Building On Nietzsche S Prelude

Drawing from the "anti-philosophies" of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, and deploying a methodology which synthesizes critical theory with evolutionary psychology and contemporary cognitive science, our analysis demonstrates: 1. Justifications, in any context, are oriented towards social manipulation and bear no relation to any "cognitive processes." 2. The role of logic is overstated, both with regards to our justifications, and also our cognition. 3. Truth and falsity are socio-linguistic functions which have no bearing on any "objective reality." Insofar as these claims are correct, the methods and aims (both normative and descriptive) of "classical epistemology" are invalidated. We offer up a proposal as to what a more useful/meaningful epistemology might look like, exploring how such a reformulation might affect conceptions of "knowledge" and "rationality."

Nietzsche and Heidegger, Smith argues, have made possible a far more revolutionary critique of modernity than even their most ardent postmodern admirers have realized.

The trajectory of Friedrich Nietzsche’s thought has long presented a difficulty for the study of his philosophy. How did the young Nietzsche—classicist and ardent advocate of Wagner’s cultural renewal—become the philosopher of Will to Power and the Eternal Return? With this book, Laurence Lampert answers that question. He does so through his trademark technique of close readings of key works in Nietzsche’s journey to philosophy: The Birth of Tragedy, Schopenhauer as Educator, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, Human All Too Human, and “Sanctus Januarius,” the final book of the 1882 Gay Science. Relying partly on how Nietzsche himself characterized his books in his many autobiographical guides to the trajectory of his thought, Lampert sets each in the context of Nietzsche’s writings as a whole, and looks at how they individually treat the question of what a philosopher is. Indispensable to his conclusions are the workbooks in which Nietzsche first recorded his advances, especially the 1881 workbook which shows him gradually gaining insights into the two foundations of his mature thinking. The result is the most complete picture we’ve had yet of the philosopher’s development, one that gives us a Promethean Nietzsche, gaining knowledge even as he was expanding his thought to create new worlds.

An important collection of essays offering a full assessment of Nietzsche's contribution to philosophy, first published in 2000.

On Reading the Will studies the will, will-power and wilfulness, the will to death or the will to power, as well as lack of will. It surveys many texts - from Augustine, Shakespeare, Dickens, Trollope, George Eliot and D.H. Lawrence - in order to analyse the history of its different meanings: whether these imply rational or irrational drives, or the sexual appetite, or the testamentary will. This last is a particularly interesting form of the will, in that it asserts the desire to control, and to have an identity beyond death. Drawing on philosophies of the will in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, the book studies music as the embodied will in Wagner and Verdi. Considering the law and its prohibitions as a form of the will, it sees how these produce a perverse will. Drawing on Freud and Lacan it studies interrelationships between the law which prohibits and the desire which wills, how desire creates the law, and the law desire. What stands out is that the authors studied are fascinated by the will as unknowable and irresistible, as rational and countermanding rationality, as divided and imperious. Chapters include how wills motivate plots in Shakespeare and the Victorian novel. Discussion of opera and Nietzsche focuses on the will as an unconscious force.--

Challenging the standard interpretation of Nietzsche's last published work, Ecce Homo, as frivolous autobiography, Thomas H. Brobjer provides an original and detailed analysis of Ecce Homo as fundamental to Nietzsche's unfinished masterwork on the revaluation of all values. Arguing that Ecce Homo laid the foundations for his planned four-volume work on values, Brobjer draws together the intentions and motivations behind Nietzsche's late work to create a new narrative on it. He situates this period in the desire to undermine the system of Christian values that Nietzsche believed were unchecked as the standard moral gauge for his time. To engage in this project, Brobjer shows that it was essential for Nietzsche to explore the self and life-denying qualities of a Christian system of values within a broader framework of ideas about morality, altruism, egotism, pessimism, humility and pride. By fully outlining the context of Ecce Homo, Brobjer provides a complete corrective to its reception as a self-referential and eccentric text of little philosophical significance, enabling a new understanding within the history of philosophy and Nietzsche's oeuvre.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was not only a philosopher who loved and wrote about music; he was also a musician, pianist, and composer. In this ground-breaking volume, philosophers, historians, musicians, and musicologists come together to explore Nietzsche’s thought and music in all its complexity. Starting from the role that music played in the formation and articulation of Nietzsche’s thought, as well as the influence that contemporary composers had on him, the essays provide an in-depth analysis of the structural and stylistic aspects of his compositions. The volume highlights the significance of music in Nietzsche’s life and looks deeply at his musical experiments which led to a new and radically different style of composition in relation with his philosophical thought. It also traces the influence that Nietzsche had on many other musicians and musical genres, from Russian composers to current rock music and heavy metal.