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26Moral Psychology with NietzscheOxford University Press. 2019.Brian Leiter draws on empirical psychology to defend a set of radical ideas from Nietzsche: there is no objectively true morality, there is no free will, no one is ever morally responsible, and our conscious thoughts play almost no significant role in our actions. Nietzsche emerges as not just a great philosopher but a prescient psychologist.
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62Rorty’s Rejection of PhilosophyAnalyse & Kritik 41 (1): 23-30. 2019.I argue that the real puzzle about Richard Rorty’s intellectual development is not why he gave up on ‘analytic’ philosophy-he had never been much committed to that research agenda, even before it became moribund-but why, beginning with Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (PMN), he gave up on the central concerns of philosophy going back to antiquity. In addition to Rorty’s published works, I draw on biographical information about Rorty’s undergraduate and graduate education to support this asses…Read more
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131The Truth Is TerribleJournal of Nietzsche Studies 49 (2): 151-173. 2018.The “terrible” existential truths about the human situation raise Schopenhauer's question: why continue living at all? Nietzsche's answer is that only viewed in terms of aesthetic values can life itself be “justified”. But how could the fact that life exemplifies aesthetic value restore our attachment to life in the face of these terrible existential truths? I suggest that there are two keys to understanding Nietzsche's answer: first, his assimilation of aesthetic pleasure to a kind of sublimate…Read more
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85The innocence of becoming: Nietzsche against guiltInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 62 (1): 70-92. 2019.ABSTRACTI offer an interpretation of Nietzsche's striking idea of ‘the innocence of becoming’, and a partial defense of its import, namely, that no one is ever morally responsible or guilty for what they do and that many of the so-called reactive attitudes are misplaced. I focus primarily, though not exclusively, on the arguments as set out in Twilight of the Idols. First, there is Nietzsche's hypothesis, partly psychological and partly historical or anthropological, that the ideas of ‘free’ act…Read more
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22Nietzsche's Naturalism and Nineteenth-Century BiologyJournal of Nietzsche Studies 48 (1): 71-82. 2017.Christian Emden has written an informative if sometimes philosophically frustrating book about Nietzsche’s engagement with both neo-Kantian philosophers 1 and the life sciences from the 1840s onward. Emden documents the preceding with an eye to shedding light not only on Nietzsche’s naturalism, on “what does it mean to ‘translate humanity back into nature’” as Nietzsche put it in BGE, but also on what Emden calls “the problem of normativity,” variously stated as how to “obtain an understanding o…Read more
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19Nietzsche's Metaethics: Against the Privilege ReadingsEuropean Journal of Philosophy 8 (3): 277-297. 2000.
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1123. Moralities Are a Sign-Language of the AffectsIn João Constâncio (ed.), Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity, De Gruyter. pp. 574-596. 2015.
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Nietzsche and the Critique of Morality: Philosophical Naturalism in Nietzsche's Theory of ValueDissertation, University of Michigan. 1995.In Chapters I-III, I argue that Nietzsche is a critic of "morality" in the sense of any system of values that has one or both of the following features: it presupposes the truth of certain descriptive claims about human agency, in the sense that for the evaluative categories to be intelligibly applied to persons these claims must be true ; it favors the interests of the "lowest" at the expense of the "highest" men, the embodiments of human excellence. I illustrate, in particular, how this latter…Read more
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3The Hermeneutics of Suspicion: Recovering Marx, Nietzsche, and FreudIn The Future for Philosophy, Clarendon Press. 2004.
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Is there an american furisprudence?Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 17 (2): 367-387. 1997.BRIAN LEITER; Is There An ‘American’ Jurisprudence?, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Volume 17, Issue 2, 1 July 1997, Pages 367–387, https://doi.org/10.1093/oj.
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49Maudemarie Clark, "Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy" (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 31 (1): 148. 1993.
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“The Routledge [series] is designed to introduce students to classic works of philosophy. Brian Leiter’s Nietzsche on Morality does that, and much more. The book offers a complete commentary of On the Genealogy of Morality, but it also articulates a comprehensive and original interpretation of Nietzsche’s critique of morality. The product is an exceptionally clear and cohesive account of philosophical views known neither for their clarity nor their cohesiveness…. “The distinction, and the chief …Read more
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124Legal IndeterminacyLegal Theory 1 (4): 481-492. 1995.To say that the law is indeterminate is to say that the class of legal reasons is indeterminate. The Class, in turn, consists of four components: 1. Legitimate sources of law ; 2. Legitimate interpretive operations that can be performed on the sources in order to generate rules of law ; 3. Legitimate interpretive operations that can be performed on the facts of record in order to generate facts of legal significance ; and 4. Legitimate rational operations that can be performed on facts and rules…Read more
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38On the Value of Normative Theory: A Reply to Madry and Richeimer: Brian LeiterLegal Theory 4 (2): 241-248. 1998.I am grateful to Alan Madry and Joel Richeimer for their intelligent and stimulating critique of my article “Heidegger and the Theory of Adjudication.” It is the most interesting commentary I have seen on the paper, and I have learned much from it. It may facilitate discussion, and advance debate, to state with some clarity where exactly we agree and disagree. I leave to the footnotes discussion of certain minor points where Madry and Richeimer are guilty of some critical overreaching.
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42This is a new preface written for the Greek translation of my NIETZSCHE ON MORALITY (Routledge, 2002), which will be published by Okto Publishing (Athens) in 2009. The publisher asked that I discuss how I became interested in Nietzsche, how my views about him evolved, and also how I would respond to the still-common perception (esp. in Europe) of Nietzsche as a thinker of "the right.".
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16Book Review (reviewing Tamsin Shaw, Nietzsche's Political Skepticism (2007)) (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. forthcoming.
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103Naturalized Jurisprudence and American Legal Realism RevisitedLaw and Philosophy 30 (4): 499-516. 2011.
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1Nietzsche: Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 1997.Daybreak marks the arrival of Nietzsche's 'mature' philosophy and is indispensable for an understanding of his critique of morality and 'revaluation of all values'. This volume presents the distinguished translation by R. J. Hollingdale, with a new introduction that argues for a dramatic change in Nietzsche's views from Human, All Too Human to Daybreak, and shows how this change, in turn, presages the main themes of Nietzsche's later and better-known works such as On the Genealogy of Morality. T…Read more
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259Moral Skepticism and Moral Disagreement in NietzscheOxford Studies in Metaethics 9. 2014.This chapter offers a new interpretation of Nietzsche’s argument for moral skepticism, an argument that should be of independent philosophical interest as well. On this account, Nietzsche offers a version of the argument from moral disagreement, but, unlike familiar varieties, it does not purport to exploit anthropological reports about the moral views of exotic cultures, or even garden-variety conflicting moral intuitions about concrete cases. Nietzsche, instead, calls attention to the single m…Read more
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58This is an invited commentary on Richard Rorty's Dewey Lecture, given last year at the University of Chicago Law School. “Pragmatism,” says Rorty, “puts natural science on all fours with politics and art. It is one more source of suggestions about what to do with our lives.” I argue that the truth in pragmatism - that the epistemic norms that help us cope are the ones on which we rely - is obscured by Rorty's promiscuous version of the doctrine, which confuses the criteria for relying on particu…Read more
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2The conference will examine important historical influences on Nietzsche, as well as Nietzsche's legacy to later philosophy. Invited papers will last approximately one hour, followed by a short comment, and then general discussion.
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Review of Beyond Selflessness, by Christopher Janaway (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. forthcoming.
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48Nietzsche (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2001.The latest volume in the Oxford Readings in Philosophy series, this work brings together some of the best and most influential recent philosophical scholarship on Nietzsche. Opening with a substantial introduction by John Richardson, it covers: Nietzsche's views on truth and knowledge, his 'doctrines' of the eternal recurrence and will to power, his distinction between Apollinian and Dionysian art, his critique of morality, his conceptions of agency and self-creation, and his genealogical method…Read more
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University of ChicagoRegular Faculty
Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Meta-Ethics |
Philosophy of Law |
19th Century Philosophy |