Abstract

Christian Emden’s informative book has a number of explicit aims: the first aim is to “reconstruct Nietzsche’s philosophical naturalism”; the second aim is to show “that there are specific historical reasons why Nietzsche came to adopt a position best understood in terms of philosophical naturalism”; and the third aim is to show “how Nietzsche’s naturalism and his understanding of the life sciences tie in with genealogy.”1 In pursuit of these aims, Emden divides the book into three parts, one titled “Varieties of Philosophical Naturalism,” the second “Evolution and the Limits of Teleology,” and the third “Genealogy, Nature and Normativity.” In this article I shall concentrate mainly on Emden’s discussion of...