•  5
    Nietzsche’s Earth by Gary Shapiro (review)
    Journal of Nietzsche Studies 54 (2): 214-217. 2023.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nietzsche’s Earth by Gary ShapiroKaitlyn CreasyGary Shapiro, Nietzsche’s Earth. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. xvi + 238 pp. isbn 9780226394459. $48 (cloth).Nietzsche’s Earth is an ambitious work of expansive scope, which builds on several of Shapiro’s previous articles and contributions to anthologies. Shapiro’s comprehensive interpretation of Nietzsche’s reflections on time and “great politics,” while heavi…Read more
  •  10
    Morality and feeling powerful: Nietzsche’s power-based sentimental pragmatism
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 1. 2023.
    In recent work, Bernard Reginster argues for an interpretation of the relationship between morality and the affects in Nietzsche which he calls ‘sentimental pragmatism’. According to this view, the values, value judgments, and moral practices agents develop and adopt function to serve specific affective needs. Reginster deploys this interpretation to argue for a functional interpretation of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality, according to which all three essays of the Genealogy comprise ps…Read more
  •  18
    Nietzsche’s Moral Psychology by Mark Alfano (review)
    Journal of Nietzsche Studies 53 (2): 202-210. 2022.
    If you're a Nietzsche scholar and you haven't heard of Mark Alfano's book, you're not paying attention. Published in 2019, Nietzsche's Moral Psychology has already been reviewed by leading Nietzsche scholars in numerous venues, dissected in a book symposium published in this very journal, and featured on a popular philosophy blog's book review forum. Its broad influence is already evidenced by the extensive scholarly debate it has provoked and the predominantly positive evaluations it has receiv…Read more
  •  258
    Nietzsche on the sociality of emotional experience
    European Journal of Philosophy 1 (3): 748-768. 2022.
    In this paper, I explore the sociality of emotional experience in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. Specifically, I describe four key mechanisms through which an individual's sociocultural context shapes her emotional experience on Nietzsche's view—emotional contagion as habitual affective mimicry, the production of emotions' felt character through the assimilation of dominant social beliefs and norms, affective interpretation à la Christopher Fowles, and the imposition of dominant notions of emo…Read more
  •  15
    Individuality and Beyond: Nietzsche Reads Emerson by Benedetta Zavatta (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 59 (3): 520-521. 2021.
    In her remarkable comparative analysis of the thought of Emerson and Nietzsche, Benedetta Zavatta has several aims, the first of which is to demonstrate the necessity of philology for evaluating Emerson's actual influence on Nietzsche. Though Emerson's influence on Nietzsche's thought is already well known to scholars, her impressive analysis is quite unique in that it enables her reader to evaluate Nietzsche's reception of Emerson from a sound philological basis. After an insightful first chapt…Read more
  •  20
    Nietzsche is perhaps best known for his diagnosis of the problem of nihilism. Though his elaborations on this diagnosis often include descriptions of certain beliefs characteristic of the nihilist (such as beliefs in the meaninglessness or worthlessness of existence), he just as frequently specifies a variety of affective symptoms experienced by the nihilist that weaken their will and diminish their agency. This affective dimension to nihilism, however, remains drastically underexplored. In this…Read more
  •  22
    Making Knowledge the Most Powerful Affect: Overcoming Affective Nihilism
    Journal of Nietzsche Studies 50 (2): 210-232. 2019.
    In an 1881 letter, Nietzsche remarks incredulously that he is "utterly amazed" to have found in Spinoza "a precursor" with whom he shares an "overtendency [...] to make knowledge the most powerful affect."1 It is this tendency to assign knowledge and ways of knowing the functional role of an affect that I intend to investigate as a means of overcoming affective nihilism.2 In particular, it is by participating in certain practices of self-knowledge and introducing oneself, experimentally, to new …Read more
  •  46
    On the Problem of Affective Nihilism
    Journal of Nietzsche Studies 49 (1): 31-51. 2018.
    In The Affirmation of Life, Bernard Reginster argues that Nietzschean nihilism is best characterized as a "philosophical claim."1 This account has inspired a number of critical responses from contemporary scholars.2 Ken Gemes and John Richardson, for example, both point out that while Reginster's characterization presents nihilism as a purely cognitive phenomenon involving particular beliefs about meaning and value, it is just as frequently presented by Nietzsche as a feeling-based phenomenon, a…Read more
  •  45
    Environmental Nihilism
    Environmental Philosophy 14 (2): 339-359. 2017.
    This article interprets David E. Storey’s foundation of an environmental ethic on Nietzsche’s philosophy of life as a version of new conservationism. Critically examining Storey’s various claims, the article demonstrates potentially problematic aspects of the new conservationist project. In order to both question Storey’s interpretation of a Nietzschean philosophy of life and problematize the new conservationist understanding of nature, this article returns to the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. In…Read more
  •  23
    It seems strange, on first thought, that anyone might look to Nietzsche to found an environmental ethic. In GS, he claims that “Whatever has value in the current world, has it not in itself, from nature—nature is always valueless”, and he generally lauds the natural strength and nobility manifested in the will to power’s domination and exploitation of resources. Yet in Naturalizing Heidegger, David E. Storey crafts an educative and compelling argument geared toward environmental philosophers who…Read more