The Journal of Speculative Philosophy

Nietzsche's Postmoralism joins the growing ranks of books in analytic philosophy focused on and concerned with what Christine Korsgaard has called the "normative question" (Korsgaard 1996). The volume compiles the work of many of the most prominent contemporary Nietzsche scholars in analytic philosophy, and the essays that compose it seek to flesh out the meaning of what Richard Schacht argues are the "two undeniably central tasks of [Nietzsche's] 'philosophy of the future,'" namely, "(re-)interpretation and (re-)valuation" (4). While this particular collection of essays does not necessarily present radically new [End Page 341] interpretations of Nietzsche for those already immersed in Continental scholarship, the volume as a whole represents an important effort by analytic philosophers to engage Nietzsche's thought from within, on Nietzsche's own terms. The most engaging and insightful essays manage to combine this care and perspective with analytic philosophy's hallmark concern for rigorous argumentation and logical consistency.

The most substantive contributions to the volume come in the final few essays by Schacht, Maudemarie Clark, and James Conant. Clark makes a persuasive case for Bernard Williams's debt to Nietzsche, arguing that Williams successfully overcomes objections to his earlier critique of morality only by becoming more fully Nietzschean in his later work. Schacht meticulously sorts out the competing interpretations of and possibilities for a "Nietzschean Normativity," ultimately advancing a more or less psychological interpretation of a normativity that goes beyond good and evil. But the volume saves its best for last, in Conant's revisitation of Nietzsche's early work. Conant's careful reading of Schopenhauer as Educator presents the best case I have seen to date for a Nietzschean "perfectionism" that is nevertheless consonant with modern, democratic sentiments. Conant's insistence that the order of Nietzsche's aphorisms, texts, and philosophical development matters is an important methodological point that is all too often overlooked by Nietzsche scholars, and his interpretation of Nietzsche's early writings is thorough and cogent. Ultimately, Conant avoids answering the crucial question of how he thinks Nietzsche's early and later works are related. It is clearly much easier to argue that Nietzsche's perfectionism is a matter of self-improvement, inspired (not demanded) by "exemplars" who proliferate within a plural society, on the basis of Nietzsche's earlier writings than it is from the later works. Moreover, I think the thesis that Nietzsche is uninterested in toppling morality per se (with only Christian morality being his target) is untenable. Nevertheless, Conant's essay is a model of careful scholarship, and a pleasure to read besides.

The remaining pieces in the volume take up various sub-themes that any discussion of (re-)interpretation and (re-)evaluation must necessarily engage, but are for the most part less satisfying than the final few. Robert Solomon's essay, "Nietzsche's Virtues," seems hastily conceived, and fails to follow through on any of the multiple and provocative insights it presents. The argument of Rüdiger Bittner's essay, which addresses the apparent contradiction between Nietzsche's denial of substance and the "doctrine" of will to power, proves compelling only to the extent that it can persuade the reader of Nietzsche's having committed doltish philosophical errors. According to Bittner, not only did Nietzsche fail to understand that (acts of) force and domination require both agents and objects, but he also problematically maintains that the mode of human perception is essentially creative. The latter is indefensible, according to Bittner, since no one but God can be understood to have "really" created anything; the former is untenable because "power talk makes no sense in a world [End Page 342] without agents" (38). Yet was Nietzsche simply too dim to have understood the "real" meaning of creativity, much less the "nature" of power and its reliance on subject and object? Or is he perhaps suggesting an entirely different perspective altogether? Bittner concludes that we must reject the notion...