The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche

by Gemes, Ken; Richardson, John

• ISBN13: 9780199534647
• ISBN10: 0199534640
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-11-15
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The diversity of Nietzsche's books, and the sheer range of his philosophical interests, have posed daunting challenges to his interpreters. This Handbook addresses this multiplicity by devoting each of its 32 essays to a focused topic, picked out by the book's systematic plan. The aim is to treat each topic at the best current level of philosophical scholarship on Nietzsche. The first group of papers treat selected biographical issues: his family relations, his relations to women, and his ill health and eventual insanity. In Part 2 the papers treat Nietzsche in historical context: his relations back to other philosophers--the Greeks, Kant, and Schopenhauer--and to the cultural movement of Romanticism, as well as his own later influence in an unlikely place, on analytic philosophy. The papers in Part 3 treat a variety of Nietzsche's works, from early to late and in styles ranging from the "aphoristic" The Gay Science and Beyond Good and Evil through the poetic-mythic Thus Spoke Zarathustra to the florid autobiography Ecce Homo. This focus on individual works, their internal unity, and the way issues are handled within them, is an important complement to the final three groups of papers, which divide up Nietzsche's philosophical thought topically. The papers in Part 4 treat issues in Nietzsche's value theory, ranging from his metaethical views as to what values are, to his own values of freedom and the overman, to his insistence on 'order of rank', and his social-political views. The fifth group of papers treat Nietzsche's epistemology and metaphysics, including such well-known ideas as his perspectivism, his promotion of becoming over being, and his thought of eternal recurrence. Finally, Part 6 treats another famous idea--the will to power--as well as two linked ideas that he uses will to power to explain, the drives, and life. This Handbook will be a key resource for all scholars and advanced students who work on Nietzsche.

Author Biography

Ken Gemes is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London. He is the co-editor of Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy (with Simon May; OUP, 2009).

John Richardson is Professor of Philosophy at New York University. He is the author of Existential Epistemology: A Heideggerian Critique of the Cartesian Project (OUP, 1986), Nietzsche's System (OUP, 1996), Nietzsche's New Darwinism (OUP, 2004), and Heidegger (Routledge, 2012). He is a co-editor of Nietzsche (2001) in the Oxford Readings in Philosophy series.

Table of Contents

Introduction, Ken Gemes & John Richardson
Part 1: Biography
1. Family relations: "Nietzsche and the Family", Graham Parkes
2. Relations to women: "Nietzsche and Women", Julian Young
3. Debility: "Nietzsche's Illness", Charles Huenemann
Part 2: Historical relations
4. The Greeks: "Nietzsche and the Greeks", Jessica Berry
5. Romanticism: "Nietzsche and Romanticism: Goethe, Holderlin and Wagner", Adrian Del Caro
6. Kant: "Nietzsche the Kantian?", Tom Bailey
7. Schopenhauer: "Schopenhauer as Nietzsche's 'Great Teacher' and 'Antipode'", Ivan Soll
8. Analytic philosophy: "Nietzsche's Influence on Analytic Philosophy", Simon Robertson & David Owen
Part 3: Principal works
9. The Birth of Tragedy: "The Themes of Affirmation and Illusion in The Birth of Tragedy and Beyond", Daniel Came
10. Untimely Meditation II: "'Holding on to the Sublime': On Nietzsche's Early 'Unfashionable' Project", Keith Ansell-Pearson
11. The Gay Science: "The Gay Science", Chris Janaway
12. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: "Zarathustra: 'That Malicious Dionysian'", Gudrun von Tevenar
13. Beyond Good and Evil: "Beyond Good and Evil", Maudemarie Clark & David Dudrick
14. On the Genealogy of Morality: "Nietzsche's Genealogy", Richard Schacht
15. The Antichrist: "Nietzsche's Antichrist", Dylan Jaggard
Ecce Homo: "Beholding Nietzsche: Ecce Homo, Fate, and Freedom", Christa Davis Acampora
Part 4: Values
17. Metaethics: "Nietzsche's Metaethical Stance", Nadeem J. Z. Hussain
18. Aesthetic values: "Nietzsche and the Arts of Life", Aaron Ridley
19. Autonomy: "Nietzsche on Autonomy", R. Lanier Anderson
20. The overman: "The Overman", Randall Havas
21. Promising: "'A Promise Made is a Debt Unpaid': Nietzsche on the Morality of Commitment and the Commitments of Morality", Mark Migotti
22. Order of rank: "Order of Rank", Robert Guay
23. Peoples and races: "Will-to-Power: Does it lead to the 'coldest of all cold monsters'"?, Jacob Golomb
Part 5: Epistemology & metaphysics
24. Perspectivism: "Life's Perspectives", Ken Gemes
25. Naturalism: "Nietzsche's Naturalism Reconsidered", Brian Leiter
26. Aestheticism: "Nietzsche's Philosophical Aestheticism", Sebastian Gardner
27. Becoming vs. being: "Being, Becoming and Time in Nietzsche", Robin Small
28. Eternal recurrence: "Eternal Recurrence", Paul S. Loeb
Part 6: Developments of will to power
29. Will to power and causation: "Nietzsche's Metaphysical Sketches: Causality and Will to Power", Peter Poellner
30. Will to power and values: "Honesty, Curiosity, and Affirmation in Nietzsche's Free Spirits", Bernard Reginster
31. Drives: "Nietzsche's Philosophical Psychology", Paul Katsafanas
32. Life: "Nietzsche on Life's Ends", John Richardson
Index