In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nietzsche’s Critiques: The Kantian Foundations of His ThoughtDaniel SchumanR. Kevin Hill. Nietzsche’s Critiques: The Kantian Foundations of His Thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003. Pp. xvi + 242. Cloth, $45.00.This important book presents a broad and systematic study of Kant's influence on Nietzsche. Hill contends that Nietzsche, throughout the course of his philosophical career, wrestled with fundamental ideas presented in all three of Kant's Critiques. In the preliminary chapter, (...) Hill chronicles Nietzsche's familiarity with Kant by briefly examining the nineteenth century interpretations of Kant that Nietzsche was known to have read, namely those of Kuno Fisher, Friedrich Lange, and Schopenhauer. Hill also details Nietzsche's references to Kant throughout the published and unpublished writings, even providing a table that lists the number of references to Kant in five-year increments from 1865 through 1889 (19). Whether or not one agrees with the arguments in the remainder of the book, this first chapter stands alone as a useful historical introduction and reference guide for anyone interested in Kant and Nietzsche in light of early Neo-Kantianism.Chapters 2 and 3 focus upon Nietzsche's early encounter with the Critique of Judgment. Hill offers an interpretation of the third Critique that focuses on the centrality of reflective judgment in that text. The author shows how both aesthetic and teleological judgments are reflective, as opposed to determinative, in the sense that they exemplify ways that the subject is driven to interpret or conceive of the world, e.g., "as if" it were designed (70). He argues that Kant's conception of reflective judgmenthad a significant influence upon Nietzsche's early views on teleology and aesthetics. Hill also proposes that Nietzsche's early published and unpublished writings, including the Birth of Tragedy, are more indebted to Kant's metaphysics and conception of the supersensible, than they are to Schopenhauer's metaphysics of the will. Though Nietzsche retained a conception of the noumenal, Hill argues that he rejected Schopenhauerian determinative judgments about noumena in favor of Kantian reflective judgments similar to those in the third Critique (94).Chapters 4, 5, and 6 of this book deal with Kant's influence on Nietzsche's mature critiques of metaphysics and epistemology. Hill contends that Nietzsche's naturalism and empiricism were a response to, and outgrowth of, a variety of specific metaphysical and epistemological claims made in the first Critique. For example, by focusing on space and time, he compares Kant's transcendental idealism with Nietzsche's naturalism. Hill shows that Nietzsche generally accepted Kant's contention that the spacio-temporal structure of the phenomenal or natural world is "mind-dependent" (127). However, he also proposes that because Nietzsche had access to more advanced empirical theories, he eventually came to the conclusion that Kant's rigid a priori, Euclidian characterization of the phenomenal stands as a "falsified" interpretation of nature (132, 191). Hill contends that while Nietzsche [End Page 503] accepts that nature is a product of the mind, he was also committed to the idea that there may be better or more accurate ways of characterizing nature. In this section of the book, Hill could have done more to clarify how, for Nietzsche, nature is both dependent upon the mind (what Hill labels "panpsychism"), yet still somehow "transcends us" (138). Nonetheless, one does gain from these chapters an appreciation of the influence that Kant's theoretical philosophy had on Nietzsche.The final chapter investigates the ways that the three essays of the Genealogy of Morals confront various aspects of Kant's practical philosophy (Hill does provide evidence that Nietzsche read the second Critique prior to writing the Genealogy [202]). Hill claims Nietzscheian genealogy is employed as an attack upon various aspects of Kant's rational conception of morality, including his dependence upon moral intuition (202, 205, 206). He also details Nietzsche's reaction against Kant's dependence upon the noumenal as the foundation for moral freedom and responsibility (219, 222-29). Nonetheless, Hill finds points of agreement between Kant and Nietzsche on morality. For instance, he argues that Kant and Nietzsche share somewhat similar conceptions of moral agency in the sense that Nietzsche "agrees with Kant's characterization... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.1 (2001) 158-159 [Access article in PDF] Christopher Janaway, editor. The Cambridge Companion to Schopenhauer. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. 592. Cloth, $59.95. Schopenhauer's import as a original thinker has often been downplayed or underestimated by contemporary commentators and his philosophy is often examined only in light of his influence upon Nietzsche. This collection of thirteen essays assembled by Christopher Janaway (...) does much to overcome scholarly neglect of Schopenhauer by illustrating the original aspects of his thought as well as the widespread influence his philosophy has had. One gains from this book not only a solid introduction to Schopenhauer's major ideas but an appreciation of the significant contributions he made to the philosophical milieu of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.In the first essay, Gunter Zöller examines how Schopenhauer's unique notion of selfhood fits into his overall "dual aspect" theory of the world as both will and representation. He also discusses Schopenhauer's conception of the self within the context of his claims regarding the negation of the will. The following article, by David Hamlyn, is also broad in scope and provides a comprehensive examination of Schopenhauer's epistemology in The World as Will and Representation. He looks at the various notions of knowledge that are employed in Schopenhauer's system and how they are determined by the different classes of objects of knowledge that Schopenhauer distinguishes. In the third essay F. C. White turns to Schopenhauer's earlier work, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle ofSufficient Reason. White runs through Schopenhauer's arguments regarding each of the four classes of objects which comprise the world as representation in the Fourfold Root. He reinforces the point made by Schopenhauer himself, that this is a text that can not be overlooked if one is to gain a sufficient understanding of his primary work. The Fourfold Root, like the rest of Schopenhauer's philosophy, is deeply engaged with the philosophy of Kant. This is the topic of the next article by Paul Guyer. Guyer gives a detailed summary and evaluation of Schopenhauer's appropriation and critique of Kant's theoretical philosophy. According to Guyer, Schopenhauer and Kant employ quite different methodologies, Kant's being thoroughly transcendental and Schopenhauer's more phenomenological. Also, Schopenhauer's phenomenological approach to epistemological questions often skews his interpretation and evaluation of Kant's transcendental arguments. [End Page 158]Christopher Janaway, in the first of his two contributions, turns the focus to Schopenhauer's famous metaphysical doctrine of the will. He provides a particularly illuminating discussion of Schopenhauer's conception of will as the "thing-in-itself." The thing-in-itself is also the subject of the next article by Noira Nichols. Despite his reputation for not significantly altering his major positions, Nichols argues that there is a distinct difference between Schopenhauer's earlier, more Kantian, conception of the thing-in-itself with his later, more mystical, conception. She attributes these conceptual shifts to the increasing influence of Eastern philosophy upon Schopenhauer's thinking. Schopenhauer's broad analysis of the concept of will includes complex aesthetic and moral theories which are addressed in the contributions by Cheryl Foster and David Cartwright. In her contribution, Cheryl Foster examines Schopenhauer's aesthetics by focusing on his views regarding the relationship of art and science, art and the limitations of the intellect, and the nature of artistic genius. Turning to Schopenhauer's moral theory, David Cartwright explicates Schopenhauer's "narrower" sense of morality as discussed in his often overlooked On the Basis of Morality, rather than focusing on the "higher metaphysical-ethical standpoint" exemplifed in the World as Will and Representation. Cartwright also attempts to demonstrate "... how Schopenhauer has contributed and could contribute to contemporary moral thought" (253).The next group of articles address the issue of Schopenhauer's pessimism. Dale Jacquette looks at Schopenhauer's understanding of the meaning of death in light of his pessimistic metaphysic. Included in Jacquette's study is an explanation of Schopenhauer's views on suicide and asceticism. Covering similar territory, Christopher Janaway... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Willing and Nothingness: Schopenhauer as Nietzsche's EducatorDaniel SchumanChristopher Janaway, Editor. Willing and Nothingness: Schopenhauer as Nietzsche's Educator. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. 293. Cloth, $65.00.Considering how many English language studies of Nietzsche's thought exist, it is quite remarkable that more has not been written on the question of the influence that Arthur Schopenhauer, his self-described "educator," had on his philosophy. The essays in this important volume (...) go a long way toward filling this vacancy in Nietzsche (and Schopenhauer) scholarship. Christopher Janaway has assembled an impressive group of articles that, taken together, effectively reveal the complexity and depth of Nietzsche's Schopenhauerian inheritance. This collection is both focused and comprehensive. These essays deal with almost all of the major points of agreement and contention between these two philosophers without exaggerating the influence of Schopenhauer on Nietzsche.In his introduction and contributing essay, Janaway highlights some of the general ways in which Schopenhauer exerted an influence on Nietzsche throughout his philosophical development. Janaway argues that despite Nietzsche's steadfast rejection of Schopenhauer's metaphysics there are important ways in which he remained indebted to his mentor even in his later works. For instance, though Schopenhauer embraces the mystical ideal of freeing the intellect from the will, it is his view that in the phenomenal realm the intellect is essentially an instrument of the will. According to Janaway, this claim that the intellect must be "rooted in a living, striving entity" had a profound [End Page 133] influence on Nietzsche's later thought, especially on his 'perspectivism' (35). The second essay in this volume, contributed by Maudemarie Clark, makes the similar claim that Nietzsche's ideas regarding truth and knowledge are grounded in the naturalistic conception of intellect he inherited from Schopenhauer. Clark claims Schopenhauer's philosophy, once divested of its more extreme metaphysical aspects, can be understood as a form of empiricism in which all knowing is "rooted in affect" (74). This is an idea that Clark also takes to be at the heart of Nietzsche's perspectivism.Other essays deal with two issues that were of primary importance to both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche: aesthetics and morality. Ivan Soll compares their respective aesthetic theories and argues that their views regarding the significance of art are not as dissimilar as Nietzsche himself claimed. They both see art "through the lens of life" and as a way of responding to the suffering that characterizes human existence. However, whereas Schopenhauer sees art as a means of denying the will to life, Nietzsche sees it as means of affirming life in the face of suffering. Like Soll, David Cartwright argues that Nietzsche embraces Schopenhauer's stance on the pervasiveness of suffering in human life. From this standpoint he examines both Nietzsche's criticisms and appropriation of certain elements of Schopenhauer's moral philosophy. Cartwright cleverly argues that Nietzsche's scathing critique of Schopenhauer's asceticism and morality of Mitleid actuallyrelies upon Schopenhauer's methodology and incorporates elements of his pessimism.Pessimism is dealt with in more detail in the essays by Kathleen Higgins and David Berman. Higgins claims that Schopenhauer's and Nietzsche's basic conceptions of will are actually quite similar. Both philosophers understand and interpret life in fundamentally voluntaristic terms. However, the two philosophers part ways when it comes to how will is characterized. Schopenhauer's pessimism and Nietzsche's relative optimism, Higgins claims, spring more from a difference in the temperament of the two thinkers, rather than a difference in their conceptions of will. In his essay, David Berman reinforces Higgins' view that Schopenhauer and Nietzsche share the same basic understanding of will even though their evaluations of it differ. However, Berman claims that Nietzsche came to see Schopenhauer as a closet epistemological optimist whose purported pessimism was "being used to protect and insulate him from the world's pain" (190). It is Berman's view that Nietzsche's self-proclaimed recognition of Schopenhauer's pessimism as a kind of "self-deceived" optimism actually cleared the way for Nietzsche to develop his philosophy of power and life affirmation. Whereas Schopenhauer retreats into the false comfort of resignation and denial, Nietzsche's... (shrink)