essays comprising the book underscore Nietzsche’s concern that experimentation with values ultimately provide humankind with a new “wherefore” or purpose. Wide-ranging in its scope, this volume brings together a diverse group of scholars working in both the analytic and continental traditions to provide original insights into Nietzsche’s thought. A unique contribution to the scholarship, it deepens understanding of the relationship between Nietzsche’s critiques of art and science, the role this relationship plays in his futural thought, and the experimental, life-affirming practices that his free spirit project may enable toward the transfiguration of humankind.
Nietzsche's Philosophy of Religion
by Julian YoungIn this 2006 book, Julian Young argues that Nietzsche's early religious communitarianism persists through all his published works.
Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same
by Karl LowithThis long overdue English translation of Karl Löwith's magisterial study is a major event in Nietzsche scholarship in the Anglo-American intellectual world. Its initial publication was extraordinary in itself—a dissident interpretation, written by a Jew, appearing in National Socialist Germany in 1935. Since then, Löwith's book has continued to gain recognition as one of the key texts in the German Nietzsche reception, as well as a remarkable effort to reclaim the philosopher's work from political misappropriation.For Löwith, the centerpiece of Nietzsche's thought is the doctrine of eternal recurrence, a notion which Löwith, unlike Heidegger, deems incompatible with the will to power. His careful examination of Nietzsche's cosmological theory of the infinite repetition of a finite number of states of the world suggests the paradoxical consequences this theory implies for human freedom. How is it possible to will the eternal recurrence of each moment of one's life, if both this decision and the states of affairs governed by it appear to be predestined? Löwith's book, one of the most important, if seldom acknowledged, sources for recent Anglophone Nietzsche studies, remains a central text for all concerned with understanding the philosopher's work.
Nietzsche's Political Skepticism
by Tamsin ShawPolitical theorists have long been frustrated by Nietzsche's work. Although he develops profound critiques of morality, culture, and religion, it is very difficult to spell out the precise political implications of his insights. He himself never did so in any systematic way. In this book, Tamsin Shaw claims that there is a reason for this: Nietzsche's insights entail a distinctive form of political skepticism. Shaw argues that the modern political predicament, for Nietzsche, is shaped by two important historical phenomena. The first is secularization, or the erosion of religious belief, and the fragmentation of moral life that it entails. The second is the unparalleled ideological power of the modern state. The promotion of Nietzsche's own values, Shaw insists, requires resistance to state ideology. But Nietzsche cannot envisage how these values might themselves provide a stable basis for political authority; this is because secular societies, lacking recognized normative expertise, also lack a reliable mechanism for making moral insight politically effective. In grappling with this predicament, Shaw claims, Nietzsche raises profound questions about political legitimacy and political authority in the modern world.
Nietzsche's Posthumanism (Posthumanities)
by Edgar LandgrafA timely and trenchant commentary on the centrality of Nietzsche&’s thought for our time While many posthumanists claim Nietzsche as one of their own, rarely do they engage his philosophy in any real depth. Nietzsche&’s Posthumanism addresses this need by exploring the continuities and disagreements between Nietzsche&’s philosophy and contemporary posthumanism. Focusing specifically on Nietzsche&’s reception of the life sciences of his day and his reflections on technology—research areas as central to Nietzsche&’s work as they are to posthumanism—Edgar Landgraf provides fresh readings of Nietzsche and a critique of post- and transhumanist philosophies. Through Landgraf&’s inquiry, lesser-known aspects of Nietzsche&’s writings emerge, including the neurophysiological basis of his epistemology (which anticipates contemporary debates on embodiment), his concerns with insects and the emergent social properties they exhibit, and his reflections on the hominization and cultivation effects of technology. In the process, Landgraf challenges major commonplaces about Nietzsche&’s philosophy, including the idea that his social theory asserts the rights of &“the strong&” over &“the weak.&” The ethos of critical posthumanism also offers a new perspective on key ethical and political contentions of Nietzsche&’s writings. Nietzsche&’s Posthumanism presents a uniquely framed introduction to tenets of Nietzsche&’s thought and major trends in posthumanism, making it an essential exploration for anyone invested in Nietzsche and his contemporary relevance, and in posthumanism and its genealogy. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly.
Nietzsche's Protestant Fathers: A Study in Prodigal Christianity
by Thomas R. NevinNietzsche was famously an atheist, despite coming from a strongly Protestant family. This heritage influenced much of his thought, but was it in fact the very thing that led him to his atheism? This work provides a radical re-assessment of Protestantism by documenting and extrapolating Nietzsche’s view that Christianity dies from the head down. That is, through Protestantism’s inherent anarchy. In this book, Nietzsche is put into conversation with the initiatives of several powerful thinking writers; Luther, Boehme, Leibniz, and Lessing. Using Nietzsche as a critical guide to the evolution of Protestant thinking, each is shown to violate, warp, or ignore gospel injunctions, and otherwise pose hazards to the primacy of Christian ethics. Demonstrating that a responsible understanding of Protestantism as a historical movement needs to engage with its inherent flaws, this is a text that will engage scholars of philosophy, theology, and religious studies alike.
Nietzsche's Psychology of Ressentiment: Revenge and Justice in "On the Genealogy of Morals" (Routledge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Philosophy)
by Guy ElgatRessentiment—the hateful desire for revenge—plays a pivotal role in Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals. Ressentiment explains the formation of bad conscience, guilt, asceticism, and, most importantly, it motivates the "slave revolt" that gives rise to Western morality’s values. Ressentiment, however, has not enjoyed a thorough treatment in the secondary literature. This book brings it sharply into focus and provides the first detailed examination of Nietzsche’s psychology of ressentiment. Unlike other books on the Genealogy, it uses ressentiment as a key to the Genealogy and focuses on the intriguing relationship between ressentiment and justice. It shows how ressentiment, despite its blindness to justice, gives rise to moral justice—the central target of Nietzsche’s critique. This critique notwithstanding, the Genealogy shows Nietzsche’s enduring commitment to the virtue of non-moral justice: a commitment that grounds his provocative view that moral justice spells the ‘end of justice’. The result provides a novel view of Nietzsche's moral psychology in the Genealogy, his critique of morality, and his views on justice.
Nietzsche's Revaluation of All Values (Elements in the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche)
by Thomas H. BrobjerWhy is Nietzsche's thought and philosophy still regarded as relevant today? There are a large number of possible answers to a question like this, but one of the most important and persuasive is that Nietzsche questioned and discussed the nature, character and value of our values. Nietzsche frequently turns other questions such as epistemological and ontological ones into axiological ones, making values pivotal in his thought. It is possible to argue that the revaluation of all values is both the most important and today the most relevant of Nietzsche's main philosophical themes and projects. Furthermore, the theme is intimately involved with what Nietzsche regarded as his most important work, his magnum opus (that he called his Hauptwerk), for a long period called The Will to Power but later Revaluation of All Values.
Nietzsche's Rhetoric: Four Case Studies
by Francesca CauchiThis book excavates the rhetorical devices that Nietzsche habitually uses and explains how they constitute a distinctive form of philosophical argumentation. Through a sustained analysis of Nietzsche’s rhetorical style, stratagems, and didactic aims in two of his early works (‘On Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense’ and Daybreak) and two of his later works (Beyond Good and Evil and Twilight of the Idols), the book assesses the extent to which Nietzsche's substantial rhetorical arsenal undermines the philosophical claims he is seeking to advance. The four case studies also bring to the fore some of the less palatable aspects of Nietzsche’s thought such as racial-stereotyping, the essentialising of a so-called slave mentality, and the ranking of human beings based on a highly idiosyncratic and prejudiced view of what qualifies as noble and ignoble.
Nietzsche's Sister and the Will to Power: A Biography of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche (International Nietzsche Studies)
by Carol DietheA penetrating study of the sister who betrayed and endangered her famous brother's legacy In 1901, a year after her brother Friedrich's death, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche published The Will to Power, a hasty compilation of writings he had never intended for print. In Nietzsche's Sister and the Will to Power, Carol Diethe contends that Förster-Nietzsche's own will to power and her desire to place herself--not her brother--at the center of cultural life in Germany are centrally responsible for Nietzsche's reputation as a belligerent and proto-Fascist thinker. Offering a new look at Nietzsche's sister from a feminist perspective, this spirited and erudite biography examines why Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche recklessly consorted with anti-Semites, from her own husband to Hitler himself, out of convenience and a desire for revenge against a brother whose love for her waned after she caused the collapse of his friendship with Lou Salomé. The book also examines their family dynamics, Nietzsche's dismissal of his sister's early writing career, and the effects of limited education on intelligent women. Diethe concludes by detailing Förster-Nietzsche's brief marriage and her subsequent colonial venture in Paraguay, maintaining that her sporadic anti-Semitism was, like most things in her life, an expedient tool for cultivating personal success and status. A volume in the series International Nietzsche Studies, edited by Richard Schacht
Nietzsche's Task: An Interpretation of Beyond Good and Evil
by Laurence LampertLaurence Lampert reveals the true meaning of the book "Beyond Good and Evil" by Nietzsche.
Nietzsche's The Gay Science: An Introduction (Cambridge Introductions to Key Philosophical Texts)
by Michael UreNietzsche's The Gay Science (1882/1887) is a deeply personal book, yet also an important work of philosophy. Nietzsche conceives it as a philosophical autobiography, a record of his own self-transformation. In beautifully composed aphorisms he communicates his central experience of overcoming pessimism and recovering the capacity to affirm joyfully the tragedy of life. On the basis of his experiments in living, Nietzsche articulates his most famous philosophical concepts and images: the death of God, the exercise of eternal recurrence, and the ideal of self-fashioning. This book explains the ancient and modern philosophical contexts that shape Nietzsche's central concern with the affirmation of life. It surveys Nietzsche's philosophy as a whole, explains the pivotal place of The Gay Science as the source of his ideal of tragic joy, and shows how he revives an ancient conception of philosophy as a way of life and the philosopher as physician.
Nietzsche's Voices (The Collected Writings of John Sallis)
by John SallisNietzsche's Voices, a much-anticipated volume of the Collected Writings of John Sallis, presents his two-semester lecture course on Nietzsche offered in the Philosophy Department of Duquesne University during the school year 1971–72."Nietzsche is easy to read; his is apparently the easiest of all the great philosophies. Yet the easy intelligibility is deceptive. Nietzsche's writings make us believe we have understood when in fact we have not. His philosophy is actually the exact opposite of easy," says Sallis. With this warning always in mind, Sallis first discusses Nietzsche's life and the relevance of the ancient Greeks to his thought and then analyzes Nietzsche's views on truth, history, morality, and the death of God. The entire second half of the book is devoted to Nietzsche's main work, the tragic, comedic, poetic Thus Spoke Zarathustra.Nietzsche's Voices offers a sensitive and brilliant introduction to the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, as presented by one of today's most significant philosophers.
Nietzsche's ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra': A Critical Guide (Cambridge Critical Guides)
by Paul S. Loeb Keith Ansell-PearsonNietzsche regarded Thus Spoke Zarathustra as his most important philosophical contribution because it proposes solutions to the problems and questions he poses in his later books – for example, his cure for the human disposition to vengefulness and his creation of new values as the antidote to nihilism. It is also the only place where he elaborates his concepts of the superhuman and the eternal recurrence of the same. In this Critical Guide, an international group of distinguished scholars analyze the philosophical ideas in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, discussing a range of topics that include literary parody as philosophical critique, philosophy as a way of life, the meaning of human life, philosophical naturalism, fatalism, radical flux, human passions and virtues, great politics, transhumanism, and ecological conscience. The volume will be invaluable for philosophers, scholars and students interested in Nietzsche's thought.
Nietzsche, Culture and Education
by Thomas E. HartIn the spring of 1872 Friedrich Nietzsche gave a series of public lectures titled 'On the Future of our Educational Institution' to an audience in Basel, Switzerland. In the lectures he made clear his attitude about what was wrong with education and how it had negatively affected the culture of his day. More than one hundred years after the death of Nietzsche, his legacy remains one of the most pervasive in philosophical thought. While his influence on philosophical thought concerning culture is everywhere to be found, his influence on the philosophy of education has yet to find a place in mainstream thought on the subject, in spite of the inextricable connection between the two. This collection has been put together in an effort to redress this situation. Nietzsche, Culture and Education brings together a collection of specially commissioned essays on the theme of Nietzsche's cultural critique and its use in and effect on educational theory. The international character of the contributors gives this work a polyvalent perspective on these areas of Nietzsche's philosophy. This publication will be a valuable source book for both undergraduate and postgraduate students of philosophy, education and the social sciences as well as for Nietzsche specialists.
Nietzsche, Feminism and Political Theory
by Paul PattonAre you visiting women? Do not forget your whip!''Thus Spoke Zarathustra'the democratic movement is...a form assumed by man in decay'Beyond Good and EvilNietzsche's views on women and politics have long been the most embarrassing aspects of his thought. Why then has the work of Nietzsche aroused so much interest in recent years from feminist theorists and political philosophers?In answer, this collection comprises twelve outsanding essays on Mietzsche 's work to current debates in feminist and political theory, It is the first to focus on the way in which Nietzche has become an essential point of reference for postmodern ehtical and political thought.
Nietzsche, Freud, Benn, and the Azure Spell of Liguria
by Martina KolbThe Mediterranean region of Liguria, where the Maritime Alps sweep down to the coasts of northwest Italy and southeast France, the Riviera, marks the intersection of two of Europe's major cultural landscapes. Remote, liminal, compact, and steep, the terrain has influenced many international authors and artists. In this study, Martina Kolb traces Liguria's specific impact on the works of three seminal German-writing modernists - Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Gottfried Benn - whose encounters with Ligurian lands and seas led to an innovative geopoetic fusion of word and world.Kolb examines each of these authors' acquired affinities with Ligurian and Provençal landscapes and seascapes, revisiting and reassessing the long tradition of northern longing for a Mediterranean south. She also shows how Freud and Benn followed in the footsteps of Nietzsche in his most prolific years, a topic which has received little critical attention to date. Nietzsche, Freud, Benn, and the Azure Spell of Liguria offers a fresh approach to these writers' groundbreaking literary achievements and profound interest in poetic expression as cathartic self-liberation.
Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche's <i>On the Genealogy of Morals</i> (Philosophical Traditions #5)
by Richard SchachtWritten at the height of the philosopher's intellectual powers, Friedrich Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals has become one of the key texts of recent Western philosophy. Its essayistic style affords a unique opportunity to observe many of Nietzsche's persisting concerns coming together in an illuminating constellation. A profound influence on psychoanalysis, antihistoricism, and poststructuralism and an abiding challenge to ethical theory, Nietzsche's book addresses many of the major philosophical problems and possibilities of modernity.In this unique collection focusing on the Genealogy, twenty-five notable philosophers offer diverse discussions of the book's central themes and concepts. They explore such notions as ressentiment, asceticism, "slave" and "master" moralities, and what Nietzsche calls "genealogy" and its relation to other forms of inquiry in his work. The book presents a cross section of contemporary Nietzsche scholarship and philosophical investigation that is certain to interest philosophers, intellectual and cultural historians, and anyone concerned with one of the master thinkers of the modern age.
Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism? On the Uses and Abuses of a Philosophy
by Robert S. Wistrich Jacob GolombNietzsche, the Godfather of Fascism? What can Nietzsche have in common with this murderous ideology? Frequently described as the "radical aristocrat" of the spirit, Nietzsche abhorred mass culture and strove to cultivate an Übermensch endowed with exceptional mental qualities. What can such a thinker have in common with the fascistic manipulation of the masses for chauvinistic goals that crushed the autonomy of the individual? The question that lies at the heart of this collection is how Nietzsche came to acquire the deadly "honor" of being considered the philosopher of the Third Reich and whether such claims had any justification. Does it make any sense to hold him in some way responsible for the horrors of Auschwitz? The editors present a range of views that attempt to do justice to the ambiguity and richness of Nietzsche's thought. First-rate contributions by a variety of distinguished philosophers and historians explore in depth Nietzsche's attitudes toward Jews, Judaism, Christianity, anti-Semitism, and National Socialism. They interrogate Nietzsche's writings for fascist and anti-Semitic proclivities and consider how they were read by fascists who claimed Nietzsche as their intellectual godfather. There is much that is disturbingly antiegalitarian and antidemocratic in Nietzsche, and his writings on Jews are open to differing interpretations. Yet his emphasis on individualism and contempt for German nationalism and anti-Semitism put him at stark odds with Nazi ideology. The Nietzsche that emerges here is a tragic prophet of the spiritual vacuum that produced the twentieth century's totalitarian movements, the thinker who best diagnosed the pathologies of fin-de-siècle European culture. Nietzsche dared to look into the abyss of modern nihilism. This book tells us what he found.