The paper examines Nietzsche's claim that valuations born out of a psychological condition he calls "ressentiment" are objectionable. It argues for a philosophically sound construal of this type of criticism, according to which the criticism is directed at the agent who holds values out of ressentiment, rather than at those values themselves. After presenting an analysis of ressentiment, the paper examines its impact on valuation and concludes with an inquiry into Nietzsche's reasons for claiming that ressentiment valuation is "corrupt." Specifically, (...) the paper proposes that ressentiment valuation involves a form of self-deception, that such self-deception is objectionable because it undermines the integrity of the self, and that the lack of such integrity ensnares the agent in a peculiar kind of practical inconsistency. The paper ends with a brief review of the problems and prospects of this interpretation. (shrink)

The paper examines Nietzsche’s claim that valuations born out of a psychological condition he calls “ressentiment” are objectionable. It argues for a philosophically sound construal of this type of criticism, according to which the criticism is directed at the agent who holds values out of ressentiment, rather than at those values themselves. After presenting an analysis of ressentiment, the paper examines its impact on valuation and concludes with an inquiry into Nietzsche’s reasons for claiming that ressentiment valuation is “corrupt.” Specifically, (...) the paper proposes that ressentiment valuation involves a form of self-deception, that such self-deception is objectionable because it undermines the integrity of the self, and that the lack of such integrity ensnares the agent in a peculiar kind of practical inconsistency. The paper ends with a brief review of the problems and prospects of this interpretation. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche was immensely influential and, counter to most expectations, also very well read. An essential new reference tool for those interested in his thinking, Nietzsche’s Philosophical Context identifies the chronology and huge range of philosophical books that engaged him. Rigorously examining the scope of this reading, Thomas H. Brobjer consulted over two thousand volumes in Nietzsche’s personal library, as well as his book bills, library records, journals, letters, and publications. This meticulous investigation also considers many of the annotations in (...) his books. In arguing that Nietzsche’s reading often constituted the starting point for, or counterpoint to, much of his own thinking and writing, Brobjer’s study provides scholars with fresh insight into how Nietzsche worked and thought; to which questions and thinkers he responded; and by which of them he was influenced. The result is a new and much more contextual understanding of Nietzsche's life and thinking. (shrink)

Spinoza's Ethics is one of the most remarkable, important, and difficult books in the history of philosophy: a treatise simultaneously on metaphysics, knowledge, philosophical psychology, moral philosophy, and political philosophy. It presents, in Spinoza's famous 'geometric method', his radical views on God, Nature, the human being, and happiness. In this wide-ranging 2006 introduction to the work, Steven Nadler explains the doctrines and arguments of the Ethics, and shows why Spinoza's endlessly fascinating ideas may have been so troubling to his contemporaries, (...) as well as why they are still highly relevant today. He also examines the philosophical background to Spinoza's thought and the dialogues in which Spinoza was engaged - with his contemporaries, with ancient thinkers, and with his Jewish rationalist forebears. His book is written for the student reader but will also be of interest to specialists in early modern philosophy. (shrink)

Nietzsche's creative and fundamental account of chaos in both its cosmic, universal as well as its humane context, recalls the ancient Greek meaning of chaos rather than its modern, disordered, decadent significance. In this generatively primordial sense, chaos corresponds not to the watery nothingness of Semitic myth or modern, scientific entropy but creative, uncountenancedly abundant potency. And in such an archaic sense, Nietzsche's chaos is a word for both nature and art. Nietzsche's creative conception of chaos equates it with the (...) will to power: as the foundational essence of the world "to all eternity." This same correspondence is also the stylistic prerequisite for creating oneself as a work of art. /// O artigo começa por demonstrar até que ponto a mais fundamental explicação criadora dada por Nietzsche a respeito do caos, em seu contexto tanto cósmico e universal como meramente humano, constitui uma evocação do antigo sentido que Ihe foi dado pelos Gregos, mais do que uma adesão à significação moderna do mesmo, desordenada e decadente. Para Nietzsche, com efeito, o caos em seu sentido generativo mais primordial, não corresponde nem à ambiguidade do nada inerente ao mito semítico nem ao sentido moderno, científico, da entropia, mas sim a uma potência criadora assinalada por uma abundãncia inesgotável Mostra-se, assim, até que ponto, em conformidade com o sentido arcaico do termo, o caos em Nietzsche constitui um nome que se dá tanto à natureza como à arte. Mais, o presente artigo mostra ainda até que ponto a concepqao nietzschiana do caos o transforma em algo equivalente à vontade depoder, ou seja, na essãncia fundadora do mundo " para toda a eternidade". Desta correspondência, aliás, resulta a condição estilistica para que cada um se crie a si mesmo como verdadeira obra de arte. (shrink)