•  561
    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'
  •  450
    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
  •  436
    Guilt, bad conscience, and self-punishment in Nietzsche's Genealogy
    In Brian Leiter & Neil Sinhababu (eds.), Nietzsche and Morality, Oxford University Press. pp. 138--54. 2007.
    The article provides a commentary on the Second Treatise of Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality, entitled '"Guilt, "Bad Conscience," and Related Matters'. The Treatise's central train of thought is that having a bad conscience or feeling guilty is a way in which we satisfy a fundamental need to inflict cruelty. This is achieved by turning the exercise of cruelty inwards, upon the self rather than others, and by interpreting such a cruelty as a legitimate form of punishment of oneself.
  •  236
    Nietzsche's aims and targets -- Reading Nietzsche's preface -- Naturalism and genealogy -- Selflessness : the struggle with Schopenhauer -- Nietzsche and Paul Rée on the origins of moral feelings -- Good and evil : affect, artistry, and revaluation -- Free will, autonomy, and the sovereign individual -- Guilt, bad conscience, and self-punishment -- Will to power in the Genealogy -- Nietzsche's illustration of the art of exegesis -- Disinterestedness and objectivity -- Perspectival knowing and th…Read more
  •  227
    Nietzsche, the self, and Schopenhauer
    In 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
  •  215
    Beauty is false, truth ugly: Nietzsche on art and life
    In Daneil Came (ed.), Nietzsche on Art and Life, Oxford University Press. 2014.
    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
  •  214
    Nietzsche on Free Will, Autonomy and the Sovereign Individual
    with Ken Gemes
    Aristotelian 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
  •  185
    Tragedy: a case of pleasure in pain
    In 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.
  •  181
    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
  •  172
    This new collection enriches our understanding of Nietzsche's philosophy by examining his relationship with Schopenhauer. Eight leading scholars contribute specially written essays in which Nietzsche's changing conceptions of pessimism, tragedy, art, morality, truth, knowledge, religion, atheism, determinism, the will, and the self are revealed as responses to the work of the thinker he called his "great teacher.".
  •  158
    Self and world in Schopenhauer's philosophy
    Oxford University Press. 1989.
    Janaway provides a detailed and critical account of Schopenhauer's central philosophical achievement: his account of the self and its relation to the world of objects. The author's approach to this theme is historical, yet is designed to show the philosophical interest of such an approach. He explores in unusual depth Schopenhauer's often ambivalent relation to Kant, and highlights the influence of Schopenhauer's view of self and world on Wittgenstein and Nietzsche, as well as tracing the many p…Read more
  •  154
    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…Read more
  •  139
    Attitudes to suffering: Parfit and Nietzsche
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 60 (1-2): 66-95. 2017.
    In On What Matters, Derek Parfit argues that Nietzsche does not disagree with central normative beliefs that ‘we’ hold. Such disagreement would threaten Parfit’s claim that normative beliefs are known by intuition. However, Nietzsche defends a conception of well-being that challenges Parfit’s normative claim that suffering is bad in itself for the sufferer. Nietzsche recognizes the phenomenon of ‘growth through suffering’ as essential to well-being. Hence, removal of all suffering would lead to …Read more
  •  125
    Naturalism and value in Nietzsche (review)
    with Ken Gemes
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (3). 2005.
  •  122
    Schopenhauer on the aimlessness of the will
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 26 (2): 331-347. 2018.
    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 c…Read more
  •  108
    Schopenhauer's Pessimism
    Royal 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
  •  99
    What’s So Good about Negation of the Will?: Schopenhauer and the Problem of the Summum Bonum
    Journal 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
  •  93
    Nietzsche, Naturalism & Normativity (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2012.
    This volume comprises ten original essays on Nietzsche, one of the western canon's most controversial ethical thinkers. An international team of experts clarify Nietzsche's own views, both critical and positive, ethical and meta-ethical, and connect his philosophical concerns to contemporary debates in and about ethics, normativity, and value.
  •  93
    Arts and crafts in Plato and Collingwood
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 50 (1): 45-54. 1992.
    R.G. Collingwood argues that what is properly called 'art' shares none of the features of craft. This article looks critically at his attribution to Plato of the sharply contrasting view that poetry is simply a craft. There is an important sense in which poetry is not a craft (techne) for Plato. Moreover, Plato's views are much closer to Collingwood's own than Collingwood appreciates.
  •  77
    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 tr…Read more
  •  77
    Plato's analogy between painter and poet
    British Journal of Aesthetics 31 (1): 1-12. 1991.
    The paper discusses Plato's example of the 'painter of craftsmen' at Republic 598b–601b, arguing that its function is to provide the analogy for the special case of the poet, and in particular the tragic or Homeric poet. The point of the analogy is that people mistake the poet for someone who is knowledgeable about what he fictionally represents. Given this explanation, Plato's treatment of poetry may be neither as inconsistent nor as absurd as it is sometimes said to be.
  •  75
    Nietzsche on Morality by Brian Leiter (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (3): 729-740. 2005.
  •  75
    Kant's aesthetics and the `empty cognitive stock'
    Philosophical Quarterly 47 (189): 459-476. 1997.
    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…Read more
  •  64
    Review of: The Gay Science (Cambridge University Press) (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 1. 2002.
    Review of Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, ed. Bernard Williams, trans. Josefine Nauckhoff, poems trans. Adrian Del Caro, Cambridge University Press, 2001.
  •  63
    Better Consciousness: Schopenhauer's Philosophy of Value (edited book)
    with Alex Neill
    Wiley-Blackwell. 2009.
    _Better Consciousness: Schopenhauer's Philosophy of Value_ reassesses Schopenhauer's aesthetics and ethics and their contemporary relevance. Features a collection of new essays from leading Schopenhauer scholars Explores a relatively neglected area of Schopenhauer's philosophy Offers a new perspective on a great thinker who crystallized the pessimism of the nineteenth century and has many points of contact with twenty-first century thought
  •  60
    On the Very Idea of "Justifying Suffering"
    Journal of Nietzsche Studies 48 (2): 152-170. 2017.
    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 posi…Read more
  •  60
    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'.
  •  60
    Worse than the best possible pessimism? Olga Plümacher's critique of Schopenhauer
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 30 (2): 211-230. 2021.
    Olga Plümacher (1839–1895) published a book entitled Der Pessimismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart in 1884. It was an influential book: Nietzsche owned a copy, and there are clear cases where he borrowed phraseology from Plümacher. Plümacher specifies philosophical pessimism as comprising two propositions: ‘The sum of displeasure outweighs the sum of pleasure’ and ‘Consequently the non-being of the world would be better than its being’. Plümacher cites Schopenhauer as the first proponent of thi…Read more
  •  60
    Nietzsche on Free Will, Autonomy and the Sovereign Individual
    Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 80 (1): 339-357. 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