The impact of Nietzsche's engagement with the Greek skeptics has never before been systematically explored in a book-length work - an inattention that belies the interpretive weight scholars otherwise attribute to his early career as a professor of classical philology and to the fascination with Greek literature and culture that persisted throughout his productive academic life. Jessica N. Berry fills this gap in the literature on Nietzsche by demonstrating how an understanding of the Pyrrhonian skeptical tradition illuminates Nietzsche's (...) own reflections on truth, knowledge, and ultimately, the nature and value of philosophic inquiry. This entirely new reading of Nietzsche's epistemological and ethical views promises to make clear and render coherent his provocative but often opaque remarks on the topics of truth and knowledge and to grant us further insight into his ethics-since the Greek skeptics, like Nietzsche, take up the position they do as a means of promoting well-being and psychological health. In addition, it allows us to recover a portrait of Nietzsche as a philologist and philosophical psychologist that has been too often obscured by commentaries on his thought. "The book addresses a number of central issues in Nietzsche's philosophy, including perspectivism and his conception of truth. The idea that his views in these areas owe much to the ancient Pyrrhonists casts them in an important new light, and is well supported by the texts. A lot of people from a lot of different areas in philosophy will have good reason to take notice." - Richard Bett, Johns Hopkins University. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Pyrrhonian Revival in Montaigne and NietzscheJessica N. BerryMichel de Montaigne occupies a unique place in Nietzsche's history of ideas. He is one of a very few figures for whom Nietzsche expresses deep admiration and about whom he has virtually nothing critical to say. This is a rare enough mark of distinction; but contrary to what it might lead us to expect, the relationship between Montaigne and Nietzsche has (...) seldom been carefully examined. There has yet to be a book-length study devoted solely to Montaigne and Nietzsche,1 and article-length treatments of the relationship between their works and thought have been surprisingly scarce. What discussions there have been tend to locate the connections between Nietzsche and Montaigne mainly in matters of either literary or personal style,2 but studies that examine Montaigne's influence on Nietzsche with an eye toward philosophical rather than literary or stylistic issues have been almost non-existent.3 This dearth of treatments can be explained, at least in part, by the fact that, while Montaigne is rightly recognized for the literary merits of his work and for its subsequent influence on later prose stylists (and not only in French), his work on the whole has seldom been appreciated as having any philosophical value in its own right. Small wonder, then, that the connection between Montaigne and Nietzsche has [End Page 497] appeared more significant to commentators on Montaigne who are interested in tracing his influence on later thinkers than to scholars of Nietzsche—even those Nietzsche scholars who take an acute interest in his intellectual heritage. What I will argue here is that Montaigne makes a more concrete and philosophically more substantive contribution to Nietzsche's thought than has generally been appreciated; specifically, by giving impetus to the naturalism that develops in Human, All Too Human as an antidote to Schopenhauer's pessimistic metaphysics of will.In this essay, I present a two-fold thesis about Montaigne's influence on Nietzsche's early work. First, I will argue that the "naturalistic turn" in Human, All Too Human reflects Nietzsche's engagement with Montaigne during a crucial moment in the development of his thought. Second, I will demonstrate that the naturalism Nietzsche adopts from Montaigne has roots in the tradition of Pyrrhonian skepticism that Montaigne carries forward into the Renaissance. In the end, a better understanding of the skeptical ancestry of Nietzsche's naturalism should help us make better sense of Human, All Too Human and its immediate successors in Nietzsche's oeuvre, which cultivate what otherwise seems to be an uneasy partnership between naturalism and skepticism.I. It is by now widely accepted that Nietzsche's estimation of the value of the techniques and methods of the natural sciences undergoes radical revision in the period culminating in the first volume of Human, All Too Human (HAH),4 a book sometimes described as inaugurating a "positivist" phase in Nietzsche's work. From the first of its nine major sections, "Of First and Last Things," HAH narrates a struggle between science on the one hand and philosophy on the other. It is important to note the breadth of the extension of the term "science" (Wissenschaft), which includes not only what we think of as the "hard" or physical sciences (physics, chemistry, and the like) but also areas of inquiry we now consider "behavioral sciences" such as psychology and sociology—and, Nietzsche would say, philology as well. "Philosophy," by contrast is specified more narrowly. As Nietzsche uses the term throughout HAH, "philosophy" is usually shorthand for "metaphysical philosophy" and singles out for criticism the discourse of metaphysics that has dominated the philosophical landscape at least since Plato.In the sense in which Nietzsche worries about it "metaphysical philosophy" promotes speculation about such supra-sensible entities as Platonic forms, Descartes's "immaterial substances," and Kantian things-in-themselves. That its contributions include, for instance, theories about the existence and immortality of the soul accounts for Nietzsche's grouping "metaphysical philosophy" [End Page 498] together with religion and art as "arts of narcosis."5 Consciously or not they endeavor to comfort us by assuaging our fear of death, our existential anxieties about the purposelessness of... (shrink)

Introduction : reading Nietzsche skeptically -- Nietzsche and the Pyrrhonian tradition -- Skepticism in Nietzsche's early work : the case of "on truth and lie" -- The question of Nietzsche's "naturalism" -- Perspectivism and Ephexis in interpretation -- Skepticism and health -- Skepticism as immoralism.

Between his calling into question, on the one hand, the apparently unquestionable value of compassion itself, and his refusal, on the other hand, to concede that suffering is unconditionally bad, Nietzsche has been understood by many as expressing a callous indifference, or worse, to most human suffering. This article aims to show that this interpretation relies on an oversimplified characterization of the relevant moral emotions. Compassion (or pity, either of which word can be used to translate the German das Mitleid) (...) is ‘a polyphonous being’, as Nietzsche insists in Daybreak (1881). A closer look at some key passages in Nietzsche’s text, and some help from Greek thinkers Nietzsche points us toward, will demonstrate that this term has meanings that have been lost to us. Recovering those meanings will shed light both on Nietzsche’s critique of compassion (or pity) and on his own attitude toward suffering. (shrink)

Three papers included in this issue were presented to the North American Nietzsche Society (NANS) in San Francisco during the Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association. Participants were invited by the NANS program committee to address the theme, “Nietzsche and Antiquity.” The session, held on March 31, 2010 and chaired by R. Lanier Anderson (Stanford), included papers by Nickolas Pappas (CUNY), who proposes to shed new light on BT by examining some peculiar distortions in Nietzsche’s presentation of the (...) god Apollo; Joel E. Mann (St. Norbert College), who delves insightfully into Nietzsche’s “medical posture” and his allusions to Hippocrates and ancient medicine in D; and Wilson H. Shearin .. (shrink)

Nietzsche's Antichrist is subtitled "A Curse on Christianity." In its last numbered section, he pronounces his "eternal indictment" of two millennia of tradition: —Now I have come to the end and I pronounce my judgment. I condemn Christianity, I indict the Christian church on the most terrible charges an accuser has ever had in his mouth. I consider it the greatest corruption conceivable, it had the will to the last possible corruption. [...] I want to write this eternal indictment of (...) Christianity on every wall, wherever there are walls,—[...] I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great innermost corruption, the one great instinct of revenge that does not consider any method to be poisonous... (shrink)

For the North American Nietzsche Society group meeting at the 2013 Eastern Division Meeting of the APA in Baltimore, the program committee invited Professor Jesse Prinz to deliver remarks on the contribution and the uniqueness of Nietzsche’s genealogical method. At the panel, chaired by R. Lanier Anderson on December 28, 2013, Rahul Chaudhri and Mark Migotti commented on his presentation, “Genealogies of Morals: Nietzsche’s Method Compared.” We are pleased to present Professor Prinz’s essay and both commentaries in this issue. Also (...) included here are the winning selections from the annual North American Nietzsche Society call for... (shrink)

Professional philosophy is overdue for a Pyrrhonian revival. For too long, the skeptic has been either overlooked or regarded as an object of pity (for the feebleness of his arguments) or contempt (for his appearing to thumb his nose at the canons of reason and morality). Even among the most learned and philosophically astute commentators, those who would be best positioned to develop a philosophically sophisticated and compelling interpretation of Pyrrhonism, it has found few defenders, many detractors, and has generally (...) suffered by its having been misunderstood, caricatured, or conflated with contemporary varieties of skepticism. Casey Perin's eloquent little essay is therefore a refreshing contribution to the .. (shrink)

The intellectual history of Germany in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is sometimes compared to the philosophical achievement of Athens at the very height of the classical age. Both were tremendously fruitful periods, which saw the birth of revolutionary philosophical systems that inspired a fantastic intellectual commerce among new and rival schools of thought. The plenitude of references to Greek mythology in literary works from Goethe and Lessing to Schiller, Novalis, and Hölderlin; the burgeoning interest in classical philology and (...) the translation and transmission of works of antiquity; and the growing interest in the history of skepticism in ancient Greece; all are instances of a widespread preoccupation with Hellenic thought and culture that persisted throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. The intellectual associations between many seminal thinkers during this time make it easy to trace the transmission of this enthusiasm from one figure or group to another. (shrink)

What is the future of Nietzsche studies? What are the most pressing questions its scholars should address? What texts and issues demand our urgent attention? And as we turn to these issues, what methodological and interpretive principles should guide us? The Journal of Nietzsche Studies recently put these questions to some of the most prominent names in Anglophone Nietzsche scholarship. Here, we bring you ten thoughtful responses, as a starting point for shaping discussions in these pages and elsewhere about the (...) most fruitful directions for us to take and the most promising avenues for building on the best recent... (shrink)

The program committee of the North American Nietzsche Society recently elected to suspend their long-standing practice of holding group sessions in conjunction with divisional meetings of the American Philosophical Association, and to organize bi-annual conferences instead. This journal will continue to bring its readers select presentations from those events. In the meantime, the seven articles in this issue represent the last of the complete Proceedings and Addresses of the North American Nietzsche Society.The first two articles, on the affirmation and the (...) denial of life, by Guy Elgat and Daniel I. Harris, were selected by the program committee... (shrink)

For the North American Nietzsche Society group meeting at the 2013 Eastern Division Meeting of the APA in Baltimore, the program committee invited Professor Jesse Prinz to deliver remarks on the contribution and the uniqueness of Nietzsche’s genealogical method. At the panel, chaired by R. Lanier Anderson on December 28, 2013, Rahul Chaudhri and Mark Migotti commented on his presentation, “Genealogies of Morals: Nietzsche’s Method Compared.” We are pleased to present Professor Prinz’s essay and both commentaries in this issue. Also (...) included here are the winning selections from the annual North American Nietzsche Society call for... (shrink)

On April 5, 2012, the North American Nietzsche Society held a session, chaired by myself, at the American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Meeting in Seattle on reading Nietzsche as a figure within the history of philosophy. Paul Loeb commented on papers by Michael Green and Gary Shapiro. Professor Green’s contribution, published in this issue, argues for the importance of Afrikan Spir’s work for understanding the “falsification thesis” about empirical judgments that he attributes to Nietzsche; here, he responds to Nadeem Hussain’s (...) work on Nietzsche and Spir and brings us a closer look at the arguments of Spir’s.. (shrink)

On behalf of the Program Committee of the North American Nietzsche Society, I am pleased to be able to introduce in this issue three papers from an Author-Meets-Critics session devoted to Paul Katsafanas’s recent book, Agency and the Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean Constitutivism. In a group meeting chaired by R. Lanier Anderson and held on December 28, 2014, in conjunction with the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Meeting in Philadelphia, Professors Bernard Reginster and Jorah Dannenberg addressed their comments and criticisms (...) to Professor Katsafanas, whose thoughtful replies are... (shrink)

Dear Readers,In this issue, several authors contribute their insights on social and political themes in Nietzsche: Robert Miner looks to the works of the “middle period” to add nuance to Nietzsche’s critical attitude to socialism; Birte Loschenkohl asks again what Nietzsche has in mind with his enigmatic call for “great politics,” arguing that Zarathustra holds the key to understanding his vision; and Sacha Golob looks back to the second Untimely Meditation to analyze Nietzsche’s views on education and the role that (...) exemplary figures like Schopenhauer can and should play in that process. Iain Morrison, too, by focusing on the question of how drives and affects create the systems of value that take hold within... (shrink)

Dear Readers,Nietzsche's familiarity with the anti-Semitic literature of his era and its various tropes—the nature, depth, and extent of that familiarity, his references and appeals to seminal works, and even his employment of those tropes—have long been an object of grim fascination for Nietzsche scholars and casual readers. The mission of this journal is to advance our understanding of Nietzsche's philosophical thought and significance, and discharging that mission successfully requires our coming to terms with what seem to be even the (...) least agreeable, most uncomfortable aspects of his legacy. In this issue, we bring you a symposium on "The Biology of Evil," by Ken Gemes, a study that illuminates... (shrink)

Dear Readers,With this issue of the Journal of Nietzsche Studies, I am particularly pleased to welcome Chris Fowles, formerly an editorial assistant, to the Associate Editorship desk alongside Scott Jenkins. His sharp editorial eye and sound philosophical judgment will help us continue to bring you some of the best recent work on Nietzsche’s philosophical thought.At the same time, I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to Alexander Prescott-Couch, whose term as Book Reviews Editor will end with this issue. During (...) his time at the reviews desk, he has worked hard to benefit our entire readership by commissioning substantive engagements with a well-curated... (shrink)

Dear Readers,This is a time of many transitions for JNS and of exciting new developments in Nietzsche studies. Since 2011, I have had the pleasure and the privilege of working as an Associate Editor under Christa Davis Acampora, and as I now step into her editorial role, I know you will join me in thanking her for service to the journal, where her wise stewardship has secured its reputation as the preeminent venue for English-language scholarship on Nietzsche’s thought and work. (...) Her efforts have increased submissions, kept acceptances competitive, encouraged scholarly accuracy, consistency, and rigor, and enhanced the visibility of the journal through electronic distribution services that have made it an ever more... (shrink)

Dear Readers,In this issue, we bring you four longer explorations of topics central to Nietzsche’s thought. Alexander Nehamas revives the discussion of “falsification” in Nietzsche’s work, challenging the notion that Nietzsche is committed at any time in his life to the view that all human beliefs “falsify” reality—what has come to be known as the “falsification thesis”— and reopening questions about the value of truth, and of falsehood, for Nietzsche. Professor Nehamas was among the first to draw the attention of (...) scholars interested in Nietzsche to these important issues, and in his contribution he answers many of the voices who have joined this debate over the years. Deeply connected to the themes of truth and... (shrink)

A growing literature in recent epistemology leverages the fact of persistent, systematic disagreement among philosophers to reach deeply skeptical conclusions, not just about philosophical propositions, but about the practice of philosophy itself. This article argues that a version of this argument is implicit in Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, and that Nietzsche is best read as occupying a stance that would be called “conciliationist” today. The only sincere effort to date to attribute to Nietzsche a skeptical position on the basis (...) of disagreement, I argue, both overcommits him in some ways and undercommits him in others. Correctly assessing his target and scope and appreciating the conciliationist strain in Nietzsche’s thought improves our understanding of his philosophical project. (shrink)

This issue includes four papers originally presented to the North American Nietzsche Society at group sessions of the April 2007 Central Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association in Chicago. The program committee selected these papers by blind review from among responses to its annual call for papers. In Session I, chaired by Jacqueline Scott (Loyola University Chicago), Morgan Rempel, now Associate Professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, presented a reading of Daybreak 72, and Bryan Finken, currently teaching at (...) the University of Colorado at Denver, presented his examination of a peculiar type of genetic fallacy against which Nietzsche struggles, especially in his earlier published .. (shrink)

The papers published in this issue were presented at North American Nietzsche Society (NANS) sessions held in conjunction with the divisional meetings of the American Philosophical Association from the end of 2007 through 2009. I would like to thank Richard Schacht and the other members of the program committee for their continued service to Nietzsche studies, and I thank Cameron Smith for invaluable editorial assistance in the production of this issue. The first three papers published here were presented on December (...) 29, 2007 at the Eastern Division Meeting in Baltimore, where NANS held an ‘Author Meets Critics’ session devoted to a discussion of Robert B. Pippin’s Nietzsche, moraliste français: La conception .. (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)

This article explores notions about Nietzsche’s career as a philologist and his fascination with the Greeks. It considers his interest in Homer and the Greek philosophers—in particular, Heraclitus and Pyrrho. For Nietzsche, ancient Greeks such as Heraclitus and Homer were interesting not because of their doctrines, but because of the example they themselves provided of certain psychological types. Like the ancient skeptics following Pyrrho, Nietzsche was generally more interested in the psychological consequences of philosophical doctrines than in their content, and (...) like those skeptics he often rejected any ambitions to limn the true nature of reality. (shrink)

BackgroundDecision-making in initiating life-sustaining health technology is complex and often conducted at time-critical junctures in clinical care. Many of these decisions have profound, often irreversible, consequences for the child and family, as well as potential benefits for functioning, health and quality of life. Yet little is known about what influences these decisions. A systematic review of reasoning identified the range of reasons clinicians give in the literature when initiating technology dependence in a child, and as a result helps determine the (...) range of influences on these decisions.MethodsMedline, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsychINFO, Web of Science, ASSIA and Global Health Library databases were searched to identify all reasons given for the initiation of technology dependence in a child. Each reason was coded as a broad and narrow reason type, and whether it supported or rejected technology dependence.Results53 relevant papers were retained from 1604 publications, containing 116 broad reason types and 383 narrow reason types. These were grouped into broad thematic categories: clinical factors, quality of life factors, moral imperatives and duty and personal values; and whether they supported, rejected or described the initiation of technology dependence. The majority were conceptual or discussion papers, less than a third were empirical studies. Most discussed neonates and focused on end-of-life care.ConclusionsThere is a lack of empirical studies on this topic, scant knowledge about the experience of older children and their families in particular; and little written on choices made outside ‘end-of-life’ care. This review provides a sound basis for empirical research into the important influences on a child’s potential technology dependence. (shrink)

Scepticism is central to Nietzsche’s philosophical project, both as a tool of criticism and, through its role in self-transformation, as a tool for responding to criticism. While its importance in his thought and its complexity have been acknowledged, exactly what kind of scepticism Nietzsche calls for still stands in need of analysis. Jessica Berry’s [Nietzsche and the Ancient Skeptical Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011] comparison between Nietzsche and Pyrrhonian scepticism recognized the importance of the practical dimension (...) of Nietzschean scepticism but distorted Nietzsche’s philosophy in attempting to paint it as Pyrrhonian in character. Earlier discussions recognize Nietzsche’s opposition to Pyrrhonian suspension of judgement and tranquillity. They have not, however, explored in sufficient detail Nietzsche’s sceptical practice and how it affects the individual. In this article, I combine Berry’s emphasis on scepticism as a practice with attention to the important differences between Nietzsche and Pyrrhonism. I outline Nietzsche’s scepticism as a transformative practice, arguing that its differences from Pyrrhonian scepticism are as illuminating as any similarities. The scepticism that Nietzsche advocates involves not just destruction of our beliefs but destruction of who we are, and at the same time as cultivating the capacity to do without certainty, requires an experimental engagement with our drives – allowing the creation of new values. (shrink)

Jessica Berry provides the first detailed analysis of whether, and in what sense, Nietzsche was a skeptic (5). Exploring the affinity between Nietzsche’s work and Pyrrhonism in six main chapters, Berry differentiates between modern skepticism, understood as epistemological pessimism or nihilism (33), and Pyrrhonian skepticism as a commitment to continuing inquiry, based on the equipollence of arguments, “roughly equal persuasive weight for and against just about any claim,” and epochē, suspension of judgment (36–37). Berry shows that (...) Nietzsche appreciated this distinction (29–32) and proceeds to read Nietzsche’s remarks on truth skeptically. She argues that—like the ancient Skeptic’s response to the .. (shrink)

In this chapter, Robb Dunphy is concerned with the nature of G.E. Schulze's scepticism as he presents it in his 1792 work Aenesidemus, and with its relation to the metaphysical projects of Kant, Reinhold, and later German Idealists. After introducing Schulze's text, Dunphy turns to a recent interpretation offered by Jessica Berry, who claims that the extent to which Schulze endorsed a genuinely Pyrrhonian Scepticism has gone unacknowledged, both by his idealist contemporaries and by the majority of the (...) secondary literature on the period. Berry suggests that this unacknowledged Pyrrhonism in Aenesidemus provides the resources for a more radical criticism of the German Idealists' scientific, systematic metaphysical ambitions, to which they remain fundamentally vulnerable. Despite agreeing that an exploration of Schulze's debt to Pyrrhonism represents a valuable addition to our understanding of his scepticism, in the latter parts of the chapter Dunphy suggests that the Berry's attribution of a Pyrrhonian Scepticism to Schulze should to some extent be rejected, and that such a scepticism is perhaps not quite as problematic for the projects of Kant and the German Idealists as she suggests. (shrink)

It has recently been suggested that a distinctive metaphysical relation— ‘Grounding’—is ultimately at issue in contexts in which some goings-on are said to hold ‘in virtue of’’, be ‘metaphysically dependent on’, or be ‘nothing over and above’ some others. Grounding is supposed to do good work in illuminating metaphysical dependence. I argue that Grounding is also unsuited to do this work. To start, Grounding alone cannot do this work, for bare claims of Grounding leave open such basic questions as whether (...) Grounded goings-on exist, whether they are reducible to or rather distinct from Grounding goings-on, whether they are efficacious, and so on; but in the absence of answers to such basic questions, we are not in position to assess the associated claim or theses concerning metaphysical dependence. There is no avoiding appeal to the specific metaphysical relations typically at issue in investigations into dependence—for example, type or token identity, functional realization, classical mereological parthood, the set membership relation, the proper subset relation, the determinable/determinate relation, and so on—which are capable of answering these questions. But, I argue, once the specific relations are on the scene, there is no need for Grounding. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Many phenomena appear to be indeterminate, including material macro-object boundaries and certain open future claims. Here I provide an account of indeterminacy in metaphysical, rather than semantic or epistemic, terms. Previous accounts of metaphysical indeterminacy have typically taken this to involve its being indeterminate which of various determinate states of affairs obtain. On my alternative account, MI involves its being determinate that an indeterminate state of affairs obtains. I more specifically suggest that MI involves an object's having a determinable (...) property, but not having any unique determinate of that determinable. I motivate the needed extension of the traditional understanding of determinables, then argue that a determinable-based account of MI accommodates, in illuminating fashion, both ‘glutty’ and ‘gappy’ cases of MI, while satisfactorily treating concerns about MI stemming from Evans’ argument and the problem of the many. (shrink)

Both the special sciences and ordinary experience suggest that there are metaphysically emergent entities and features: macroscopic goings-on (including mountains, trees, humans, and sculptures, and their characteristic properties) which depend on, yet are distinct from and distinctively efficacious with respect to, lower-level physical configurations and features. These appearances give rise to two key questions. First, what is metaphysical emergence, more precisely? Second, is there any metaphysical emergence, in principle and moreover in fact? Metaphysical Emergence provides clear and systematic answers to (...) these questions. Wilson argues that there are two, and only two, forms of metaphysical emergence of the sort seemingly at issue in the target cases: 'Weak' emergence, whereby a dependent feature has a proper subset of the powers of the feature upon it depends, and 'Strong' emergence, whereby a dependent feature has a power not had by the feature upon which it depends. Weak emergence unifies and illuminates seemingly diverse accounts of non-reductive physicalism; Strong emergence does the same as regards seemingly diverse anti-physicalist views positing fundamental novelty at higher levels of compositional complexity. After defending the in-principle viability of each form of emergence, Wilson considers whether complex systems, ordinary objects, consciousness, and free will are actually metaphysically emergent. She argues that Weak emergence is quite common, and that there is Strong emergence in the important case of free will. (shrink)