Argues that Nietzsche tried to create a specific literary character in his writings and discusses the paradoxes of his work.

Constitutivism is the view that we can derive substantive normative conclusions from an account of the nature of action. Agency and the Foundations of Ethics explains the constitutivist strategy and argues that the attractions of this view are considerable: constitutivism promises to resolve longstanding philosophical puzzles about the metaphysics, epistemology, and practical grip of normative claims. Yet constitutivism faces a challenge: it must employ a conception of action that is minimal enough to be independently plausible, but substantial enough to yield (...) robust normative results. The current versions of constitutivism fall short on this score. However, we can generate a successful version by employing a more nuanced theory of action. Drawing on recent empirical work on human motivation as well as a model of agency indebted to the work of Nietzsche, the book argues that every episode of action aims jointly at agential activity and power. An agent manifests agential activity if she approves of her action, and further knowledge of the motives figuring in the etiology of her action would not undermine this approval. An agent aims at power if she aims at encountering and overcoming obstacles or resistances in the course of pursuing other, more determinate ends. These structural features of agency both constitute events as actions and generate standards of assessment for action. Using these results, the book shows that we can extract substantive normative claims from facts about the nature of agency. (shrink)

Both an introduction to Nietzsche’s moral philosophy, and a sustained commentary on his most famous work, On the Genealogy of Morality, this book has become the most widely used and debated secondary source on these topics over the past dozen years. Many of Nietzsche’s most famous ideas - the "slave revolt" in morals, the attack on free will, perspectivism, "will to power" and the "ascetic ideal" - are clearly analyzed and explained. The first edition established the centrality of naturalism to (...) Nietzsche’s philosophy, generating a substantial scholarly literature to which Leiter responds in an important new Postscript. In addition, Leiter has revised and refreshed the book throughout, taking into account new scholarly literature, and revising or clarifying his treatment of such topics as the objectivity of value, epiphenomenalism and consciousness, and the possibility of "autonomous" agency. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche haunts the modern world. His elusive writings with their characteristic combination of trenchant analysis of the modern predicament and suggestive but ambiguous proposals for dealing with it have fascinated generations of artists, scholars, critics, philosophers, and ordinary readers. Maudemarie Clark's highly original study gives a lucid and penetrating analytical account of all the central topics of Nietzsche's epistemology and metaphysics, including his views on truth and language, his perspectivism, and his doctrines of the will-to-power and the eternal recurrence. (...) The Nietzsche who emerges from these pages is a subtle and sophisticated philosopher, whose highly articulated views are of continuing interest as contributions to a whole range of philosphical issues. This remarkable reading of Nietzsche will interest not only philosophers, but also readers in neighbouring disciplines such as literature and intellectual history. (shrink)

Nietzsche, Biology and Metaphor explores the German philosopher's response to the intellectual debates sparked by the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. By examining the abundance of biological metaphors in Nietzsche's writings, Gregory Moore questions his recent reputation as an eminently subversive and (post) modern thinker, and shows how deeply Nietzsche was immersed in late nineteenth-century debates on evolution, degeneration and race. The first part of the book provides a detailed study and new interpretation of Nietzsche's much disputed relationship (...) to Darwinism. Uniquely, Moore also considers the importance of Nietzsche's evolutionary perspective for the development of his moral and aesthetic philosophy. The second part analyzes key themes of Nietzsche's cultural criticism - his attack on the Judaeo-Christian tradition, his diagnosis of the nihilistic crisis afflicting modernity and his anti-Wagnerian polemics - against the background of fin-de-siècle fears about the imminent biological collapse of Western civilization. (shrink)

This book presents a provocative new interpretation of what is arguably Nietzsche's most important and most difficult work, Beyond Good and Evil.

In this beautifully written account, Julian Young provides the most comprehensive biography available today of the life and philosophy of the nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Young deals with the many puzzles created by the conjunction of Nietzsche's personal history and his work: why the son of a Lutheran pastor developed into the self-styled 'Antichrist'; why this archetypical Prussian came to loath Bismarck's Prussia; and why this enemy of feminism preferred the company of feminist women. Setting Nietzsche's thought in the (...) context of his times - the rise of Prussian militarism, anti-Semitism, Darwinian science, the 'Youth' and emancipationist movements, as well as the 'death of God' - Young emphasises the decisive influence of Plato and of Richard Wagner on Nietzsche's attempted reform of Western culture. (shrink)

Nietzsche s work was heavily influenced by ancient Greek philosophy. Meyer shows how Nietzsche attempted to revive the Heraclitean-Protagorean position that is critically analyzed by both Plato and Aristotle in the Theaetetus and Metaphysics IV, and establishes Nietzsche as a naturalist who believes that there are objective facts.The book not only highlights the foundations of his thought, but also restores order to Nietzsche s work.".

Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation offers a resolution of one of the most vexing problems in Nietzsche scholarship. As perhaps the most significant predecessor of more recent attempts to formulate a postmetaphysical epistemology and ontology, Nietzsche is considered by many critics to share this problem with his successors: How can an antifoundationalist philosophy avoid vicious relativism and legitimate its claim to provide a platform for the critique of arguments, practices, and institutions? -/- Christoph Cox argues that Nietzsche successfully navigates between relativism (...) and dogmatism, accepting the naturalistic critique of metaphysics and theology provided by modern science, yet maintaining that a thoroughgoing naturalism must move beyond scientific reductionism. It must accept a central feature of aesthetic understanding: acknowledgment of the primacy and irreducibility of interpretation. This view of Nietzsche's doctrines of perspectivism, becoming, and will to power as products of an overall naturalism balanced by a reciprocal commitment to interpretationism will spur new discussions of epistemology and ontology in contemporary thought. (shrink)

This dual-language edition offers the English-speaking reader who has some knowledge of French an opportunity to examine the stylistic virtuosity of Derrida's writing—of particular significance for his analysis of "the question of style.".

_Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation_ offers a resolution of one of the most vexing problems in Nietzsche scholarship. As perhaps the most significant predecessor of more recent attempts to formulate a postmetaphysical epistemology and ontology, Nietzsche is considered by many critics to share this problem with his successors: How can an antifoundationalist philosophy avoid vicious relativism and legitimate its claim to provide a platform for the critique of arguments, practices, and institutions? Christoph Cox argues that Nietzsche successfully navigates between relativism and (...) dogmatism, accepting the naturalistic critique of metaphysics and theology provided by modern science, yet maintaining that a thoroughgoing naturalism must move beyond scientific reductionism. It must accept a central feature of aesthetic understanding: acknowledgment of the primacy and irreducibility of interpretation. This view of Nietzsche's doctrines of perspectivism, becoming, and will to power as products of an overall naturalism balanced by a reciprocal commitment to interpretationism will spur new discussions of epistemology and ontology in contemporary thought. (shrink)

This classic biography of Nietzsche, first published in the 1960s, was enthusiastically reviewed at the time. The biography is now reissued with its text updated in the light of recent research. Hollingdale's biography remains the single best account of the life and works for the student or non-specialist. The biography chronicles Nietzsche's intellectual evolution and discusses his friendship and breach with Wagner, his attitude towards Schopenhauer, and his indebtedness to Darwin and the Greeks. It follows the years of his maturity (...) and his mental collapse in 1889. The final part of the book considers the development of the Nietzsche legend during his years of madness. R. J. Hollingdale, one of the preeminent translators of Nietzsche, allows Nietzsche to speak for himself in a translation that transmits the vividness and virtuosity of Nietzsche's many styles. This is the ideal book for anyone interested in Nietzsche's life and work to learn why he is such a significant figure for the development of modern thought. (shrink)

Die Reihe Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung (MTNF) setzt seit mehreren Jahrzehnten die Agenda in der sich stetig Nietzsche-Forschung. Die Bände sind interdisziplinär und international ausgerichtet und spiegeln das gesamte Spektrum der Nietzsche-Forschung wider, von der Philosophie über die Literaturwissenschaft bis zur politischen Theorie. Die Monographien und Sammelbände unterliegen jeweils einem strengen Peer-Review.

Die 1990 gegründete Reihe, die auf eine Anregung von Mazzino Montinari zurückgeht, publiziert Quellenmaterialien zu Nietzsches Leben, seinem Umkreis und seiner Wirkung. Die Supplementa stellen somit eine Ergänzung zu den Kritischen Ausgaben von Nietzsches Werken (KGW) und Briefen (KGB) dar.

Full-length studies of individual books of Nietzsche have been lacking until now both because of the immaturity of the field and because Nietzsche's style itself seems to contraindicate them. Close reading, however, reveals a great deal of literary and philosophical unity. This holds good even of Human, All-Too-Human, Nietzsche's longest and most unwieldy work. The book represents Nietzsche's break with Schopenhauer and Wagner, as well as the birth of Nietzsche as we know him in the later works. The book's embrace (...) of science as conducive to culture follows the early works' vilification of science as anathema to culture. This reassessment is possible because science is now seen as a method and a discipline rather than an insatiable drive for knowledge, and culture is now a broad set of symbols and activities rather than a narrowly focussed "unity of artistic style." Both changes were motivated by Nietzsche's rejection of Wagner. Part of the help science provides culture is its release from restrictive metaphysical beliefs. Nietzsche battles metaphysics, principally that of Schopenhauer, by means of scientific arguments meant both to provide alternative explanations of phenomena and to expose the origin of countervailing metaphysical beliefs. However, even when combined in a two-pronged attack, these arguments still fall short of their goal of refuting metaphysics. The scientific world-view may nonetheless aid the development of "free spirits," whose unalloyed devotion to knowledge makes them science's paragons. The free spirits are the prototypes for the later works' strong individuals, yet here they are viewed as crucial elements in the cultural development of general society. Nietzsche seeks both to create them and to encourage their devotion to the needs of culture. Part of his effort to do this is the deployment of a terse, elliptical style which will involve the reader more thoroughly than can be done by means of argument alone. Study of the book's structure reveals that its core, Parts 1, 5, and 9, outlines the relation between science, culture, and free spirits. (shrink)

Here, William H. Schaberg presents a detailed publication history and biography of Nietzsche as author and an equally comprehensive annotated bibliography of his work.

Nietzsche did not write a completed magnum opus, a ‘Hauptwerk’, but he planned to do so during at least the last 5 years of his active life. I will show that during and after the writing of Also sprach Zarathustra this was his main aim and ambition. The projected work passed through a number of related phases, of which the much discussed and controversial ‘Will to Power’ was merely one. This intention to write a magnum opus has been denied or (...) almost completely ignored by almost all commentators . I will bring attention to this intention, discuss why it has been ignored and show that an awareness of it is important for our understanding of the late Nietzsche's thinking and for determining the value and originality of his late notes. It has been a failure of historians of philosophy, intellectual historians and Nietzsche scholars not to have taken this into consideration and account. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Most commentators have assumed that the revaluation theme belongs exclusively to the late Nietzsche ; often its origin is dated to 1886 or 1884. After examining Nietzsche’s notes, I argue that its origin occurred in 1880-81. I discuss its rather complex context at this time, with no single obvious thematic textual context outweighing all the others, and consider some of the consequences of this early dating. I furthermore examine the end of the literary revaluation project, concluding that Nietzsche regarded (...) it as an unfinished four-volume project at least until shortly before his mental collapse. (shrink)

"Immer schon verlegte mein Gefuhl Overbecks Weigerung, die in ihm verkorperte Nietzschetradition der Schwester des Freundes auszuliefern, jenseits personlicher Regungen in das Gebiet des Grundsatzlichen, Naturnotwendigen. Nietzsche, im Leben der grosse Unglucksmensch, betritt die Nachwelt als ein Kind des Gluckes. Nicht nur verhalf die Energie seiner Rechtsnachfolger den Schriften zu schnellster Wirkung; auch die fur die Ewigkeit eines jeden Ruhmes unerlasslich Zuruckdammung des ursprunglichen Parteienthusiasmus sah sich nicht auf neutrale Gelehrtenanalyse angewiesen. Sein bester Freund ist sein strengster Kritiker gewesen. Overbeck (...) liebte Nietzsche so sehr, dass er jenem und sich selbst das letzte zumuten durfte. Er nahm Nietzsche, wie er ihm erschien, vor sich auf die flache Hand und legte mit der andern freien Hand unerbittlich die Sonde an. Hochste Freundschaft vermag sogar das; freilich ist sie nur zwischen Mannern denkbar und nur Mannern ganz verstandlich." [...] Vorliegender Band von Carl Albrecht Bernoulli uber die Freundschaft von Franz Overbeck und Friedrich Nietzsche ist geschrieben nach ungedruckten Dokumenten und im Zusammenhang mit der bis dahin erfolgten Forschung. Dieses Buch ist ein unveranderter Nachdruck der langst vergriffenen Originalausgabe von 190. (shrink)