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75Nietzsche on Morality by Brian Leiter (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (3): 729-740. 2005.
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22Who – or what – says yes to life?In Daniel Came (ed.), Nietzsche on Morality and the Affirmation of Life, Oxford University Press. 2022.Nietzsche is concerned with what he calls ‘affirmation of life’, or ‘saying Yes to life’. This article examines attitudes or processes that Nietzsche describes as ‘affirmation’ or ‘Yes-saying’ (Bejahung, Jasagen). Nietzsche often speaks of something other than an individual as the locus of affirmation. Surveying Nietzsche’s uses from the period of Daybreak onwards, we find Bejahung, Jasagen and cognates with a variety of grammatical subjects, referring to human individuals, cultural products a…Read more
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60Knowing about surprises: A supposed antinomy revisitedMind 98 (391): 391-409. 1989.A given event may be a surprise to you, even if you know that it is going to occur. It may be a surprise to you, even if you know that it is going to occur and be a surprise to you. But what is not possible is that you should know a finite list of possible times at which it may possibly occur, and know that it will be a surprise to you. The article argues that this is sufficient to dispense with the well-known paradox or antinomy, the 'Surprise Test'.
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5The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2009.Arthur Schopenhauer's The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics consists of two groundbreaking essays: 'On the Freedom of the Will' and 'On the Basis of Morals'. The essays make original contributions to ethics and display Schopenhauer's erudition, prose-style and flair for philosophical controversy, as well as philosophical views that contrast sharply with the positions of both Kant and Nietzsche. Written accessibly, they do not presuppose the intricate metaphysics which Schopenhauer constructs el…Read more
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1PlatoIn Berys Nigel Gaut & Dominic Lopes (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, Routledge. 2000.Plato's writings about the arts play a foundational role in the history of aesthetics, not simply because they are the earliest substantial contribution to the subject. The arts are a central, rather than a marginal topic for Plato, and for him the whole of culture must reflect and inculcate the values that concern him. His philosophy of art (as we would call it) is closely integrated with his metaphysics, ethics and politics. We shall examine in outline the major issues that a reading of Plato …Read more
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185Tragedy: a case of pleasure in painIn Arto Haapala & Oiva Kuisma (eds.), Aesthetic Experience and the Moral Dimension: Essays on Moral Problems in Aesthetics (Helsinki: Acta Philosophica Fennica 72,, Acta Philosophica Fennica. pp. 19-32. 2003.
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8Schopenhauer as Nietzsche's EducatorIn Willing and Nothingness: Schopenhauer as Nietzsche's Educator, Clarendon Press. 1998.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 bein…Read more
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5Ancient Greek philosophy I: The pre-Socratics and PlatoIn A. C. Grayling (ed.), Philosophy: A Guide Through the Subject, Oxford University Press. pp. 336--397. 1995.An introductory text dealing with the Pre-Socratic philosophers and central aspects of Plato.
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227Nietzsche, the self, and SchopenhauerIn Keith Ansell-Pearson (ed.), Nietzsche and Modern German Thought, Routledge. 1991.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 hi…Read more
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214Nietzsche on Free Will, Autonomy and the Sovereign IndividualAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 80 (1): 321-357. 2006.[Ken Gemes] In some texts Nietzsche vehemently denies the possibility of free will; in others he seems to positively countenance its existence. This paper distinguishes two different notions of free will. Agency free will is intrinsically tied to the question of agency, what constitutes an action as opposed to a mere doing. Deserts free will is intrinsically tied to the question of desert, of who does and does not merit punishment and reward. It is shown that we can render Nietzsche's prima faci…Read more
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21Naturalism and genealogyIn Keith Ansell-Pearson (ed.), A Companion to Nietzsche, Blackwell. pp. 337-52. 2006.This chapter contains sections titled: Methodological Naturalism Nietzsche's Antagonists in the Genealogy Rée and Selflessness Real History Rhetorical Method and the Affects Perils of Present Concepts: Causa fiendi and False Unity Conclusion.
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Willing and Nothingness: Schopenhauer as Nietzsche's EducatorTijdschrift Voor Filosofie 61 (4): 802-805. 1999.
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181Images of excellence: Plato's critique of the artsOxford University Press. 1995.This original new book argues for a reassessment of Plato's challenge to the arts. Plato was the first great figure in Western philosophy to assess the value of the arts; he argued in the Republic that traditionally accepted forms of poetry, drama, and music are unsound. While this view has been widely rejected, Janaway argues that Plato's hostile case is a more coherent and profound challenge to the arts than has sometimes been supposed. Denying that Plato advocates "good art" in any modern sen…Read more
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41The real essence of human beings: Schopenhauer on the unconscious willIn Angus Nicholls & Martin Liebscher (eds.), Thinking the Unconscious: Nineteenth-Century German Thought, Cambridge University Press. pp. 140-155. 2010.This paper elucidates and interrogates Schopenhauer’s notion of will and its relation to ideas about the unconscious, with the aim of addressing its significance as an exercise in philosophical psychology. Schopenhauer aims at a global metaphysics, a theory of the essence of the world as it is in itself. He calls this essence will (Wille), which, to put it briefly, he understands as a blind striving for existence, life, and reproduction. Human beings have the same essence as all other manifestat…Read more
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450Die Schönheit ist falsch, die Wahrheit hässlich: Nietzsche über die Kunst und das LebenIn Lore Hühn & Philipp Schwab (eds.), Die Philosophie des Tragischen: Schopenhauer - Schelling - Nietzsche, De Gruyter. pp. 531-552. 2011.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…Read more
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108Schopenhauer's PessimismRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 44 47-63. 1999.This series of lectures was originally scheduled to include a talk on Schopenhauer by Patrick Gardiner. Sadly, Patrick died during the summer, and I was asked to stand in. Patrick must, I am sure, have been glad to see this series of talks on German Philosophy being put on by the Royal Institute, and he, probably more than anyone on the list, deserves to have been a part of it. Patrick Gardiner taught and wrote with unfailing integrity and quiet refinement in the Oxford of the 1950s, '60s, '70s …Read more
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15Borges and Danto: A reply to Michael WreenBritish Journal of Aesthetics 31 (4): 72-76. 1991.In response to Michael Wreen, 'Once is Not Enough?' (British Journal of Aesthetics 1990), this article argues that the short story by Jorge Luis Borges, 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote' supports Arthur Danto's account of the individuation of art works, according to which two verbally identical compositions can be two distinct works. Wreen argues that the Menard story is a case of copying. But the story is one of intentional coincidence of texts, not copying. Hence Wreen lacks a convincing …Read more
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118Review: Bernard Reginster: The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism (review)Mind 118 (470): 518-522. 2009.
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27Aesthetic Autonomies: A Discussion of Paul Guyer, Kant and the Experience of FreedomKantian Review 1 151-161. 1997.There are two familiar strategic approaches to Kant's Critique of Judgement which commentators have not always found easy to combine. One would regard the work as fitting snugly into Kant's enterprise as the keystone that absorbs the forces of his theoretical and practical philosophies, uniting them and itself into a single sound structure. That Kant saw it this way is obvious from his Introduction to the Critique. But the other approach has sometimes seemed more fruitful: start with the Analyti…Read more
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561Nietzsche on morality, drives and human greatnessIn Nietzsche, Naturalism, and Normativity, Oxford University Press. pp. 183-201. 2012.Authored item in a collection of original research papers, arising out of the University of Southampton's AHRC-funded research project 'Nietzsche and Modern Moral Philosophy'
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99What’s So Good about Negation of the Will?: Schopenhauer and the Problem of the Summum BonumJournal of the History of Philosophy 54 (4): 649-669. 2016.The final part of Schopenhauer’s argument in The World as Will and Representation concerns “affirmation and negation of the will”. He argues, with a fervor that borders on the religious, that “negation of the will” is a condition of unique value, the only state that enables “true salvation, redemption from life and from suffering”. Some commentators have asserted without qualification that this condition is his “highest good.” However, Schopenhauer in fact claims that there cannot be a highest g…Read more
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3Schopenhauer: On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason and Other Writings (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2013.This volume of translations unites three shorter works by Arthur Schopenhauer that expand on themes from his book The World as Will and Representation. In On the Fourfold Root he takes the principle of sufficient reason, which states that nothing is without a reason why it is, and shows how it covers different forms of explanation or ground that previous philosophers have tended to confuse. Schopenhauer regarded this study, which he first wrote as his doctoral dissertation, as an essential preli…Read more
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13Knowledge and Tranquility: Schopenhauer on the value of artIn Dale Jacquette (ed.), Schopenhauer, Philosophy and the Arts, Cambridge University Press. pp. 39--61. 1996.The article argues that Schopenhauer seeks to defend art against Plato's critique, but that he does so by adopting two distinct strategies that to some extent conflect: a 'cognitivist strategy' according to which art provides the most objective knowledge of reality, and an 'aesthetic experience' strategy, in which there is a peculiarly aesthetic state of mind which gives our pleasure in art a value of its own. The truly unifying notion in Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory is that of tranquil, will…Read more
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58What a musical forgery isn'tBritish Journal of Aesthetics 39 (1): 62-71. 1999.The central question addressed in this article is whether anyone can make a piece of music, intending to assert falsely that it is identical with a notationally equivalent but distinct piece. It is argued that this is impossible, because we cannot regard an agent, thus described, as having fully coherent intentions and beliefs. This opposes Jerrold Levinson's view that there are no art forms whose works are strictly nonforgeable.
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19History of Philosophy: The Analytical IdealAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 62 (1). 1988.A two-part symposium. Janaway's article offers an analysis and critique of a methodological assumption current in the history of philosophy, which he labels 'the Analytical Ideal'. It discusses the views of P.F. Strawson, Michael Ayres, and Richard Rorty among others.
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56The Cambridge Companion to Schopenhauer (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 1999.Arthur Schopenhauer is something of a maverick figure in the history of philosophy. He produced a unique theory of the world and human existence based upon his notion of will. This collection analyses the related but distinct components of will from the point of view of epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, aesthetics, ethics, and the philosophy of psychoanalysis. This volume explores Schopenhauer's philosophy of death, his relationship to the philosophy of Kant, his use of ideas drawn …Read more
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1Review of: Aaron Ridley, Music, Value and the Passions (1995) (review)British Journal of Aesthetics 39 (2): 198-200. 1999.Review of: Aaron Ridley, Music, Value and the Passions (1995).
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54Schopenhauer: a very short introductionOxford University Press. 2002.Schopenhauer is considered to be the most readable of German philosophers. This book gives a succinct explanation of his metaphysical system, concentrating on the original aspects of his thought, which inspired many artists and thinkers including Nietzsche, Wagner, Freud, and Wittgenstein. Schopenhauer's central notion is that of the will--a blind, irrational force that he uses to interpret both the human mind and the whole of nature. Seeing human behavior as that of a natural organism governed …Read more
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2AMERIKS, K. "Kant's Theory of Mind: An Analysis of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason" (review)Mind 93 (n/a): 632. 1984.
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Areas of Interest
Aesthetics |
Normative Ethics |
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
19th Century Philosophy |