Christopher Janaway

Schopenhauer asserts that ‘the will, which is objectified in human life as it is in every appearance, is a striving without aim and without end’. The article rejects some recent readings of this claim, and offers the following positive interpretation: however many specific aims of my specific desires I manage to attain, none is a final aim, in the sense that none terminates my ‘willing as a whole’, none turns me into a non-willing being. To understand Schopenhauer’s claim we must recognize his central contrast between happiness and will-lessness. Happiness is the satisfaction of individual desire, but no act of will that succeeds in satisfying individual desire is the attainment of a final aim, in that none brings about a conscious state in which the subject experiences no more unfulfilled desires. Such a state is the ultimate goal of existence, in Schopenhauer’s view, but happiness does not provide a route along which it can be attained.

Many commentators have said that Nietzsche is concerned, either in all or in some parts of his career, with providing a kind of ‘theodicy,’ or with justifying or finding meaning in suffering. In this article, I examine these notions, questioning whether terms such as ‘theodicy’ or ‘justifying suffering’ are helpful in getting Nietzsche’s views into focus, and exploring some unclarities concerning the way in which such terms themselves are understood. I conclude that, while Nietzsche’s later position is continuous with the tradition of theodicy in seeking to relate suffering’s value to some wider whole, it is also discontinuous with that tradition because it does not hold that suffering as such has a fixed normative value, that suffering as such has a meaning, that it happens for a reason, or that it is justified, let alone that the world’s containing suffering is in line with our interests, or that we ought because of suffering to value our lives one way or another. On Nietzsche’s view there is nothing that guarantees meaning or specific normative value to suffering just because it is suffering. In all these senses Nietzsche has moved away from the tradition of theodicy.

The article discusses issues raised by Daniel Came, Ken Gemes, Peter Kail, and Stephen Mulhall in commentaries on Janaway, Beyond Selflessness: Reading Nietzsche's "Genealogy" (2008). The main topics are disinterestedness, aesthetic experience, perspectivism, affects and drives, the self, genealogical method, naturalistic psychology, and Nietzsche's rhetoric. The article argues that Nietzsche's criticisms of the conception of aesthetic experience as disinterested are justified, in particular his criticisms of Schopenhauer. Nietzsche's rejection of disinterestedness is linked to his claim that there is "only a perspectival knowing" and his conception of genealogical method. The article argues that perspectivism is the view that we understand best when we feel a multiplicity of affects, and that Nietzsche's own rhetorical method is a therapeutic provocation of affects which constitute the true basis of his readers' values. A particular example from Genealogy I. 14 is examined.--Correspondence to: cjanaway @soton.ac.uk

The paper argues on the basis of internal textual evidence that Nietzsche's statement that Essay 3 of On the Genealogy of Morality illustrates an aphorism has hitherto been misinterpreted. The aphorism in question is Section 1 of Essay 3 (which was in fact inserted a late stage of publication); the remainder of Essay 3 is the commentary on it. Those interpreters who have taken the short epigram concerning 'wisdom as a woman' to be the aphorism on which Essay 3 is the commentary have invented theories concerning what Nietzsche means by 'intepretation' that are rendered unnecessary by locating the correct aphorism.

This paper gives an account of the argument of Schopenhauer's essay On the Freedom of the Human Will, drawing also on his other works. Schopenhauer argues that all human actions are causally necessitated, as are all other events in empirical nature, hence there is no freedom in the sense of liberum arbitrium indifferentiae. However, our sense of responsibility or agency (being the ) is nonetheless unshakeable. To account for this Schopenhauer invokes the Kantian distinction between empirical and intelligible characters. The paper highlights divergences between Schopenhauer and Kant over the intelligible character, which for Schopenhauer can be neither rational nor causal. It raises the questions whether the intelligible character may be redundant to Schopenhauer's position, and whether it can coherently belong to an individual agent, suggesting that for Schopenhauer a more consistent position would have been to deny freedom of will to the individual

It is sometimes assumed that Kant’s claim that a judgement of taste is grounded in a pleasure ‘without concepts’ leaves little room for any credible account of critical judgements of art. I argue that even Kant’s conception of free (as opposed to dependent) beauty can provide the framework for an analysis of aesthetic judgements about art works. It is a matter of understanding what roles for concepts Kant prohibits in his analysis of pure judgements of taste: conceptual cognition must be neither what gives rise to the subject’s pleasure nor part of the evidential basis for the subject’s judgement. But this does not entail that the subject encounters the object in a wholly ‘concept–free’ manner. Kant’s account of free beauty is quite different from Schopenhauer’s superficially similar theory, and is compatible with the thought that increased conceptual knowledge can enhance critical judgements of art

In this paper I juxtapose two well-known thought-experiments concerning duplicate art works, and point out that they appear to have directly conflicting results. I then make a proposal as to how to reconcile the two cases. The two cases are Borges' story of Pierre Menard, in which a text coinciding exactly with Cervantes' Don Quixote is nonetheless a distinct work from it, and Nelson Goodman's claim that a musical work cannot be forged, because anything complying with a work's notation is that work (or a performance of it), not anything distinct. Both claims seem correct, but how can they be reconciled? I suggest two factors that must be present for two indistinguishable works to be numerically distinct: divergent causal histories and distinct 'privileged interpretational instructions'. Notational equivalence of W and W1 plus the instruction to interpret W as W1 leads to the impossiblity of forgery. But in the absence of such instruction, W and W1 can constitute distinct works.

Against the claim that Nietzsche’s early and late views on confronting the truth about human existence differ widely, this article argues that in The Birth of Tragedy tragic art is affirmative of life and not limited to beautifying illusion, while later works still contain the idea that artistic production of beauty is a falsification necessary to make existence bearable for us. Nietzsche did not start with the view that art’s value lies in sheer illusion, nor end with the view that truth should be confronted wholly without illusion, but is ambivalent on this issue throughout

Designed for readers with no or little prior knowledge of the subject, this concise anthology brings together key texts in aesthetics and the philosophy of art. Designed for readers with no or little prior knowledge of the subject. Presents two contrasting pieces on each of six topics. Texts range from Plato’s famous critique of art in the ‘Republic’ through Nietzsche’s ‘The Birth of Tragedy’ to Barthes’ ‘The Death of the Author’ 'and pieces in recent philosophical aesthetics from a number of traditions. Interactive editorial commentary helps readers to engage with the philosophical train of thought. Explains the argumentative and historical context in which each piece was written. Includes questions for debate and suggestions for further reading.

This paper aims to distinguish a conception of ‘free will’ that Nietzsche opposes (that of the pure agent unaffected by contingencies of character and circumstance) and one that he supports. In Human, All Too Human Nietzsche propounds the ‘total unfreedom’ of the will. But by the time of Beyond Good and Evil and the Genealogy he is more concerned (a) to trace the affective psychological states underlying beliefs in both free will and ‘unfree will’, (b) to suggest that the will might become free in certain individuals, a matter of having a consistent strong character, self-knowledge, and ability to create values. The paper explores the kind of autonomy required in agents who would ‘revalue’ existing values.

One feature of my book (Beyond Selflessness: Reading Nietzsche's Genealogy) that is perhaps worth some comment is the historical background that I place Nietzsche against.2 It is noteworthy, I think, that in GM P, Nietzsche mentions just two thinkers as his antagonists: Schopenhauer and Rée. My aim was to take these thinkers, the former still somewhat underread by Nietzsche commentators (though the situation is improving) and the latter very poorly studied until recently, and map out Nietzsche’s position as structured in opposition to them in the first instance. Why does this matter? First, some of the detail of what he says in certain places makes better sense if these are his targets. Just to give some examples, the famous passage on perspectives and affects in GM III:12 is directed against conceiving “objectivity” as the stance of a “pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge,” which is precisely Schopenhauer’s view of objectivity (attainable in aesthetic experience). Nietzsche’s preoccupation with attacking compassion (Mitleid) stems from the fact that compassion is the sole moral incentive in Schopenhauer’s ethics. Again, the account of the origins of morality given by the so-called English psychologists with which Nietzsche opens GM I is demonstrably Rée’s account; as is the account of punishment as deterrence criticized in GM II for confusing the uses or meanings of a thing with its origins. In general, if we are to get a picture of what is truly bugging Nietzsche, as it were, it may be helpful to take a closer look at his targets. For example, much [End Page 124] has been made recently about Nietzsche opposing theories of morality that are based on a particular notion of free will, that of the causa sui, uncaused cause, neutral subject of free choice, and so on. Well, yes, Nietzsche is opposed to such theories, but if that were his dominating concern, why would he be so explicitly against Schopenhauer and Rée, both adamant determinists? Alternatively, we may think that Nietzsche’s main point is to oppose theistic metaphysics: but both his named antagonists are already decided atheists. Recently it has been suggested that Nietzsche’s guiding aim is to oust everything supernatural or transcendent and establish a strict form of naturalism. That is one of his aims, but although Rée at least is as strict a naturalist as you could want in the late nineteenth century, Nietzsche nonetheless represents himself as saying no to everything he found in Rée’s book The Origin of the Moral Sensations—and even Schopenhauer, though overall a metaphysician offering a global account of the thing in itself that Nietzsche must oppose, believes that the empirical world can be correctly described in wholly causal, materialist terms. It seems to me important that Nietzsche treats as his principal opponents thinkers who are atheists, naturalists, and determinists—not because they hold these positions but on other grounds, which we should seek to clarify. What unites Schopenhauer and Rée—and I think Nietzsche makes this very clear in GM P—is the centrality they give to “the unegoistic” in their account of morality or, as Nietzsche says, to “the value of the unegoistic, of the instincts of compassion, self-denial, self-sacrifice” (GM P:5).

The essay draws attention to some of the different uses made of Schopenhauer throughout Nietzsche's writings. Different roles for Schopenhauer coexist at all stages of Nietzsche's writing. He functions as an exemplar for European culture, but at the same time Nietzsche can find serious fault with his philosophical doctrines, as he does in early unpublished notes. In later writings Schopenhauer is assigned the role of Nietzsche's antipode, but even then Schopenhauer is paid the compliment of being Nietzsche's great and only teacher. The essay includes a commentary on Genealogy III:12 in which Nietzsche's conception of 'perspectival knowledge' is anti-Schopenhauerian, but can only be seen for what it is once an underlying Schopenhauerian structure is made explicit.

This flexible introductory textbook explores several key themes in philosophy, and helps the reader learn to engage with the key arguments by introducing and analysing a selection of classic readings. Fully integrated introductory text with readings for beginning students of philosophy. Each chapter focusses on a core philosophical topic, and contains an introduction to the topic, 2 classic readings and interactive commentaries on the readings. An introductory book which doesn't merely _tell_ the reader about the subject, but requires them to engage philosophically with the text. A pedagogical resource developed in the classroom by the authors at the University of London.

Nietzsche vehemently attacks the traditional conception of the unitary self. This essay tries to show that some of the undermining of that conception had already been done in Schopenhauer’s work. We should not ignore the obvious fact that while Nietzsche is a philosopher of cultures, classes and epochs, Schopenhauer’s view of knowledge and ethics remains firmly ahistorical. 1 Nevertheless, if we first try to inhabit Schopenhauer’s point of view, we can look forward to Nietzsche and illuminate him from one (partial) perspective. 2 For Nietzsche’s opposition to Schopenhauer’s conceptions of the subject and of the will is interwoven with more positive debts to his predecessor’s philosophy, and he by no means fully overcomes its problems and tensions.