Anthony K. Jensen - Nietzsche's Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal Recurrence - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.4 671-672 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Anthony K. Jensen Emory University Lawrence J. Hatab. Nietzsche's Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal Recurrence. New York-London: Routledge, 2005. Pp. xix + 191. Paper, $24.95. In his latest book, Lawrence Hatab brings together several threads from his previous (...) writing into an elegant expression that examines a wide range of Nietzsche's thought through the single prism of his notoriously obscure conception of "Eternal Recurrence." The opening chapters establish the affirmation of becoming and the "tragic" view of the world (which Nietzsche had already articulated in his earliest.. (shrink)

With his _An Interpretation of Nietzsche’s "On the Uses and Disadvantage of History for Life_", Anthony K. Jensen shows how 'timely' Nietzsche’s second "Untimely Meditation" really is. This comprehensive and insightful study contextualizes and analyzes a wide range of Nietzsche’s earlier thoughts about history: teleology, typology, psychology, memory, classical philology, Hegelianism, and the role historiography plays in modern culture. _On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life_ is shown to be a ‘timely’ work, too, insofar as it (...) weaves together a number of Nietzsche's most important influences and thematic directions at that time: ancient culture, science, epistemology, and the thought of Schopenhauer and Burckhardt. Rather than dismiss it as a mere ‘early’ work, Jensen shows how the text resonates in Nietzsche’s later perspectivism, his theory of subjectivity, and Eternal Recurrence. And by using careful philological analysis of the text’s composition history, Jensen is in position to fully elucidate and evaluate Nietzsche’s arguments in their proper contexts. As such Jensen’s _Interpretation_ should restore Nietzsche’s second "Untimely Meditation" to a prominent place among 19 th Century philosophies of history. (shrink)

Ernst Cassirer Ernst Cassirer was the most prominent, and the last, Neo-Kantian philosopher of the twentieth century. His major philosophical contribution was the transformation of his teacher Hermann Cohen ’s mathematical-logical adaptation of Kant’s transcendental idealism into a comprehensive philosophy of symbolic forms intended to address all aspects of human cultural life and creativity. In … Continue reading Ernst Cassirer →.

Nietzsche, the so-called herald of the 'philosophy of the future', nevertheless dealt with the past on nearly every page of his writing. Not only was he concerned with how past values, cultural practices and institutions influence the present - he was plainly aware that any attempt to understand that influence encounters many meta-historical problems. This comprehensive and lucid exposition of the development of Nietzsche's philosophy of history explores how Nietzsche thought about history and historiography throughout his life and how it (...) affected his most fundamental ideas. Discussion of the whole span of Nietzsche's writings, from his earliest publications as a classical philologist to his later genealogical and autobiographical projects, is interwoven with careful analysis of his own forms of writing history, the nineteenth-century paradigms which he critiqued, and the twentieth-century views which he anticipated. The book will be of much interest to scholars of Nietzsche and of nineteenth-century philosophy. (shrink)

Nas universidades alemãs do período em que Nietzsche esteve intelectualmente ativo, a tradição kantiana foi amplamente substituída por duas escolas independentes e que, desde então, têm sido rotuladas de "neokantismo". Este artigo apresenta quatro teses principais da filosofia da história neokantiana, mostra como elas são uma decorrência de sua adaptação da tradição kantiana e como Nietzsche se envolve criticamente com os mesmos temas na formação de sua própria teoria histórica. Embora não haja uma influência muito direta entre estas escolas, o (...) contraste com a tradição neokantiana nos permite situar melhor a filosofia da história de Nietzsche em seu contexto apropriado. In the German academies of Nietzsche's period of writing, the Kantian tradition was largely displaced in favor of two independent schools that have since been labeled "Neo-Kantianism." This paper presents four key theses about philosophy of history from four Neo-Kantian thinkers, how they follow from their adaptation of the Kantian tradition, and how Nietzsche critically engaged the very same issues in the formation of his own historical theory. Although there is little direct influence between orthodox Neo-Kantianism and Nietzsche, their comparison on these points will illuminate their unique adaptations of the Kantian tradition. (shrink)

In contrast to positivistic assignations of influence in Nietzsche-studies, this article considers the possibility of “conversational” reconstructions of contexts, where the focus is less on “whether” and “when” Nietzsche read a text, and concentrates instead on “how” and “why” he read it. This method is exemplified by the case of Philipp Mainländer, a contemporary about whom Nietzsche says almost nothing of philosophical importance. This article shows that six key leitmotifs of the Zarathustrazeit happen to form direct solutions to dangers entailed (...) by Mainländer’s system: the Death of God, the Übermensch, the Last Man, Will to Power, Eternal Return, and Amor Fati. That each of these tropes serves as a neat solution to Mainländer suggests that Nietzsche was engaged in a sort of competitive intellectual conversation with his philosophy. And as such, Mainländer’s influence on Nietzsche, even if mostly negative, should not continue to be neglected. (shrink)

Nietzsche stands alone among the great nineteenth-century philosophers of history to have been trained and employed as an historian. As a classical philologist, he was trained not only in Ancient languages, but also in the methods of critical hermeneutics, textual genealogy, and cultural theory. Despite this there has been comparatively little scholarly attention paid to Nietzsche's most pointed reflection on history: _On the Uses and Disadvantage of History for Life _, the second of his _Untimely Meditations_. In this monograph, (...) class='Hi'>Anthony K. Jensen demonstrates how ‘timely’ this work of Nietzsche’s is, revealing a text that offers insight into the most important aspects of Nietzsche’s then-contemporary philosophy of history, including teleological theories, Hegelianism, Positivism, romantic historiography, classical philology, and the role of history in education and politics. Using a straightforward and conversational approach, Jensen contextualizes the figures and movements that serve as Nietzsche’s interlocutors, and situates this text within Nietzsche’s larger philosophical project. Through an examination of Nietzsche's views, the author argues for the contemporary philosophical relevance of _On the Uses and Disadvantage of History for Life_, and advances the scholarly discussion of this oft-overlooked but nevertheless essential text. (shrink)

This article exams the philosophy of history of the now mostly-forgotten 19th Century philosopher, Eduard von Hartmann. Hartmann inverts Hegel’s rational teleology by his reliance on a notion of ‘unconscious ideas’. Purposes are a species of idea. All natural things, including unintelligent natural things, will purposes of which they are often not conscious. These unconscious ideas cannot be held by natural beings that lack intellect, so there must be some supra-naturalistic being, which Hartmann names the Metaphysical Unconscious, that imposes purposes (...) on unconsciously-acting agents. The course of human history is the gradual becoming-conscious of the ends posited by the Metaphysical Unconscious. Insofar as nature always achieves the purposes of the Metaphysical Unconscious this is the best of all possible worlds. Insofar as those purposes are realized irrespective of human happiness, historical progress becomes the gradual assurance of human misery. (shrink)

The possibility of historical knowledge is a problem that occupied Nietzsche’s thought from beginning to end. Because the meanings of values, customs, and even truth itself are historically contingent phenomena, neither timeless nor unchanging, Nietzsche’s most fundamental statements about the character of the world and our place in it are typically framed within a historical account. Several scholars have recently suggested that his means of expositing history are consistent throughout his career. 1 From his early philological articles to his genealogical (...) method, Nietzsche is said to offer a consistent and sustained way of uncovering and evaluating the past. The studies of James I. Porter and Christian Benne are .. (shrink)

This article traces the evolution of a single concept—Anschauung—in Nietzsche's thinking. It shows that Nietzsche relies to a great extent in his early epistemology on Schopenhauer's romantic notion of Anschauung as a way of apprehending timeless and universal ideas. After The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche begins to use the term to designate the mental process of transference by which stimulation becomes a choate representation. In a third phase of development, Nietzsche abandons any positive use of the term and employs Anschauung (...) instead as a sarcastic watchword for essentialist epistemologies generally. Although it has been nearly ignored in anglophone literature, the changing context of its employment is an essential aspect of Nietzsche's development as a thinker. (shrink)

This paper aims to reexamine Nietzsche’s early interpretation of Heraclitus in an attempt to resolve some longstanding scholarly misconceptions. Rather than articulate similarities or delineate the lines of influence, this study engages Nietzsche’s interpretation itself in its historical setting, for the first time acknowledging the contextual framework in which he was working. This framework necessarily combines Nietzsche’s reading in philology, post-Kantian scientific naturalism, and of the romantic worldviews of Schopenhauer and Wagner. What emerges is not the acceptance of the metaphysical-flux (...) doctrine so much as a natal form of his physiognomic theory ofperspectivism, a naturalistic and anti-teleological conception of flux, and a theory of justice as cosmodicy. (shrink)

The Schopenhauer-Schule was a group of original and diverse thinkers working in the wake of a common inspiration. This paper elucidates Nietzsche’s relationship with these thinkers specifically as concerns their intertwined theories of will. It shows that despite his efforts to suppress and ridicule them, Nietzsche was influenced by the Schopenhauer-Schule and adopted several of their alterations to Schopenhauer. But it will also show that Nietzsche was a heretical member of this school in the sense that his theory of will (...) was not only different from theirs but also subversive. Whereas each member of the Schopenhauer-Schule posits a realist ontology of will, Nietzsche’s perspectivism undercuts the possibility of their ontological realism and puts in its place a semiotical system of expression. As a result of this contextualized framework, Nietzsche’s will to power is revealed, not as an intended reference to a real “thing” in the world, but as a symbol that expresses his perspective about an unknowable reality. (shrink)

Resumo: A Segunda consideração extemporânea geralmente é tida em conta por filósofos e historiadores, em razão de sua crítica ao que Nietzsche classifica como “doença histórica”,. Isso por uma boa razão: a crítica de Nietzsche tem como alvo não apenas a famosa tríade composta por historiadores monumentais, antiquários e críticos, mas também suas modalidades contemporâneas em historiografia e teleologia científicas. O que frequentes vezes é desconsiderado é que o próprio Nietzsche expõe - ainda que numa retórica altamente estilizada - uma (...) concepção afirmativa da história. Essa concepção, como eu proponho, faz o leitor retornar ao enunciado que inaugura o livro, qual seja, o Ceterum Censeo, de Goethe. A demanda de Nietzsche de que a história serve à vida é uma nova aplicação da teoria de Goethe do crescimento morfológico como consequência de forças polares concorrentes para o reino da história. Uma vez que Goethe tinha os organismos vivos como a crescer por meio de forças em concorrência, também Nietzsche entendia que os indivíduos e culturas cresciam por meio de uma história considerada, acima de tudo, uma espécie de arena competitiva em que se expressam impulsos antagonistas.: The second Untimely Meditation is usually regarded by philosophers and historians for its critique of what Nietzsche labels ‘historische Krankheit’. This is for good reason, as Nietzsche’s critique not only targets the famous triad of Monumental, Antiquarian, and Critical historians, but also his contemporary fashions in scientific historiography and teleology as well. What is too often overlooked is that also Nietzsche exposits -- albeit in highly-stylized rhetoric -- an affirmative vision of history. This vision, I argue, returns the reader to the opening sentence of the book, namely, the Ceterum Censeo from Goethe. Nietzsche’s demand that history serve life is a novel application of Goethe’s theory of morphological growth as a consequence of polar competing forces to the realm of history. As Goethe thought living organisms grow by means of intrinsic competitive forces, so Nietzsche thought individuals and cultures grow by means of a history that is, above all, considered as a sort of competitive arena in which to express antagonistic drives. (shrink)

I argue that, despite similarities between them, Hayden White has fundamentally misunderstood Nietzsche’s philosophy of history. White, like many postmodern historical theorists, attributes to Nietzsche a truth-relativism with respect to historical facts and a value-relativism with respect to the worth of competing interpretations. I show that both of these attributions take insufficient account of Nietzsche’s perspectivism. Nietzsche rejects relativism and endorses interpretations that further the interests of particular types of life. When Nietzsche’s position is properly distinguished from the kind of (...) relativism ascribed by White, it will appear a coherent middle-ground between the positivist construal of historical truth and post-modern truth relativism. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s relationship with Burckhardt’s image of the Renaissance was a way of practicing history. Nietzsche shared with Burckhardt the preference for typology, the belief that truth is reached intuitively and concerns the inner identity of all things, and for great cultural historical objects and individuals. And he shared it with him in some part precisely because two of their most significant common influences were Goethe and Schopenhauer. Beyond this, I argue that there are a few minor and a few more (...) significant disjunctions in their approach to the historiography of the Renaissance. I address what we might call the question of motive: that Burckhardt’s purpose in construing the Renaissance was in fact quite opposed to Nietzsche’s more radical gaze upon history. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s break from Schopenhauer is usually regarded as coextensive with his movement toward ontological naturalism, the view that all there is is limited by the scope of what is naturally observable. Moral norms like good and evil are accordingly ruled out as “things,” but naturalized as human, all-too-human constructions, just as much as are God and the soul, just as much as would Schopenhauer’s non–naturally observable one world Will. While I think that basic picture is correct, I also think that (...) scholars have regarded the problem with insufficient attention to the historical context of that transition, especially when it comes to naturalistic explanations of choice and agency. The move away from a.. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche: Philosophy of History Nietzsche was well-steeped in his contemporary methods and debates in the philosophy of history, which carried over into his philosophy in essential ways. Once a prodigy in classical philology, Nietzsche’s philosophy is everywhere concerned with traditions, historical shifts in custom and meaning, and, to adapt his key expression, “how things […].

History and memory rank as central themes in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. As one of the last philosophers of the 19th century, Nietzsche naturally belongs to the so-called ‘historical century’. The contentious exchange with the past and with antiquity – as much as the mechanisms, the dangers, and the lessons of memory and tradition – are continually examined and stand in close relationship with Nietzsche’s vision of life and his project of human development. As Jacob Burckhardt once wrote of (...) the cultural critique to his Basel colleague: "Fundamentally, you are always teaching history". Following Burckhardt’s judgment, the contributors focus on the analysis of core questions in the philosophies of history and memory, and their respective convergence in the thought of Nietzsche. The epistemological relevance of these central concepts will be thematized alongside those concerning tradition, and education. The discussion of these rich themes unifies a broad spectrum of questions, ranging from cultural memory to contemporary philosophy of mind. The contributions are revised versions of selected papers presented at the 2018 conference of the annual meeting of the Nietzsche Society in Naumburg. (shrink)

The twelve contributors to this volume embody the best in ancient philosophical scholarship from America and Europe. Each author presents a carefully-wrought argument that adds substantially to the literature in their chosen topics.Carlo Natali’s “Socrates’ Dialectic in Xenophon’s Memorabilia” argues for the internal coherence of Xenophon’s conceptions of dialegesthai and dialektikos, and shows how Xenophon portrays elenchos as one method among several Socrates used to encourage his interlocutors to become better citizens. In the eclectic “If You Know What Is Best, (...) You Do It,” Gerhard Seel argues for a weak form of moral intellectualism, the possibility of a deontological Socratic ethics, and for the restriction of “Socratic” knowledge to meta-ethical claims. Charles H. Kahn briefly shows how Plato wrestled with the popular acceptance of hedonism. The strange acceptance of hedonism in the Protagoras is said to be neither straightforwardly ironical nor exactly a thesis Plato himself outright rejected at that time. Terrence Irwin, in “Socrates and Euthyphro,” examines the difference between “god-beloved” and “pious” in terms of a. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzsche-Studien Jahrgang: 44 Heft: 1 Seiten: 462-486.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nietzsche’s Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal RecurrenceAnthony K. JensenLawrence J. Hatab. Nietzsche’s Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal Recurrence. New York-London: Routledge, 2005. Pp. xix + 191. Paper, $24.95.In his latest book, Lawrence Hatab brings together several threads from his previous writing into an elegant expression that examines a wide range of Nietzsche's thought through the single prism of his notoriously obscure conception of "Eternal (...) Recurrence." The opening chapters establish the affirmation of becoming and the "tragic" view of the world (which Nietzsche had already articulated in his earliest book) as central to the entire spectrum of his writing. Chronological shifts in Nietzsche's expression away from this tragic outlook are not suggestive of stringently exclusive temporal periods in his thought but, in themselves, illustrate an "agonistic perspectivism" wherein certain thought postures perform a corrective or delimiting role meant to expand the dialectical character of Nietzsche's thought. Hatab believes that the cosmological presentation of the Eternal Recurrence found in Nietzsche's later notebooks should thus be received as one "perspectival participant" in the more encompassing question of the value-of-life affirmation within the ceaseless repetition of our tragic existence.Hatab's detail of the Eternal Recurrence in chapters 4 and 5 is his richest philosophical presentation and his most original contribution to Nietzschean scholarship. Although rather conventional in his emphasis on the existential-force of the Eternal Recurrence (i.e., its meaning for the way we live our existence), Hatab is more creative in attempting to overcome the problem raised for such existentialist projects of self-instantiation. Even if a "factually true" cosmological conception of Eternal Recurrence is impossible, as has often been demonstrated, we readers of Nietzsche must listen seriously to his "call to affirm Eternal Recurrence." Hatab's move is to uphold Recurrence as not "factually" valid but as "literally" true. Readers should approach Eternal Recurrence with about the same degree of conceptual criticism as the Greeks would have done in listening to their dramatic performances: we ought to "suspend our disbelief" in a moment of "mimetic identification" with the "literal," if not "factual," truth of the drama. We readers should believe Eternal Recurrence as a "quasi-religious revelation," in the same manner Nietzsche himself claims to have been convinced.The call to affirm the literal truth of Recurrence is not a mandate to "approve" the eternal repetition of every event, irrespective of how morally repugnant that event may be. Contrary to some interpreters, affirming the perpetual re-occurrence of the holocaust does not imply the desire for the holocaust to recur, for in affirming the recurrence of that event, we also affirm our attitude of moral repugnance to it. To affirm the tragic world of becoming, we must affirm agonistic (or competitive) tensionalities between opposing values without reducing those tensions to any one-sided resolution. So construed, Nietzsche's Will to Power appears not as a drive to destroy or invalidate alterity, but as a call to embrace otherness as the condition of this competitively-structured life itself. Hatab's Nietzsche does not oppose otherness, but only the effort to place it in a binary scheme of opposition with the intention of nullifying the value of alterity as a part—even if a terrible part—of life.In chapter 6, there is a useful, if oversimplified, classification of the various articulations of Eternal Recurrence, ranging from the historical positions of Löwith and Heidegger to the contemporary presentations of Magnus and Soll. Hatab's assessment of the "Existentialist" reading here would have been helpful earlier in the book, as it only now demarcates the line between those readings and Hatab's own emphasis on the "existentialist call and test" of Eternal Recurrence. That line is drawn when conventional "existentialist" interpretations abandon the "literal" truth of Eternal Recurrence, which, in doing so, deflate the efficacy of Eternal Recurrence as a life-altering doctrine. Chapter 7 analyzes certain philosophical issues regarding the compatibility of Recurrence with Nietzsche's conceptions of creativity and the nature of truth. Particularly important, though, again—and this should at least have been mentioned earlier—is Hatab's illumination of Nietzsche... (shrink)

Luigi Caranti presents his readers three carefully articulated arguments in this estimable book. The first is that Kant's career-long engagement with Cartesian skepticism culminates in the first Critique's A-edition version of the Fourth Paralogism, rather than in the later Refutation of Idealism, as is more traditionally thought. The second argues that scholars must take Kant seriously when he asserts that transcendental idealism is the only possible refutation of skepticism, since it denies the possibility of the skeptical doubt arising in the (...) first place. Third, on the merit of its solution to this skeptical "scandal of philosophy," transcendental idealism remains today a first-rate epistemological viewpoint.What Caranti means by skepticism is restricted to Descartes's infamous "Evil Genius" hypothesis, the doubt whether any logical inference can establish a causal connection between external objects and the immediately-known affects of the mind . Caranti shows that Kant failed to adequately answer this charge throughout the pre-critical period since he then identified phenomena with mind-dependent representations and noumena with the cause of those representations. That causal argument would never satisfy since it presumed the very inference denied by the skeptic in the first. (shrink)

Twenty years after the appearance of the first of his three-volume One and Many in Aristotle's Metaphysics, Edward Halper has produced his much anticipated prequel commentary on the opening books of the Metaphysics. Readers of the chronologically prior Central Books will not be disappointed here. The analytic detail, the remarkably comprehensive yet deftly critical attention to the vast history of Aristotle scholarship, the clarity and precision of compositional style—all hallmarks of Halper's earlier work—are here in abundance as he works through (...) his singularly sweeping vision of the unity of Aristotle's book.Halper's central argument is that the problem of the One and the Many is Aristotle's most crucial and pervasive concern in the Metaphysics. While Aristotle himself never declares this—not even in those passages on the Presocratic philosophers where this problem features most prominently—Halper argues convincingly that Aristotle's conviction about the possibility of a science as determined by a necessary degree of unity among the objects it studies must itself assume the solvability of the One and Many problem. As explicated in the. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Nietzsche's texts invite perplexing questions about the justification and objectivity of his ethical views. According to the interpretation suggested here, Nietzsche does not advance a substantive normative ethics, but proposes, based on his ontological idea of will to power, an instrumentalist theory of value. He is not a realist about value—according to him, nothing is intrinsically valuable. However, things, actions, beliefs, and values can be evaluated with reference to their capacities in serving our fundamental quest for power. The central (...) advantage of this interpretation against competing readings is that it attempts to make sense of how an “objective” evaluation fits together with antirealism or nihilism about value, including how the “ethics” of will to power is to be understood alongside the metaphysical and ethical doctrine of eternal recurrence. (shrink)