Recent years have seen a very considerable revival of interest in Nietzsche. However, many of the studies available in English fail to do justice to the complexity of his writings and tend to involve only very partial and limited readings of his work. Peter Poellner offers a new and comprehensive interpretation and a detailed critical assessment of Nietzsche's later ideas on epistemology and metaphysics, drawing extensively not only on his published works but also on his voluminous notebooks, largely unpublished. Poellner examines Nietzsche's various distinct lines of thought on the traditionally central areas of philosophy and shows in what specific sense Nietzsche, as he himself claimed, might be said to have moved beyond these questions. Throughout the book, considerable attention is paid both to the historical context of his writings and to subsequent developments in philosophy - English-language as well as Continental European. Among the themes discussed are Nietzsche's relation to scepticism and to evolutionary epistemology; his analysis of 'objective reality' andthe associated 'perspectivism'; his criticism of the metaphysician's 'will to truth' and the related analysis of the intellectual paradigm he called the 'ascetic ideal'; his notion of unconscious mental states; and the concept of the will to power and its relation to metaphysics. Poellner, while recognizing the originality of Nietzsche's influential new philosophical paradigm, shows that his thought has closer affinities to the orthodox philosophical tradition than is generally supposed.

About the Author
Peter Poellner is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Warwick.

Reviews
those wishing to discover a "new" yet "traditional" Nietzsche may eaily encounter him in Nietzsche and Metaphysics. * Christopher Adair-Toteff, German Studies Review *
Poellner's study must supplant Schact's as the standard point of departure for any future treatment of Nietzsche's metaphysical views ... Poellner's treatment of these themes is unusually thorough and philosophically rich ... substantial, scholarly. * Brian Letter, Mind *
Peter Poellner's book ... subjects Nietzsche's thinking to rigorous scrutiny. He is, however, sufficiently touched by the grandeur of Nietzsche's overall project to lend his considerable analytic skills to a sympathetic reconstruction ... This is an extremely intelligent, closely-argued book that deserves the attention of any serious Nietzsche scholar. * Times Higher Education Supplement *
Poellner brings philosophical learning of an impressive scope to bear on his reading of Nietzsche ... Poellner leads the reader down a lengthy and winding path ... the path is one worth taking, not so much for its ultimate destination, which is a familiar rejection of Nietzsche's antiessentialism and psychology, but rather for the engaging twists and turns it takes along the way * Samuel Kerstein, University of Maryland at College Park, Review of Metaphysics, March 1997 *



Book Information
ISBN 9780198250630
Author Peter Poellner
Format Paperback
Page Count 332
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 434g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 138mm * 18mm