Seeing Double

Raymond Geuss is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge.

• Preface1 Montaigne and the Essay2 Rabelais and the Low Road to Modernity3 Nietzsche’s Philosophical Ethnography4 Autopsy and Polyphony5 Speaking Well, Speaking Correctly6 Succeed, Fail, Fail Better7 HopeNotesIndex

"This is a wonderful collection of essays covering a broad range of important topics. The title Seeing Double refers to a recurring theme in the book: the need for multiple perspectives. The essays all display Geuss’s hallmark combination of originality, boldness, insight, clarity of argument, erudition, and stylistic elegance. It would be hard to praise this collection too strongly."Michael N. Forster, Bonn University"Geuss invites his readers to converse with an eccentric tradition of European thinkers who refused to indulge the belief in a single standpoint from which the world must make sense. His collection is an invitation to us to wean ourselves from optimism and to cultivate recognition of the plurality and conflict of our embodied, social, and world-dependent existence as a first step toward a liveable future."Katherine Harloe, School of Advanced Study, University of London"The book has all the things that make Geuss's writing so splendid: the vast learning, the interest in widely different areas of culture, the dry wit. Many philosophers would be proud to have written even one of these essays. A whole collection of them is a very nice thing to have."Philosophy in Review"If reflecting on (social criticism) with the historical sweep and acuity of Geuss's scholarship does not currently qualify as exemplary philosophy, then it should. The profession needs exactly the sort of discussion to which this terrific book contributes."Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews"Seeing Double is, like all of Raymond Geuss’s books, a liberating break from an information landscape where insights usually come packaged in banal, easily digestible and infantilizing language.”Ny Tid