Beyond Selflessness: Reading Nietzsche's Genealogy

by Christopher Janaway

Overview

Christopher Janaway presents a full commentary on Nietzsche's most studied work, On the Genealogy of Morality, and combines close reading of key passages with an overview of Nietzsche's wider aims. Arguing that Nietzsche's goal is to pursue psychological and historical truths concerning the origins of modern moral values, Beyond Selflessness differs from other books on Nietzsche in that it emphasizes the significance of his rhetorical methods as an instrument of persuasion. Nietzsche's outlook is broadly naturalist, but he is critical of typical scientific and philosophical methods for their advocacy of impersonality and suppression of the affects. In contrast to his opponents, Schopenhauer and Paul Rée, who both account for morality in terms of selflessness, Nietzsche believes that our allegiance to a post-Christian morality that centers around selflessness, compassion, guilt, and denial of the instincts is not primarily rational but affective: underlying feelings, often ambivalent and poorly grasped in conscious thought, explain our moral beliefs. The Genealogy is designed to detach the reader from his or her allegiance to morality and prepare for the possibility of new values. In addition to examining how Nietzsche's "perspectivism" holds that one can best understand a topic such as morality through allowing as many of one's feelings as possible to speak about it, Janaway shows that Nietzsche seeks to enable us to "feel differently:" his provocation of the reader's affects helps us grasp the affective origins of our attitudes and prepare the way for healthier values such as the affirmation of life (as tested by the thought of eternal return) and the self-satisfaction to be attained by "giving style to one's character."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199570850
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	09/21/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	298
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Christopher Janaway is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton.

Table of Contents

A Note on Translations and Abbreviations

Chapter 1 Nietzsche's aims and targets
Chapter 2 Reading Nietzsche's Preface
Chapter 3 Naturalism and genealogy
Chapter 4 Selflessness: the struggle with Schopenhauer
Chapter 5 Nietzsche and Paul Rée on the origin of moral feelings
Chapter 6 Good and evil: Nietzsche's artistic revaluation
Chapter 7 Free will, autonomy, and the sovereign individual
Chapter 8 Guilt, bad conscience, and self-punishment
Chapter 9 Will to power in the Genealogy
Chapter 10 Nietzsche's illustration of the art of exegesis
Chapter 11 Disinterestedness and objectivity
Chapter 12 Perspectival knowing and the affects
Chapter 13 The ascetic ideal, meaning, and truth
Chapter 14 Beyond selflessness

Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"...intelligent and illuminating book.... there are ample rewards in terms of intelligent and discerning exposition of difficult passages, lucid placing of themes and arguments in historical context, and a rich and sympathetic appreciation of Nietzsche's style, both as a therapeutic tool and for the philosophical assumptions that underlie it."-Brian Leiter, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

From the Publisher