Nietzsche wrote in 1870 while preparing The Birth of Tragedy (1872), “Science, art, and philosophy are now growing into one another so much in me that I shall in any case give birth to a centaur one day.” The project of synthesizing philosophy, science, and art Nietzsche adumbrates here actually gets realized in The Birth of Tragedy, explaining the work’s distinctive character. It is a project whose origins lay with Friedrich Schlegel, the leading German Romantic philosopher, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Schlegel had warded off the obvious objection to incorporating art into philosophy/science that this would falsify the latter by championing a radical general skepticism about the veracity of cognition. Nietzsche takes over this aspect of Schlegel’s project as well. Moreover, this whole project of synthesizing philosophy, science, and art in light of a radical general skepticism survives after The Birth of Tragedy to reappear in different, more refined permutations throughout Nietzsche’s later works, constituting an indispensable key both to their character – in particular, their metaphysical-epistemological framework – and to their development. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the viability of the project, especially concerning the question of whether or not the radical general skepticism on which it rests is coherent.

This chapter explores images of plant life in philosophy and literature with particular focus on the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre. It pursues the question of what we can learn about the nature of the human being and its place in the world from plants and the way they are rooted in earth. Over the past half-century, many voices identify our disconnection from the earth with the centrality of technological progress, capitalist production, industrialization, and globalization that are essential to our modern self-understanding and way of life. What was supposed to be the root of human distinction has ended up uprooting us. Is this because we have a distorted view of what it means to be rooted in the first place, and our dependency on the rootedness of plant life? This chapter interrogates the metaphor of the root in Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous novel Nausea. Whereas Sartre considers the earth as an inert background in relation to human purposes: always there, meaningless, the earth is the static backdrop of our human drama, Nietzsche’s vegetal imaginary puts forward an idea of human life as deeply embedded in both earthly and planetary life.

For much of history, from the dawn of Greek historiography to the postmodern 1970s, genealogy has been synonymous with continuity of origins and blood identity, and therefore closely connected with the concepts of the classic and the canon. Yet, during the last half century, specially thanks to the Nietzschean and Foucauldian philosophical deployment, it has shed its narrative garb to become an agent of discontinuity, and thus the nemesis of the classic and the canon. Many scholars have analyzed the modern development of genealogies after Nietzsche’s alleged foundational statement and its Foucauldian reception. But none of them has provided a systematic history of the trajectory of this concept, from antiquity to the present. This chapter attempts to fill this gap by providing a history of the concept of genealogy and its associated ideas, delving specifically into its historiographical uses, and connecting it to the four previous concepts discussed in the book. I will, specifically, emphasize its polysemy, try to locate what has remained and what has changed in this long trajectory, and explain the (only recently) radically opposed nature (nemesis) between the concepts of genealogy and canon – and the implications that this opposition brings to historiography.

This chapter addresses Nietzsche’s early exposure to pessimistic thought from the late 1860s to early 1870s, and aims to elucidate his philosophical articulation of pessimism as an individual and cultural problem to be solved. It argues against the view that Nietzsche was, at this time, a straightforward Schopenhauerian and pessimist. The chapter pays special attention to the ‘problem of quietism’, interpreting The Birth of Tragedy as concerned to speak to this problem, distinguishing Nietzsche’s strategy from competing strategies offered by the likes of Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Bahnsen, as well as pessimism’s opponents. After interpreting the notion of an artistic ‘justification’ as a solely pragmatic one for Nietzsche, the chapter ends with a discussion of the Untimely Meditations and Nietzsche’s evident early concern for the problem of suffering’s meaning.

This chapter addresses why and how, if it is true that pessimism is a psychological condition as opposed to a philosophical belief, Nietzsche takes there to be a requirement to combat pessimism in ways other than the rational-dialectical manner prevalent among philosophers hitherto. The chapter first offers a conceptual analysis of the closely related but distinct notion(s) of ‘nihilism’, before then arguing how the notorious idea of ‘eternal recurrence’ is, contrary to some contemporary interpretations, specifically deployed by Nietzsche as a response to pessimism. The chapter ends by elucidating Nietzsche’s reversion to the view of The Birth of Tragedy that aesthetic experience is solely capable of facilitating life affirmation, and how aesthetic value is not only distinct but also in tension with moral value.

This chapter presents and assesses Nietzsche’s critique of pessimism in terms of how its hedonic axiology has levelling-down effects on the perfectionist values he cared most deeply about, namely, creativity and achievement. Starting from Nietzsche’s repeated claims that suffering is in some way extrinsically tied to ‘greatness’, the chapter considers Nietzschean arguments for its value through an analysis of the role of ‘admiration’ and the doctrine of will to power. The philosophical force of these ideas is then considered in light of Nietzsche’s account of the relationship between human flourishing and a naturalistic psychology. Seeking to improve upon dominant views in the secondary literature, the chapter then investigates the specific extrinsic relation Nietzsche takes there to be between suffering and greatness, arguing that an analysis of his ‘pessimism of strength’ suggests that it ought to be construed as constitutive rather than instrumental. The chapter ends by attempting to provide a solution to the ‘scope problem’ raised in Chapter 5.

This chapter is the first of three that centre upon Nietzsche’s critique of pessimism in his mature philosophy of the 1880s. It presents Nietzsche’s psychological critique of pessimism as symptomatic of a particular calibration of one’s ‘drives’ that produces fatigue and a world-directed ressentiment. The chapter gives special attention to the crucial similarities and differences between Nietzsche’s psychological reduction of pessimism and those of the degeneration theorists, and the English psychologist James Sully, arguing that Nietzsche’s own position is subtly unique and, in some ways, more plausible. The final sections of the chapter address (1) Nietzsche’s diagnosis of Christianity as the pinnacle manifestation of pessimistic sentiment and (2) the problem of the ‘scope’ of Nietzsche’s psychological reduction.

The first section of this chapter explores Nietzsche’s attempt to explain the origins and continued prominence of metaphysical philosophy in terms of the utility it produces. It argues that Nietzsche takes seriously Schopenhauer’s diagnosis of ‘humanity’s metaphysical need’, but explains this more precisely as a form of narcissistic impulse. The second section of the chapter aims to address Nietzsche’s seeming ambivalence over whether ‘humanity’s metaphysical need’ is a fundamental and static feature of the human condition, or whether it is acquired and, therefore, in principle eradicable via a new naturalistic and ‘historical’ philosophy. The final section of the chapter situates Nietzsche’s views on science, suffering, and progress in the context of the ‘social question’, arguing that the Nietzsche of the late 1870s is closer to the likes of Marx and Dühring in taking suffering to be capable of being significantly reduced, thus ejecting the need for art and religion to endow it with meaning.

This chapter introduces the problem of pessimism, its intellectual and social origins, and where Nietzsche fits into the ‘pessimism dispute’ of 1860–1900. It argues that the current secondary literature on Nietzsche has tended to overlook the historical context in which he was writing, often treating his thoughts on pessimism in isolation from the texts beyond those of Schopenhauer that he was reading on the matter. The chapter ends by laying out the structure of the forthcoming chapters.

This chapter explores how Nietzsche’s shift towards a naturalistic methodology in the late 1870s offers him an axiological and epistemic apparatus that radically alters his philosophical articulation of pessimism, and consequently affects his attitude towards it. The chapter argues that contemporary Nietzsche scholarship has largely overlooked the importance of Human, All Too Human as a crucial stage of Nietzsche’s development in approaching the question of the value of existence. By exploring the influence of Paul Rée, Eugen Dühring, and the neo-Kantians, it introduces Nietzsche’s own ‘frame of reference’ argument against pessimism as a metaphysical view, and distinguishes between different possible interpretations of it.

This chapter aims to disentangle some the different views that have often been associated with the term ‘pessimism’. This includes the claims that (1) there is no historical progress; (2) this world is the worst of all possible worlds; (3) happiness is impossible; and (4) life is not worth living. The last thesis is identified as the central concern of the ‘pessimism dispute’, and three different justifications for it are presented. The final section of the chapter considers the expression of pessimism throughout human history and culture, with special attention paid to Schopenhauer’s analysis of religion.

This chapter traces the modern reception of the Sophists from their rediscovery in the Latin West to the first edition of Hermann Diels’ Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (1903). Its focus is the Sophists’ uncertain place in the historiography of Greek philosophy, in relation both to the “Presocratics” and to Socrates and the Socratic tradition. The “Sophists” emerge as an historiographical category in the late eighteenth century and become pivotal in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s (1770–1831) systematic account of philosophy’s development. Eduard Zeller (1814–1908), his key successor, revises but also reinforces the still dominant Hegelian narrative. The chapter also discusses two outsiders to the German historiographical tradition, George Grote (1794–1871) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), who challenge the Sophists’ assimilation to progressivist views of Greek philosophy, but from radically different perspectives.

Freud very quickly complemented his psychobiology with a sociobiological theory of culture and society. As early as 1897, he rooted the psychological phenomenon of repression (shame, disgust) in what he called a “primary,” “organic” repression that corresponded in the history of the species to the adoption of the erect stature and the abandonment of the oral-anal-urethral zones as sources of sexual excitement. To this biological origin of the civilizing process, Freud added in Totem and Taboo the murder and cannibalistic incorporation of the “primal father,” an event supposed to account at the collective, phylogenetic level for the prohibition of incest, and at the individual, ontogenetic level for the “decline” of the Oedipus complex during the latency phase of the libido and the corresponding emergence of an internal “superego.” The whole development of culture is thus viewed by Freud as a constant recapitulation and commemoration of this guilt-producing event whose unconscious memory is imprinted in the “archaic heritage” of the human race and transmitted compulsively through the generations, in conformity with Lamarck’s theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics.

This essay focuses on a programme of a Shakespearean revue entitled ‘This Sceptred Isle’ (1941) in the possession of the Wolfson Centre for Archival Research, Library of Birmingham. Billed as a ‘Dramatisation of Shakespeare’s Call to Great Britain in Time of War’, the show was a brainchild of eminent Shakespeare scholar G. Wilson Knight (1897–1985) and featured such warlike set pieces as ‘This England never did, nor never shall, / Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror’ (King John) and John of Gaunt’s ‘this sceptred isle’ oration (Richard II). Knight performed all the main roles. He was convinced of Britain’s imperial destiny and of the central importance of Shakespeare (‘a national prophet’) in it. Indeed, Knight’s interpretation of the playwright informed his wartime assertion about Britain’s imperial mission and the significance of the monarchy. ‘This Sceptred Isle’ was, however, hardly a typical piece of British wartime propaganda, considering that its creator was an admirer of Nietzsche, whose ideas were appropriated by Nazism. This essay aims to explore Knight’s idiosyncratic thinking underlying the programme of ‘This Sceptred Isle’ in order to clarify how the admirer of Nietzsche and Nazism created a polemics of British patriotism with recourse to Shakespeare.

In this chapter, I argue that the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche is of central importance to the theory and practice of moral education in the 21st century. To make this case, I examine an oft-neglected text of Nietzsche’s early philosophical work: Schopenhauer as Educator. I argue that this text advances a theory of moral education with three key components: (i) a view about the particular cultural context of moral education in modernity, (ii) a conception of the proper aims of moral education, and (iii) an account of the appropriate pedagogical methods of moral education. I then discuss the kind of theory Nietzsche advances. I show that Nietzsche’s theory fits within a broadly exemplarist outlook, though it expands the standard theory and practice of exemplarist moral education in important ways. I argue that Nietzsche’s theory of moral education suggests two novel forms of exemplarist motivation – self-exemplarism and fallibilistic exemplarism – and further specifies the psychological conditions for moral aspiration and transformation to occur in educational spaces.

Mikhal Oklot surveys the hazards of imposing philosophical readings on Chekhov while also probing his engagement with specific philosophical traditions – Stoicism, Cynicism, materialism – and the distinct resonance of his moral perspective with such figures as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and especially Schopenhauer as a key interlocutor and influence.

Teaching Shakespeare and Moral Agency begins with respect for the unschooled insights students express and supports their emotional engagement with the plays. Students were asked to set aside historical context and to engage directly with the resistant structure of the text. Building from their own background knowledge and the spontaneity of their response, it is then possible to develop their preliminary insights into a more rigorous understanding of the moral seriousness of Shakespeare’s dramatic art. Contrasting styles of moral inquiry can then be used to put questions of this kind into a philosophical context. Required philosophical reading included Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics; Erasmus, Enchiridion; Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Morals; Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals. These ethical encounters between contemporary readers and Shakespeare’s fictional universe often turn out to be profoundly disturbing. To illustrate the ethical distress provoked in these encounters the chapter builds on student responses to Isabella’s moment of decision in Measure for Measure: “More than our brother is our chastity.” What students discover from this program is a distinctively Shakespearean account of virtue ethics - conflicted, panoramic in scope and grounded in the concrete immediacy of experience.

The modern period (1800–1500) saw important innovations as philosophy of music moved in dramatically different directions. The first innovation was the incorporation of philosophy of music into philosophical systems, either absolute idealist or Marxist. These philosophers also held that music provides important insights into reality. In this stream of philosophy of music are found the seeds of Continental philosophy of music. The other, diametrically opposed, development was the rapid rise of formalist approaches to philosophy of music. These writers stressed the autonomy of musical beauty. A third stream within modern philosophy of music is continuous with earlier thinking about music. It opposed formalism without adopting a grand weltanschauung. Ontology of musical works emerges as a topic for philosophical discussion. Thinkers discussed include Hegel, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Wagner, Nietzsche, Ernst Bloch, Adorno, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Nicolai Hartmann, Carroll C. Pratt, Susanne Langer, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, Vladimir Jankélévitch, Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Hanslick, Edmund Gurney, Vernon Lee (Violet Paget), R. G. Collingwood and Roman Ingarden.