Nietzsche, Naturalism, and Normativity

by Janaway, Christopher; Robertson, Simon

• ISBN13: 9780191745294
• ISBN10: 0191745294
• Format: eBook
• Copyright: 2012-11-15
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Nietzsche, Naturalism, and Normativity comprises ten original essays which critically engage with one of the western canon's most controversial ethical thinkers. Bringing together an internationally renowned line-up of Nietzsche specialists and mainstream moral philosophers, the volume provides a timely and distinctive contribution to our understanding of both Nietzsche and his significance for ethical thought more generally. As well as clarifying Nietzsche's own views, both critical and positive, ethical and meta-ethical, the articles connect Nietzsche's philosophical concerns to contemporary debates in and about ethics, normativity, and value. The volume's topics include: the nature and scope of Nietzsche's critique of morality; the character of the positive ideals Nietzsche advances in light of that critique; the meta-ethical commitments underpinning the substantive views he variously opposes and espouses; his conception of human psychology and its relation to normativity and value; and, more generally, the relation between Nietzsche's revaluative ambitions and the naturalistic worldview it has become common to attribute to him. With an editors' introduction providing a comprehensive and accessible background to these topics, including a state-of-the-art overview of the interpretative and philosophical controversies Nietzsche's normative and naturalistic endeavours raise, Nietzsche, Naturalism, and Normativity stands at the cutting edge of current work in the field and is essential reading for anyone interested in the challenges Nietzsche poses for dominant models of moral philosophy.

Author Biography

Christopher Janaway is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton, and was formerly Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has written extensively on the philosophy of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and on aesthetics. He has been principal investigator on the AHRC-funded project 'Nietzsche and Modern Moral Philosophy' at Southampton and is general editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Schopenhauer. His most recently published book is Beyond Selflessness: Reading Nietzsche's Genealogy (2007).

Simon Robertson is a Lecturer in Philosophy at Cardiff University. After completing a PhD at the University of St Andrews, he lectured at the Universities of Leeds, Stirling and York, and held a postdoctoral research fellowship as part of the Nietzsche and Modern Moral Philosophy project at the University of Southampton. His main philosophical background lies at the intersection of contemporary metaethics, practical reason and normative ethics, though he also works on the philosophy of normativity, Nietzsche, and the philosophy of risk. He has published extensively in each of these fields, both in journals and edited collections, and is the editor of Spheres of Reason (OUP, 2009).