Nietzsche and the ancient skeptical tradition
By: by Jessica Berry.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 230
ISBN-13: 9780195368420
Subjects: Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, -- 1844-1900; Skeptics (Greek philosophy); Philosophy, Ancient; Skepticism
Description: "The impact of Nietzsche's engagement with the Greek skeptics has never before been systematically explored in a book-length work - an inattention that belies the interpretive weight scholars otherwise attribute to his early career as a professor of classical philology and to the fascination with Greek literature and culture that persisted throughout his productive academic life. Jessica N. Berry fills this gap in the literature on Nietzsche by demonstrating how an understanding of the Pyrrhonian skeptical tradition illuminates Nietzsche's own reflections on truth, knowledge, and ultimately, the nature and value of philosophic inquiry. This entirely new reading of Nietzsche's epistemological and ethical views promises to make clear and render coherent his provocative but often opaque remarks on the topics of truth and knowledge and to grant us further insight into his ethics-since the Greek skeptics, like Nietzsche, take up the position they do as a means of promoting well-being and psychological health. In addition, it allows us to recover a portrait of Nietzsche as a philologist and philosophical psychologist that has been too often obscured by commentaries on his thought."--Pub. desc.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: reading Nietzsche skeptically; title: Nietzsche and the pyrrhonian tradition; title: Skepticism in Nietzsche's early work: the case of "on truth and lie"; title: Nietzsche's "naturalism"; title: Perspectivism and ephexis in interpretation; title: Skepticism and health; title: Skepticism as immoralism.