Nietzsche's Naturalism

Christian J. Emden is Professor of German Intellectual History and Political Thought at Rice University, Houston. He is the author of Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of History (2008), and Nietzsche on Language, Consciousness, and the Body (2005), and recently co-edited Beyond Habermas: Democracy, Knowledge, and the Public Sphere (2012), and Changing Perceptions of the Public Sphere (2012).

• Introduction; Part I. Varieties of Philosophical Naturalism: 1. Introduction; 2. The neo-Kantian stance; 3. Nietzsche's 'anti-Darwinism'?; 4. Psychology, experiment, and scientific practice; 5. Three kinds of naturalism; Part II. Evolution and the Limits of Teleology: 6. Introduction; 7. Problems with purpose; 8. The politics of progress; 9. Naturalizing Kant; 10. Genealogy and path dependence; Part III. Genealogy, Nature, and Normativity: 11. Introduction; 12. 'Darwinism's' metaphysical mistake; 13. Living things and the will to power; 14. Toward a natural history of normativity; 15. 'Naturalism in morality'; Bibliography; Index.

'Emden manages to convey the broader historical and scientific backdrop against which Nietzsche was operating, and he offers the reader new material with which to assess Nietzsche's thought. His work - well-written, accessible and meticulously researched - has an impressive command of the secondary research, and it will be considered a welcome addition to the recent arsenal of naturalist perspectives on Nietzsche.' Dirk R. Johnson, Hampden-Sydney College