Nietzsche called The Gay Science "the most personal of all my books." It was here that he first proclaimed the death of God -- to which a large part of the book is devoted -- and his doctrine of the eternal recurrence. Walter Kaufmann's commentary, with its many quotations from previously untranslated letters, brings to life Nietzsche as a human being and illuminates his philosophy. The book contains some of Nietzsche's most sustained discussions of art and morality, knowledge and truth, (...) the intellectual conscience and the origin of logic. Most of the book was written just before Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the last part five years later, after Beyond Good and Evil. We encounter Zarathustra in these pages as well as many of Nietzsche's most interesting philosophical ideas and the largest collection of his own poetry that he himself ever published. Walter Kaufmann's English versions of Nietzsche represent one of the major translation enterprises of our time. He is the first philosopher to have translated Nietzsche's major works, and never before has a single translator given us so much of Nietzsche. (shrink)

Few philosophers have been as widely misunderstood as Nietzsche. His detractors and followers alike have often fundamentally misinterpreted him, distorting his views and intentions and criticizing or celebrating him for reasons removed from the views he actually held. Now __Nietzsche__ assesses his place in European thought, concentrating upon his writings in the last decade of his productive life.

Nietzsche never presented a worked-out normative ethical theory and appeared to regard any attempt to do so as woefully misguided. He poured scorn on the main contenders for such a theory in his day, and in ours – Kantian ethics and utilitarianism. Moreover, he repeatedly referred to himself as an 'immoralist' and gave one of his books the title Beyond Good and Evil, thus seeming only to confirm the impression that he was more interested in demolishing, and even abolishing morality (...) altogether than in making any constructive contribution to the subject. While the topic of morality appears as a central and almost obsessive interest in his works – especially in the sequence of books from Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality (1881) to On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) – it generally does so as the target of relentless criticism. Many have concluded, not surprisingly, that Nietzsche, rather than being interested in replacing an existing conception of morality with a better one of his own, was in the business of advising us to abandon morality altogether – to live, in some sense, without morality. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

“Supposing that truth is a women-what then?” This is the very first sentence in Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil . Not very often are philosophers so disarmingly explicit in their intention to discomfort the reader. In fact, one might say that the natural state of Nietzsche’s reader is one of perplexity. Yet it is in the process of overcoming the perplexity that one realizes how rewarding to have one’s ideas challenged. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche critiques the mediocre in (...) modernity and challenges the reader to accept their state of becoming and accept improvisation and creativity of the process. Nietzsche’s book is carefully designed to disorient the reader, to systematically provoke and tease her to the point of stealing away her certainties. It is challenging yet rewarding to overcome the perplexities of Nietzsche’s teachings. (shrink)

Buch 1. Geschichte des Materialismus bis auf Kant.--Buch 2. Geschichte des Materialismus seit Kant.

Few philosophers have been as widely misunderstood as Nietzsche. His detractors and followers alike have often fundamentally misinterpreted him, distorting his views and intentions and criticizing or celebrating him for reasons removed from the views he actually held. Now available in paper, Nietzsche assesses his place in European thought, concentrating upon his writings in the last decade of his productive life. Nietzsche emerges in this comprehensive study as a philosopher of considerable sophistication who diverged sharply from traditional and ordinary ways (...) of thinking, but whose criticism, departures, and alternative views and strategies deserve to be given the most serious attention by philosophers. (shrink)

Vaihinger... shows that thought is primarily a biological function turned into a conscious art. It is an art of adjustment, whose chief instrument is the construction of fictions by which men may manage to live. Thought is to be tested not by correspondence to an objective reality (that fiction is neatly disposed of) nor by its mirroring in consciousness an objective external world. Thought is to be tested by its fruits. The constructions of thought are not copies of or transcripts (...) of reality; they are programs, guess-work plans; possible programs for operation. Their validity is to be measured not by verisimilitude but by value. The fruits of thought are not "true," but especially where they are false, it may be important to act as if they were true... Vaihinger's chief originality consists in his defining of fictions and his distinction of fictions from hypotheses on the one hand, and from dogmatisms on the other. An hypothesis is a tentative discovery about the universe; a fiction is a deliberate, often clearly false and internally contradictory invention of thought... Evolution is the hypothesis that man is descended from the lower animals. We assume that we can indirectly turn to the remote facts which would justify that hypothesis. But the concept of infinity in the calculus, the atom and the ether in physics, the economic man in Adam Smith, are deliberate self-contradictory fictions, and fictions at variance with all experience. But though they are not only imaginary, false to the reality they allegedly represent and logically incoherent, they nevertheless facilitate thought and proper action. They are vital lies, human conveniences. They are the faiths, the palpably false faiths, the clearly useful falsities by which we live... The discovery that fictions were fictions has led, in the past, says Vaihinger, to an abandonment of them, and a turning to other fictions believed to be truer. Pathetic and foolish adventure! What the race needs is more faith in its own effective imaginations. The myths that it has told itself, the world pictures that it has made, are not to be dismissed because they are found to be creations of the imagination. They tally with no world and they carry the canker of logical inconsistency within them. The important thing is their utility; their human scope and mortal relevance. If we ceased making fictions, we should cease altogether to be. Let us beware to plunge from fruitful fictions to less fruitful ones that masquerade as truths and are really dogmatisms. (Review of As If by Irwin Edman, Saturday Review of Literature, 10 January, 1925) This is a well-formatted version of C.K. Ogden's translation of Philosophie des Als Ob, originally published in 1925 by Kegan Paul. (shrink)

Introduction: Historical background.--The law of causality and experience (1908)--The importance of Ernst Mach's philosophy of science for our times (1917)--Physical theories of the twentieth century and school philosophy (1929)--Is there a trend today toward idealism in physics? (1934)--The positivistic and the metaphysical conception of physics (1935)--Logical empiricism and the philosophy of the Soviet Union (1935)--Philosophical misinterpretations of the quantum theory (1936)--What "length" means to the physicist (1937)--Determinism and indeterminism in modern physics (1938)--Ernst Mach and the unity of science (1938).

Many scholars in the past half century have taken issue with some of Kaufmann's interpretations, but the book ranks as one of the most influential accounts ever ...

Selections from the books, notes, and letters of this 19th century philosopher.

FOE, some time much has been said, in England and on the Continent, concerning " Positivism " and " the Positive Philosophy." Those phrases, which during ...

First published in 1962. Kant’s philosophical works, and especially the _Critique of Pure Reason_, have had some influence on recent British philosophy. But the complexities of Kant’s arguments, and the unfamiliarity of his vocabulary, inhibit understanding of his point of view. In _Kant’s Theory of Knowledge _an attempt is made to relate Kant’s arguments in the _Critique of Pure Reason _to contemporary issues by expressing them in a more modern idiom. The selection of issues discussed is intended to present a (...) continuous argument, of an epistemological kind, which runs centrally through the _Critique_. The argument deals with essentially with the problems, raised in the Transcendental Analytic, about the status of categories. It deals with certain preliminary assumptions made in setting these problems, and discusses the way in which the various sections of the Analytic contribute to their solution. It also deals with Kant’s criticisms of traditional metaphysics, and ends with an account of his effort in the Third Antinomy to resolve the conflict between freedom and causality, and so to effect a transition of knowledge to moral philosophy. (shrink)

This landmark book is now reissued in a new edition that has been vastly rewritten and updated to respond to recent Kantian literature. It includes a new discussion of the Third Analogy, a greatly expanded discussion of Kant’s _Paralogisms, _and entirely new chapters dealing with Kant’s theory of reason, his treatment of theology, and the important Appendix to the Dialectic. _Praise for the earlier edition: _ “Probably the most comprehensive and substantial study of the Critique of Pure Reason written by (...) any American philosopher.... This is a splendid book.”—Lewis White Beck “This masterful study... will most certainly join the canon of required reading for future interpreters of Kant’s theoretical philosophy. Superbly organized and lucidly written.”—Garrett Green, _Journal of Religion_. (shrink)

Does Nietzsche claim to know anything? Does he need to make such claims in order to fulfill his broader philosophical aims, in particular, to criticize religion and morality genealogically? Do his own epistemological views entitle him to make such claims? I defend affirmative answers to the first two of these questions and formulate several crucial issues involved in answering the third. These issues stem both from unresolved difficulties in available interpretations of Nietzsche and unexplored aspects of Nietzsche’s views. They include: (...) the extent to which and the ways in which Nietzsche thinks that language inherently ‘falsifies’ the world, the importance of distinguishing several senses of ‘thing-in-itself’ and of ‘creation’ of truth in Nietzsche’s writings, the inadequacies of utilitarian or (vulgarly) pragmatic interpretations of Nietzsche’s views, and the apparent self-referential inconsistency of Nietzsche’s ‘perspectivism’. I hope that posing these issues will help focus controversies among divergent groups of Nietzsche’s interpreters. (shrink)

I have argued elsewhere that Nietzsche’s genealogical critique of religion and morality requires a cognitivist epistemology, including a correspondence conception of truth. In this essay I pose ten crucial questions concerning the consistency of Nietzsche’s epistemology with his genealogy: Does Nietzsche hold that the world is a totally characterless flux? Does he hold that there is a metaphysical distinction between appearance and reality? Does he believe that there is cognitively useful perceptual access to the world? Does he believe that there (...) is a distinction between language and reality? Does he hold that there are representations? Does he hold that (some) language is capable of expressing what is made available by the senses? Is Nietzsche himself limited by the inadequacies of language that bar others from knowledge? Does his talk of the ‘creation’ of truth have non-cognitivist implications? Does his ‘perspectivism’ entail non-cognitivism? Is Nietzsche’s perspectivism self-referentially consistent? In answering these questions, I defend Nietzsche’s consistency and his cognitivism by showing that his views on ‘philology’ respond to his own critique of language and that his ‘perspectivism’ is self-referentially consistent and is consistent with his cognitivism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nietzsche’s Reading and Private Library, 1885–1889Thomas H. BrobjerOne can easily get the impression that Nietzsche read little, especially later in his life. He criticizes reading because it is not sufficiently life-affirming and Dionysian: “Early in the morning at the break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one’s strength, to read a book—I call that vicious!...” 1 He also criticizes it for making one reactive and forcing (...) one to be concerned with the thoughts of others rather than with one’s own:My eyes alone put an end to all bookwormishness, in plain terms philology: I was redeemed from the “book,” for years I read nothing—the greatest favour I have ever done myself!—That deepest self, as it were buried and grown silent under a constant compulsion to listen to other selves (—and that is what reading means!) awoke slowly, timidly, doubtfully—but at length it spoke again. 2This impression is strengthened by the fact that in his published books from 1885–88 very few contemporary and minor authors and books are mentioned. [End Page 663] He also explicitly claims that he read little: “It does not perhaps lie in my nature to read much or many kinds of things: a reading room makes me ill.... Caution, even towards new books is rather part of my instinct.” 3 Concretely, he claims in Ecce Homo that, “I have to reckon back half a year to catch myself with a book in my hand. But what was it?—An excellent study by Victor Brochard, les Sceptiques Grecs.” 4 As suggested in a quotation above, and as a major leitmotif in his letters, his health and especially that of his eyes is another reason to assume that he read little. This is also how most philosophers and historians have tended to treat Nietzsche—as an isolated, profound thinker.However, this impression and Nietzsche’s claims here are to a large extent incorrect. Nietzsche was, in fact, a rather substantial reader. This is true not only for his younger days but also for his last four active years, 1885–88. 5 Contrary to his claim that he is hostile to new books, he was very pleased with the large trilingual bookshop Löscher in Turin. He was a frequent and good enough customer to know its “Chef “ and to make contacts through it. 6 Nietzsche frequently used other bookshops, ordered book catalogues, and asked for recommendations of new book titles. 7 Nietzsche found some of the most important books in his life as random discoveries in bookshops, for example, those of Schopenhauer, Stendhal, and Dostoyevsky. Contrary to his claim that a reading room made him ill, he praised Turin for its good libraries, 8 and he wrote to his sister: “one cannot even with ten horses draw me to a place where, if I am correctly informed, not even a good library is to be found.” 9 Libraries were [End Page 664] important for Nietzsche’s reading, and the quality of the libraries was an important determining factor in deciding Nietzsche’s travels and places of residence. He even occasionally wrote to libraries to inquire if they were suitable for his purposes and for deciding if he would visit the town. 10 During the period 1885–88 Nietzsche used the libraries in Nice, Leipzig, Chur, Venice, Turin, and the Hotel Alpenrosen’s library in Sils-Maria. He probably also used the library in Zürich and possibly in other towns, and he planned to visit Stuttgart for the sake of its library.Nietzsche did not have a permanent address during the period discussed in this article and hence travelled frequently. But travelling was difficult for him and almost without exception made him ill, and it was more difficult still with a heavy load of books. During these years Nietzsche lived on a low pension from the University of Basel and constantly worried about his expenses. In spite of this he bought a not insignificant number of books. His private library today contains 60 books published from 1885 to 1888 and in 23 of these Nietzsche has made markings, often extensively, and from several... (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche has emerged as one of the most important and influential modern philosophers. For several decades, the book series Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung (MTNF) has set the agenda in a rapidly growing and changing field of Nietzsche scholarship. The scope of the series is interdisciplinary and international in orientation reflects the entire spectrum of research on Nietzsche, from philosophy to literary studies and political theory. The series publishes monographs and edited volumes that undergo a strict peer-review process. The (...) book series is led by an international team of editors, whose work represents the full range of current Nietzsche scholarship. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

The series, founded in 1970, publishes works which either combine studies in the history of philosophy with a systematic approach or bring together systematic studies with reconstructions from the history of philosophy. Monographs are published in English as well as in German. The founding editors are Erhard Scheibe (editor until 1991), Günther Patzig (until 1999) and Wolfgang Wieland (until 2003). From 1990 to 2007, the series had been co-edited by Jürgen Mittelstraß.

Born in 1838, Mach was a pioneer in the field of physics, having even made an impression on Einstein in his younger life who credited him with being the "Philosophical forerunner of relativity theory." His name is also associated with the speed of sound (as in traveling at Mach "insert-number-here") as well as the Doppler effect. Throughout his career, he was particularly interested in the biological and sensory relationship to physics and science, and naturally, this interest expanded to that of (...) the world of psychological perception and physiological psychology as well as philosophy. The Analysis of Sensations is about just that, the nature of the relationship of physics and the physical sciences to psychological phenomena of sense and perception. It's a fascinating read for anyone looking to expand their knowledge of how the two sides of the same coin meld harmoniously. (shrink)

Given the ascribed antinaturalist theory of judgment, Green’s Nietzsche cannot stop with the error theory. “Kant and Spir argue that the only way an objectively valid judgment about an object is possible is if the qualities attributed to the object are unconditionally united in the mind, that is, united in an atemporal and necessary manner”. Thoughts, and the subjects that have them, must be timeless. There must also be a “necessary connection between thought and its object”. Reality, on the other (...) hand, isn’t timeless: there is change, or becoming—this is Nietzsche’s naturalism. Thus, the connection between thoughts and reality fails, there is no timeless subject to have thoughts, and so: “We do not think”. It follows that there are no thoughts to be false—no error theory—and naturalism itself “cannot be thought”. Green calls this Nietzsche’s “noncognitivism” and concludes that the contradictions between Nietzsche’s naturalism, error theory, and noncognitivism mean that he “did not have one considered epistemological position” —a rather mild way of putting it. (shrink)

Given the ascribed antinaturalist theory of judgment, Green’s Nietzsche cannot stop with the error theory. “Kant and Spir argue that the only way an objectively valid judgment about an object is possible is if the qualities attributed to the object are unconditionally united in the mind, that is, united in an atemporal and necessary manner”. Thoughts, and the subjects that have them, must be timeless. There must also be a “necessary connection between thought and its object”. Reality, on the other (...) hand, isn’t timeless: there is change, or becoming—this is Nietzsche’s naturalism. Thus, the connection between thoughts and reality fails, there is no timeless subject to have thoughts, and so: “We do not think”. It follows that there are no thoughts to be false—no error theory—and naturalism itself “cannot be thought”. Green calls this Nietzsche’s “noncognitivism” and concludes that the contradictions between Nietzsche’s naturalism, error theory, and noncognitivism mean that he “did not have one considered epistemological position” —a rather mild way of putting it. (shrink)

Article (Reprinted in "Oxford Readings in Philosophy: Nietzsche", edited by B. Leiter and J. Richardson, Oxford University Press, 2001.

I THE NATURE AND IMPORTANCE OF THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY In order to explain properly the true nature and peculiar character of the positive philosophy, ...