The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche

The diversity of Nietzsche's books, and the sheer range of his philosophical interests, have posed daunting challenges to his interpreters. This Oxford Handbook addresses this multiplicity by devoting each of its 32 essays to a focused topic, picked out by the book's systematic plan. The aim is to treat each topic at the best current level of philosophical scholarship on Nietzsche. The first group of papers treat selected biographical issues: his family relations, his relations to women, and his ill health and eventual insanity. In Part 2 the papers treat Nietzsche in historical context: his relations back to other philosophers-the Greeks, Kant, and Schopenhauer-and to the cultural movement of Romanticism, as well as his own later influence in an unlikely place, on analytic philosophy. The papers in Part 3 treat a variety of Nietzsche's works, from early to late and in styles ranging from the 'aphoristic' The Gay Science and Beyond Good and Evil through the poetic-mythic Thus Spoke Zarathustra to the florid autobiography Ecce Homo. This focus on individual works, their internal unity, and the way issues are handled within them, is an important complement to the final three groups of papers, which divide up Nietzsche's philosophical thought topically. The papers in Part 4 treat issues in Nietzsche's value theory, ranging from his metaethical views as to what values are, to his own values of freedom and the overman, to his insistence on 'order of rank', and his social-political views. The fifth group of papers treat Nietzsche's epistemology and metaphysics, including such well-known ideas as his perspectivism, his promotion of becoming over being, and his thought of eternal recurrence. Finally, Part 6 treats another famous idea-the will to power-as well as two linked ideas that he uses will to power to explain, the drives, and life. This Handbook will be a key resource for all scholars and advanced students who work on Nietzsche.Introduction ; PART 1: BIOGRAPHY ; 1. Family relations: "Nietzsche and the Family" ; 2. Relations to women: "Nietzsche and Women" ; 3. Debility: "Nietzsche's Illness" ; PART 2: HISTORICAL RELATIONS ; 4. The Greeks: "Nietzsche and the Greeks" ; 5. Romanticism: "Nietzsche and Romanticism: Goethe, Holderlin and Wagner" ; 6. Kant: "Nietzsche the Kantian?" ; 7. Schopenhauer: "Schopenhauer as Nietzsche's 'Great Teacher' and 'Antipode'" ; 8. Analytic philosophy: "Nietzsche's Influence on Analytic Philosophy" ; PART 3: PRINCIPAL WORKS ; 9. The Birth of Tragedy: "The Themes of Affirmation and Illusion in The Birth of Tragedy and Beyond" ; 10. Untimely Meditation II: "'Holding on to the Sublime': On Nietzsche's Early 'Unfashionable' Project" ; 11. The Gay Science: "The Gay Science" ; 12. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: "Zarathustra: 'That Malicious Dionysian'" ; 13. Beyond Good and Evil: "Beyond Good and Evil" ; 14. On the Genealogy of Morality: "Nietzsche's Genealogy" ; 15. The Antichrist: "Nietzsche's Antichrist" ; Ecce Homo: "Beholding Nietzsche: Ecce Homo, Fate, and Freedom" ; PART 4: VALUES ; 17. Metaethics: "Nietzsche's Metaethical Stance" ; 18. Aesthetic values: "Nietzsche and the Arts of Life" ; 19. Autonomy: "Nietzsche on Autonomy" ; 20. The overman: "The Overman" ; 21. Promising: "'A Promise Made is a Debt Unpaid': Nietzsche on the Morality of Commitment and the Commitments of Morality" ; 22. Order of rank: "Order of Rank" ; 23. Peoples and races: "Will-to-Power: Does it lead to the 'coldest of all cold monsters'"? ; PART 5: EPISTEMOLOGY & METAPHYSICS ; 24. Perspectivism: "Life's Perspectives" ; 25. Naturalism: "Nietzsche's Naturalism Reconsidered" ; 26. Aestheticism: "Nietzsche's Philosophical Aestheticism" ; 27. Becoming vs. being: "Being, Becoming and Time in Nietzsche" ; 28. Eternal recurrence: "Eternal Recurrence" ; PART 6: DEVELOPMENTS OF WILL TO POWER ; 29. Will to power and causation: "Nietzsche's Metaphysical Sketches: Causality and Will to Power" ; 30. Will to power and values: "Honesty, Curiosity, and Affirmation in Nietzsche's Free Spirits" ; 31. Drives: "Nietzsche's Philosophical Psychology" ; 32. Life: "Nietzsche on Life's Ends" ; Index