Stern, Tom. Review of Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, THE THREE STIGMATA OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. NDPR (October 2011).

Mellamphy, Nandita Biswas.  The Three Stigmata of Friedrich Nietzsche: Political Physiology in the Age of Nihilism.  London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Mellamphy's book aims to draw together three strands of Nietzsche's thought: his 'great politics', his philosopher of the future and the eternal recurrence. Her claim is that they are 'always co-extensive and mutually implicated' (x); hence, a reference by Nietzsche to one of these concepts necessarily invokes the others. The future philosopher is 'undoubtedly a political figure' (with artistic features) (15); and, for the future philosopher, the experience of the eternal recurrence is central to the 'task of establishing 'great politics'' (41). It is the emphasis on Nietzsche's 're-articulation of the 'political'' (121) which is most prominent, though, as stated, Mellamphy takes the three concepts together. . . .

http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/26960-the-three-stigmata-of-friedrich-nietzsche-political-physiology-in-the-age-of-nihilism/

Pub: Ashley Woodward, ed. INTERPRETING NIETZSCHE.

Woodward, Ashley, ed.  Interpreting Nietzsche: Reception and Influence.  London: Continuum, 2011.

Contents:

Introduction: Whose Nietzsche? Ashley Woodward \ 1. Loewith’s Nietzsche J. Harvey Lomax \ 2. Jasper’s Nietzsche Leonard Ehrlich and Edith Ehrlich \ 3. Heidegger’s Nietzsche Sean Ryan \ 4. Bataille’s Nietzsche Yue Zhuo \ 5. Kaufmann’s Nietzsche David Rathbone \ 6. Deleuze’s Nietzsche Jonathan Roffe \ 7. Klossowski’s Nietzsche Ashley Woodward \ 8. Müller-Lauter’s Nietzsche Ciano Aydin \ 9. Kofman’s Nietzsche Duncan Large \ 10. Strauss’ Nietzsche Mathew Sharpe and Daniel Townshend \ 11. Derrida’s Nietzsche Carolyn D’Cruz \ 12. Irigaray’s Nietzsche Joanne Faulkner \ 13. Vattimo’s Nietzsche Robert Valgenti \ 14. Nehamas’s Nietzsche Mark Tomlinson \ Notes on Contributors \ Bibliography \ Index.

Reginster, Bernard. Review of Ken Gemes, et al., eds. NIETZSCHE ON FREEDOM AND AUTONOMY. NDPR (July 2011).

Gemes, Ken, and Simon May, eds.  Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy.  Oxford: OUP, 2009.

Nietzsche's views on freedom and autonomy are confined to short, provocative statements dispersed throughout his writings. For this reason, they have not been the object of much focused, systematic scholarly treatment. This collection of essays by some of the finest Nietzsche scholars, edited by Ken Gemes and Simon May (whose helpful introduction also outlines its contents), is a spirited attempt to fill that scholarly gap. The contributions collected in Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy can be divided into two groups, each focusing on one basic aspect of the question of freedom and autonomy. The first concerns the nature of the self to which freedom and autonomy are attributed: contributions that concentrate on this question tend to treat freedom as a defining feature of selfhood, or agency. The second question bears on what it is for that self to be, or to achieve, freedom and autonomy: contributions that consider this question tend to treat freedom as an ethical ideal to be pursued by individuals who already are selves or agents. More than half of the contributions (those by Sebastian Gardner, Ken Gemes, Christopher Janaway, Brian Leiter, Aaron Ridley, David Owen, and Maudemarie Clark and David Dudrick) are primarily devoted to the Nietzschean conception of the self, specifically of the self understood as will or agency. And almost all of the remaining contributions (those by Robert Pippin, Simon May, John Richardson, and Peter Poellner) examine Nietzsche's conception(s) of freedom and autonomy as an ethical ideal. I will review each group of essays in turn, and, for ease of presentation, not necessarily in the order in which they appear in the collection. . . .

http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24779/?id=24334

Beatrix Himmelmann, Beatrix. Review of NIETZSCHE AND THE ANCIENT SKEPTIC TRADITION. NDPR (July 2011).

Berry, Jessica N.  Nietzsche and the Ancient Skeptical Tradition.  Oxford: OUP, 2011.

When writing on a figure like Nietzsche, a figure attracting wide attention and receiving diverse interpretation, many authors begin by ensuring that they are able to offer an exciting new way of understanding. Few, however, succeed in really doing so. Jessica Berry's book does, in fact, inspire rethinking the big questions Nietzsche poses. It is true that the idea that Nietzsche, somehow, embraces skepticism is widespread. He is known to be abundantly critical about most of the claims presented by the most influential philosophers -- philosophers whose legacy still is and, probably, will continue to be an important stimulus for philosophical debates in a variety of fields. Nietzsche takes pride in portraying himself as a "tempter" (Versucher), "digging, mining, undermining" (Daybreak, Preface 1). In his late self-image Ecce Homo he famously declares: "Ich bin kein Mensch, ich bin Dynamit." ("I am not a man, I am dynamite.")

Berry clears the diffuse picture of Nietzsche's skepticism. She identifies a specific tradition of skepticism to which Nietzsche owes quite a bit and which might, accordingly, contribute to explaining his key projects. Even though Nietzsche refers to Descartes explicitly when he publishes the first edition of Human, All too Human (HH, Instead of a Preface) in 1878 and alludes to Hume's skeptical objections throughout his works, it is not a strain of modern skepticism that he takes up. As Berry points out, ancient skepticism, namely Pyrrhonism, provided Nietzsche with a pattern of argumentation to which he felt akin. Cartesian doubt is methodic doubt, i.e., it is employed in order to arrive finally at some kind of certainty. In a fragment from 1885 (KSA 11: 632), Nietzsche states that, for this reason, Descartes is not radical enough. Descartes strives for certainty and does not want to be deceived. "Why not?" asks Nietzsche. Being disinterested in certainty, however, distinguishes Pyrrhonian skeptics. In contrast to another group of ancient skeptics, the Academic, they do not claim to know that things are, by their nature, inapprehensible. Consequently, Pyrrhonian skeptics are not in danger of turning into negative dogmatists. They are not tempted to fall victim to the one flaw all sorts of dogmatists share: a preference for ceasing investigation altogether because of the conviction that ultimate insight into the structure of things has been achieved. Pyrrhonists, instead, seek to continue investigation through epochē, suspension of judgment by means of opposing arguments and appearances against each other in any way whatsoever -- hoping to achieve equipollence (isostheneia) of the objects and reasons thus opposed.

From all of this, it should be fairly plausible that Nietzsche must have been attracted by the tradition of Pyrrhonian skepticism. . . .

http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24777/?id=24332

Anderson, Mark, "Telling the Same Story of Nietzsche's Life." JOURNAL OF NIETZSCHE STUDIES 42 (Autumn 2011).

In the spring 2011 issue of this journal there appeared a review of Julian Young’s recent and well-received Friedrich Nietzsche: a Philosophical Biography. The author of the piece, Daniel Blue, writes from the perspective of one of the book’s very few detractors. His objections, however, mainly concern the philosophical-interpretive chapters of Young’s book. Regarding the biographical material, Blue judges that the book provides “a lively and intellectually bracing account of Nietzsche’s life.” On this point I would not like to contradict Blue’s opinion. I am, however, inclined to lay a critical finger upon his remark that Young “[o]f necessity…tells the same story as [Ronald] Hayman and [Curtis] Cate,” two of the more ambitious among Nietzsche’s English-language biographers. Taking the point as Blue no doubt intends it, his remark is unobjectionable. Nietzsche lived only one life; his biographers, therefore, have in a general way only one story to tell. They distinguish themselves, as Blue correctly indicates, by providing their “own emphases.” I would elaborate upon this point by noting that apart from being a meticulous compiler and collator of dates and information, a successful biographer must also be something of an artist. And I would add that the biographer’s art is manifest, not in his chronological ordering of the events of one year after another, but in his particular selection of facts, in his narrative interpretation of these facts, and, perhaps most of all, in his prose, his language, which, after all, is the only medium at his disposal for characterizing his subjects, communicating their attitudes and moods, and for attracting us to them, or repelling us from them, as individual personalities.

We agree, then, that Nietzsche’s many biographers must in a general way tell the same story. Having conceded this point, however, let us consider Julian Young’s brief history and description of Nietzsche’s boarding-school, Pforta:

Originally a Cistercian abbey called Porta Coeli (Gate of Heaven), Pforta (‘Gate’—now to education rather than heaven) had been transformed into a school in 1543 by the Prince-Elector Moritz of Saxony…Pforta, or Schulpforta (Pforta School), as it is known today, is about an hour’s walk from Naumburg—Fritz sometimes walked home for the holidays. It lies just south of the ambling Saale River in a wooded valley that extends from the western edge of Naumburg to the narrow gorge of Kösen. The school estate comprises some seventy-three acres of gardens, orchards, groves of trees, buildings, and cloisters, protected from the outer world by a thick twelve-foot-high wall, which forms an almost perfect rectangle. A branch canal of the Saale flows through the middle of the enclosure, separating the work buildings and gardens and most of the teachers’ houses from the school itself. (Young 2010, 21-22)

Now compare this to the following passage from the late Curtis Cate’s biography, Friedrich Nietzsche:

Originally a Cistercian monastery bearing the Latin name, Porta coeli (Gate of Heaven), it had been transformed in 1543 into a ‘Prinzenschule’ by the Protestant Prince-Elector Moritz of Saxony. Situated slightly south of the Saale river in a wooded valley extending from the western edge of Naumburg to the narrow gorges of Kösen, Pforta or Schulpforta, as it is known to this day, consisted of some sixty acres of gardens, orchards, groves, buildings and cloisters, protected from the outer world by a thick twelve-foot-high wall, which formed an almost perfect rectangle. A branch canal of the Saale flowed through the middle of the enclosure, separating the vegetable and other gardens, the ‘household’ barns and workshops and most of the teachers’ houses from the school buildings and quadrangles. (Cate 2005, 17)

These two passages are strikingly similar; they are much closer to one another than either is to the corresponding passage in Ronald Hayman’s Nietzsche: A Critical Life, which reads: “Built in the twelfth century as a Cistercian abbey, with walls twelve feet high and two-and-a-half feet thick, [Pforta] was isolated in a valley about four miles from Naumburg” (Hayman 1982, 27). Hayman tells the same story as Cate and Young, to be sure; but his version of the story is unique. How shall we explain the parallels between Young’s story and Cate’s? . . .

http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/jns/discussion/telling-the-same-story-of-nietzsche2019s-life

Gooding-Williams, Robert. Review of Paul S. Loeb, THE DEATH OF NIETZSCHE'S ZARATHRUSTRA. NDPR (April 2011).

Loeb, Paul S.  The Death of Nietzsche's Zarathustra.  Cambridge: CUP, 2010.

Paul Loeb's The Death of Nietzsche's Zarathustra is a superb contribution to the philosophical scholarship on Nietzsche's notoriously most inaccessible book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (hereafter TSZ). Through careful exegesis of some of TSZ's most complicated and densely symbolic passages, and through rigorous, critical analysis of all the important secondary literature on the thought of the eternal recurrence, Loeb's book presents an ingeniously argued and richly insightful interpretation of Nietzsche's literary fiction that pointedly and often persuasively takes issue with each of the major TSZ commentaries to have been published within the last twenty-five years or so.

Loeb's central project is twofold: first, to advance a "performative understanding" of the "clue" Nietzsche offers his readers for interpreting TSZ -- namely, that the thought of eternal recurrence is the book's fundamental conception[2]; and second, to rely on that clue to solve four of TSZ's most prominent "riddles" or "interpretive difficulties" (1, 6).

By "performative understanding," Loeb has in mind the thesis that the narrative of TSZ embodies and enacts the thought of recurrence and, more specifically, that it displays "the unconditioned and endlessly repeated circular course of Zarathustra's life" (2). On the basis of this understanding, the riddles Loeb purports to solve include 1) the question of the relative significance of Parts III and IV of TSZ; 2) the difficulty of making sense of the various dreams, visions, allegories, and symbols that animate TSZ; 3) the problem of understanding the relationship between Nietzsche's notion of eternal recurrence and his concepts of the superhuman and the will to power; and, finally, the issue of whether the thought of recurrence is to be understood as a thought of total, unconditional affirmation, or as a selective thought that excludes the recurrence of the so-called "small man."

Visit: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=23270.

Cfp: "Between Reason and Unreason: Nietzsche – The Enlightenment – Romanticism," Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations, Queen Mary College, University of London, September 9–11, 2011.

18th International Conference, Friedrich Nietzsche Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

According to some critics, Nietzsche opts out of the dialectic of Enlightenment and appeals in Romantic fashion to the Other of reason, whether in the form of the ancient Greek Dionysian or archaic ideals of nobility. Others highlight the ways in which Nietzsche’s unique style of critique deploys reason against the claims of Enlightenment reason, undermining the latter from within so as to extend our concept of reason. The purpose of this conference is to examine the place of Nietzsche’s thought between Reason and Unreason by focusing on its relation to the modern traditions of the Enlightenment and Romanticism. What is Nietzsche’s relation to the Enlightenment in the different phases of his work? Is he, as critic of Enlightenment reason, a representative of the counter-Enlightenment – or rather of an intensified form of Enlightenment critique? In what sense(s) can Nietzsche be characterised as a Romantic? Is his recourse to art an appeal to Other of reason – or is art rather the medium in which the claims of Enlightenment reason can be realised? In line with the venue of the conference at the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations, special attention will be given to Nietzsche’s relations to the German and Anglo-Saxon traditions of the Enlightenment and Romanticism.

The 2011 conference will follow the standard FNS conference format of five parallel sessions and five plenary sessions with well-known speakers in the field. In addition, it will include the 2nd international workshop on Nietzsche and Kant, on the topic "Nietzsche and Kantian Aesthetics". This will involve invited speakers, but there will also be space for other relevant papers submitted through this call for papers.

Confirmed plenary speakers:

Marco Brusotti (TU Berlin / Università del Salento, Lecce, Italy)
Rüdiger Görner (Director of Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations, Queen Mary)
Beatrix Himmelmann(University of Trømso, Norway)
Nicholas Martin (University of Birmingham)

The Friedrich Nietzsche Society welcomes proposals for 30-minute papers on all topics bearing on the conference theme, including the following:

* Nietzsche and Reason / Nietzsche and the Irrational
* Nietzsche’s relation to both the Enlightenment and Romanticism
* Nietzsche and the Enlightenment / Nietzsche contra the Enlightenment
* Nietzsche and Romanticism / Nietzsche as Romantic

Email: friedrich.nietzsche.society@gmail.com.

Meyer, Matthew. Review of Monika M. Langer, NIETZSCHE'S GAY SCIENCE. NDPR (February 2011).

Langer, Monika M.  Nietzsche's Gay Science: Dancing Coherence.  London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

For many years, Nietzsche studies in the English-speaking world were populated by comprehensive interpretations that focused on concepts, such as the will to power, the overman, and the eternal return, that were thought to be central to Nietzsche's philosophical project. More recently, however, a handful of scholars have turned away from this thematic approach to Nietzsche's thought by focusing their scholarly efforts on the careful analysis of individual texts. The most notable example of this trend has been the recent explosion of work on Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals by prominent scholars such as Daniel Conway, Lawrence Hatab, Christopher Janaway, Brian Leiter, and David Owen. In line with this movement, Monika Langer now offers a commentary on another of Nietzsche's more popular texts, The Gay Science (GS). Although Langer's work is a welcome addition to the secondary literature for its comprehensive, section-by-section approach to GS, her overly narrow focus on the contents of the individual aphorisms to the exclusion of broader reflections on the complex genesis of the text, the role the text plays in Nietzsche's free-spirit project, and the potential relationship of the text to his larger oeuvre compromises the depth and quality of her commentary. . . .

Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=22771.

"Nietzsche the Kantian? Reading Nietzsche and Kant on the Sovereign Individual, Freedom and the Will," Institute for Philosophy, Leiden University, February 11-12, 2011.

This workshop is the first of a series on Nietzsche’s relation to Kant to be held in various European universities. It aims to illuminate the relations between Nietzsche and Kant in the field of ethics by engaging with recent debates in the English-language literature over their conceptions of ‘sovereignty’, ‘freedom’ and the ‘will’. It will respond critically to the currently popular idea that, despite his criticisms of free will, moral responsibility, intentional causality and the ‘subject’ itself, Nietzsche affirms a ‘Kantian’ sense of agency that admits certain positive senses of freedom, responsibility and intentional causality and bases a positive ethics on it. The workshop will concentrate on Nietzsche’s later writings and will challenge the current emphasis on the ‘sovereign individual’ passage of On the Genealogy of Morality by opening up the discussion to Nietzsche’s treatments of ‘will’, ‘freedom’ and ‘sovereignty’ elsewhere in his published and unpublished work. The workshop will also attempt to correct the caricature of Kant that Nietzsche himself and his commentators often present and to thus provide for more sophisticated and fruitful engagements with Kant and Kantian positions. It will consist of 30-45 minute presentations of papers, some of which will be pre-circulated among participants at the beginning of February, followed by an open discussion guided by chairs.

Contact Herman Siemens (hwsiemens@hotmail.com).

Rée, Jonathan. "Antichrist." NEW HUMANIST 125.6 (2010).

To anyone who met him in his prime, Friedrich Nietzsche looked like a genial old-style man of letters: a quiet, dapper, unworldly bachelor, kind to children and exceedingly polite. But those who kept up with his prodigious output of books – he wrote more than one a year once he hit his stride in the 1880s – knew that the mild manner concealed incandescent ambition. The gentle professor liked to think of himself as a wild beast on the rampage, an intellectual terrorist who was going to “divide history into two halves”. His mission: to destroy the last vestiges of Christianity by means of a free-spirited “philosophy of the future” – a brave new pagan philosophy heralding a brave new pagan world. “I am no man,” he said. “I am dynamite.”

One of the books on which Nietzsche pinned his hopes was Twilight of the Idols – an immoralist manifesto which backed the “instinct of life” in its fight against dismal moral precepts. “There is no such thing as a moral fact,” Nietzsche wrote. “Moral sentiment has this in common with religious sentiment: it believes in realities which do not exist.” But he meant to make still bigger waves with Thus Spake Zarathustra, a pseudo-Biblical rhapsody about a messianic Eastern preacher who wanders the earth with an eagle and a serpent, preaching the “death of God”. God has died, we are told, from an excess of “pity”, and his fate should be a warning to us all. We must “beware of pity”, Zarathustra says, and never forget that our first duty is not to others but to ourselves. We should also learn to think of the present as the prelude to a joyous new epoch – an age liberated not only by the death of God but also by the end of humanity as we know it and its transfiguration into the Übermensch, in other words something post-human, superhuman or better-than-human. And if we should find these oracles baffling or repulsive, that lies not in them but in our own all-too-human prejudices: thus spake Zarathustra.

When Zarathustra and Twilight first appeared, they attracted little interest and Nietzsche’s name remained obscure. During the 1890s, however, they caught the public imagination and Nietzsche became the celebrity of world literature he had always wanted to be. He was admired not as a venerable old philosopher in the high tradition of Plato or Kant, but an outrageous and irreconcilable enemy to religion and morality, especially when they deck themselves in the robes of philosophical reason. By that time, however, he was in no condition to savour his success: back in December 1888, at the age of 44, he had collapsed in a square in Turin, and the remaining twelve years of his life were to be passed in a state of serene insanity.

The calamity of madness did no harm to Nietzsche’s burgeoning reputation: he came to fame as the philosopher who denounced the demands of reason so effectively that at last he lost his own. Twilight could now be seen as foreshadowing the eclipse of an intellect of such power that no one could stand it, even himself, and Zarathustra became a record of insights too deep to be expressed in the ordinary discourse of reason: indeed it inspired two of the most adventurous young composers of the 1890s – Richard Strauss and Frederick Delius – to transpose the gospel of the death of God into swathes of futuristic sound. . . .

Read the rest here: http://newhumanist.org.uk/2436/antichrist.

Sinhababu, Neil. Review of Robert Pippin, NIETZSCHE, PSYCHOLOGY AND FIRST PHILOSOPHY. NDPR (September 2010).

Pippin, Robert.  Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy.  Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010.

Robert Pippin's goal in Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy is

to present a comprehensive interpretation of what Nietzsche means by 'psychology,' what the relationship is, as he understands it, between such a psychology and traditional philosophy, and why he thinks such a psychology is (indeed is, as he says, 'now') so important, why it is 'the path to the fundamental problems.' (xi-xii)

One might expect to find an account of this psychology in the first chapter, titled "Psychology as the 'Queen of the Sciences.'" Here Pippin characterizes Nietzsche's psychology as standing outside the tradition of philosophical psychology from Plato to Hume to Davidson, with philosophers defending positions on such issues as the roles of reason and passion in directing action:

Nietzsche does not appear to want simply to add another position to this list. Indeed, his main point seems to be that there is no general philosophical psychology. His view, which I will be exploring in these chapters, is that views of the soul and its capacities vary with beliefs about and commitments to norms; normative commitments are subject to radical historical change; and so what counts as soul or psyche or mind and thus psychology also changes. The "soul" is merely the name for a collective historical achievement, a mode of self-understanding, of one sort or another, what we have made ourselves into at one point or another in the service of some ideal or other. When we describe to one another what the soul is, we mean thereby to propose an ideal, usually something like psychic health. Hence also the deep interconnection or inseparability between psychology and genealogy.  (3)

The view seems to be that psychological claims are in some way grounded in normative claims. Here we might ask Pippin how exactly normative commitments are connected to psychological claims, how historical changes play into this relationship, and how the resulting psychology will explain our thoughts, feelings, and actions. (If Pippin leaves us with a psychology that cannot accomplish this explanatory task, we might ask what makes it psychology at all.) Given satisfactory answers to these questions, we might ask for textual evidence that Nietzsche held such a view and for independent reasons to accept it. . . .

Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=21188.

Young, Julian. Review of Jonathan R. Cohen, SCIENCE, CULTURE AND FREE SPIRITS. NDPR (July 2010).

Cohen, Jonathan R. Science, Culture, and Free Spirits: a Study of Nietzsche's Human, All-too-Human. Amherst, NY: Humanity, 2010.

Jonathan Cohen's thoughtful interrogation of Human, All-too-Human asks many of the right questions. Often (though perhaps not always) it gets the answers importantly right. As Cohen remarks, there are relatively few studies of individual Nietzsche texts, and Human, marking as it does the transition from the early, metaphysical romanticism to the naturalism that characterised the remainder of his career, is surely a crucial work. Cohen's study does not, however, attempt to be comprehensive. There is no discussion of Human's praise for the 'noble' religion of the Greeks, its account of the role of art in a reformed culture, its advocacy of euthanasia and eugenics, its critique of the modern state,[2] its advocacy of the disappearance of petty nationalisms in a united Europe, nor of its ambition that a reformed Western culture should take over the entire globe. Nor does Cohen discuss either Assorted Opinions and Maxims or The Wanderer and His Shadow which together, in 1886, became volume II of an expanded Human, All-too-Human. Instead, he discusses, as his title promises, the interrelated themes of science, culture and free-spiritedness as they appear in the original 1878 work. Human, All-too-Human: Central Themes might be an alternative title. In addition to examining these -- indeed central -- themes there is a discussion of the 'literary integrity' of the work (chapter 6). Here, Cohen is at pains to show that the work is no mere rag-bag of 'aphorisms' but has a literary, even logical, structure. He makes the original and plausible suggestion that the model for the 1886 expansion of Human into a two-volume work was Schopenhauer's 1844 addition of a volume II to the 1818 The World as Will and Representation. A final chapter argues, correctly in my view, that the basic relationship between science, culture and free-spiritedness established in Human remains with Nietzsche for the rest of his career. . . .

Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=20647.

Huenemann, Charlie. Review of Julian Young, NIETZSCHE: A PHILOSOPHICAL BIOGRAPHY. NDPR (June 2010).

Young, Julian. Nietzsche: a Philosophical Biography. Cambridge: CUP, 2010. Simply put, this is an excellent biography of Nietzsche, and a model of what a philosophical biography should be. Young offers a smooth integration of biographical detail and philosophical analysis so that one can readily see how Nietzsche's life and thought informed one another. He stakes out some controversial interpretive claims, but even setting these aside, Young has produced a study that must be read by every Nietzsche scholar and by anyone interested more generally in the shaping of the modern philosophical landscape. Among other Nietzsche biographies available in English, Young's biography improves hugely upon Safranski (2002) and Hollingdale (1965), and sizably upon both Kaufmann (1950) and Hayman (1980) in scope and detail. It is a difficult balance to achieve, but Young has a keen sense of exactly how much detail to relate without becoming tedious and tiresome. He vividly describes the particulars of Nietzsche's very real "living concerns" -- his fragile health, his financial limits, his changing relations with family and friends, and his constant quest to find the atmospheric conditions for his work -- without reducing Nietzsche's thoughts to these concerns. Young preserves this balance by alternating between sections of mainly biographical material and sections with more substantive philosophical analysis. He usefully enlists a wide array of materials, from Nietzsche's notebooks to the correspondence of his various acquaintances (both with Nietzsche and with one another) in order to illuminate Nietzsche's life and thought. And so we are provided with helpful accounts of the relevant historical and political circumstances, including the events of the Franco-Prussian war, Bismarck's rise to power, and the growth of Bayreuth and the Wagner industry. At the same time, we are given stimulating and informed philosophical discussions of Hölderlin, Schopenhauer, and (once again) Wagner. All of these discussions combine to provide a rich sense of Nietzsche's circumstances -- social, historical, and intellectual. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=19891.

"Nietzsche and Phenomenology," Canadian Philosophical Association, Concordia University, May 30, 2010.

This symposium wishes to examine, without anachronism, not only the presence of a Nietzschean questioning in the traditional problems addressed by phenomenology, but also the possible sources themselves of the phenomenological method within the perspectives proposed by Nietzsche. Our symposium aims at re-opening the debate initiated by Heidegger, once again appraising the role played by Nietzsche within the history of contemporary European philosophy. All presentations will deal with some of Nietzsche’s main themes (the deconstruction of the subject, perspectivism, will to power, linguistic constitution, etc.) with regard to their implicit or explicit treatments in the works of Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. Through the papers presented as part of this symposium, we wish to show that this “re-connection” can bear new ethical insight. Further information, including the programme, may be found here: http://www.phenomenology.ro/newsletter/pages/Final%20Program%20Nietzsche%20and%20phenomenology%20symposium%20CPA.pdf.

"Nietzsche and the Will to Power." THE PHILOSOPHER'S ZONE. May 22, 2010.

Friedrich Nietzsche was the son of a preacher who came to despise Christianity. He was a scholar of the Greek and Roman classics who became better known as a philosopher. And he was a philosopher whose ideas -- rejecting the idea of pity, embracing the will to power and the ideal of the superman -- cast long shadows over the twentieth century. This week, we take a sympathetic look at this troubling, and troubled, thinker. . . . Download the discussion here: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2010/2902514.htm.

"Nietzsche and Naturalism," School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University, September 20-21, 2010.

The conference is in celebration of the outstanding work of eminent Nietzsche scholar Professor Richard Schacht. The topic of Nietzsche and Naturalism has been a key feature of Richard Schacht’s work for many years and has now become a central concern for anyone with a serious interest in Nietzsche interpretation. Professor Schacht would like the conference to serve as a forum for critically addressing various naturalistic interpretations of Nietzsche’s thought. Papers should be of approximately 25 minutes duration. The deadline for the first round of the call for papers is June 25th 2010. Please submit a title and brief abstract of no more than 300 words by email to Peter R. Sedgwick: Sedgwick@cardiff.ac.uk.

Fukuyama, Francis. "Nietzsche: a Philosophy in Context." NEW YORK TIMES April 29, 2010.

Young, Julian. Nietzsche: a Philosophical Biography. Cambridge: CUP, 2010. One of the pitfalls of writing a biography of a great philosopher is the temptation to reduce important ideas to mere psychology, an outgrowth of some fluke in the philosopher’s personal development. Julian Young, a professor at the University of Auckland and Wake Forest University, has for the most part avoided this trap by writing a “philosophical” biography of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) in which the life story provides context but ultimately not explanation for the ideas. In so doing he has provided a serious and readable, if not exactly ground-breaking, introduction to Nietzsche’s “philosophy with a hammer.” Context is particularly important in Nie­tzsche’s case because his life story was so dramatic. . . . Read the whole review here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/books/review/Fukuyama-t.html?fta=y.

Pub: Wilkerson, Dale. "Friedrich Nietzsche." INTERNET ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY (August 2009).

Nietzsche was a German philosopher, essayist, and cultural critic. His writings on truth, morality, language, aesthetics, cultural theory, history, nihilism, power, consciousness, and the meaning of existence have exerted an enormous influence on Western philosophy and intellectual history. Nietzsche spoke of “the death of God,” and foresaw the dissolution of traditional religion and metaphysics. Some interpreters of Nietzsche believe he embraced nihilism, rejected philosophical reasoning, and promoted a literary exploration of the human condition, while not being concerned with gaining truth and knowledge in the traditional sense of those terms. However, other interpreters of Nietzsche say that in attempting to counteract the predicted rise of nihilism, he was engaged in a positive program to reaffirm life, and so he called for a radical, naturalistic rethinking of the nature of human existence, knowledge, and morality. On either interpretation, it is agreed that he suggested a plan for “becoming what one is” through the cultivation of instincts and various cognitive faculties, a plan that requires constant struggle with one’s psychological and intellectual inheritances. Nietzsche claimed the exemplary human being must craft his/her own identity through self-realization and do so without relying on anything transcending that life—such as God or a soul. This way of living should be affirmed even were one to adopt, most problematically, a radical vision of eternity, one suggesting the “eternal recurrence” of all events. According to some commentators, Nietzsche advanced a cosmological theory of “will to power.” But others interpret him as not being overly concerned with working out a general cosmology. Questions regarding the coherence of Nietzsche’s views–questions such as whether these views could all be taken together without contradiction, whether readers should discredit any particular view if proven incoherent or incompatible with others, and the like–continue to draw the attention of contemporary intellectual historians and philosophers. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.iep.utm.edu/nietzsch/.

Horstmann, Rolf-Peter. Review of Friedrich Nietzsche, WRITINGS FROM THE EARLY NOTEBOOKS. NDPR (December 2009).

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Writings from the Early Notebooks. Ed. Raymond Geuss and Alexander Nehamas. Trans. Ladislaus Löb. Cambridge: CUP, 2009.

As the title of the volume suggests, the texts it contains are a selection. They come from the vast amount of notes -- almost half of the historical critical edition of his works is filled with them -- that Nietzsche wrote down throughout his life in many notebooks. Some of these notes are just a couple of words whereas others are of considerable length, sometimes filling several pages. They contain remarks and reflections on topics that aroused his intellectual curiosity, covering just about every conceivable field of human life ranging from contemporary politics and cultural history to art and aesthetic phenomena and above all to almost all domains of philosophy both theoretical and practical. The roughly 240 pages of notes in the volume are from the period between 1869 and 1879. That they represent a very exclusive selection is documented by the fact that the notes from this period in the historical critical edition cover around 1400 pages. This raises a question about the principles and the criteria of selection. Unfortunately, neither the editors nor the translator explicitly address this question. However, I have the impression that the guiding thread for the selection was the general relevance of the material selected for what Alexander Nehamas in his introduction tells us about Nietzsche's preoccupations and main interests during that period. This impression is not just based on the notes chosen. It also suggests itself indirectly because of the inclusion of three texts discussed quite thoroughly in the introduction, two of which are normally not considered to be notes but fall under the rubric of unpublished writings (On the Pathos of Truth and On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense), while the third (On Schopenhauer) is from an earlier period. However that may be, the resulting collection is very convincing and informative. . . .

Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=18265.

Pub: Posthumous Fragments of Nietzsche Online.

Nietzsche Source is delighted to announce the publication of the complete posthumous fragments of Nietzsche in the Digital critical edition, based on the critical text established by Colli/Montinari and including recent philological corrections. Furthermore, 20 new notebooks have been added to the Digital facsimile edition of the Nietzsche estate, bringing the total to almost 10,000 published manuscript pages. Both editions have stable URLs allowing each fragment or manuscript page to be cited individually. For the generous support we would like to thank the European Commission, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the Maison Française d'Oxford, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the Humboldt Foundation, the LMU Munich, and the Foundation of Weimar Classics (see all institutions and sponsors). Nietzsche Source is a web site devoted to the publication of scholarly content on the work and life of Friedrich Nietzsche. It is not subscription-based and can be freely consulted and used for scholarly purposes. http://www.nietzschesource.org