Monday, September 11, 2023

Where to go for PhD studies focused on Nietzsche, 2023 edition

The recommendations are premised on three assumptions about what is needed to do good PhD work on Nietzsche: (1) a strong, general philosophical education; (2) one or more serious Nietzsche scholars to supervise the work; and (3) a philosophical environment in which one can get a solid grounding in the history of philosophy, especially ancient philosophy, Kant, and post-Kantian German philosophy. 

Unfortunately, there are fewer viable choices now than in the past.  Here's the five programs I'd strongly recommend for someone certain they plan to focus on Nietzsche: 

Brown University: a strong department overall (still top 20ish in the US), with one leading Nietzsche specialist, Bernard Reginster; unfortunately, two other senior faculty with sympathetic and complementary interests (Paul Guyer and Charles Larmore) have both retired.  So Reginster is "more on his own" than before, but the department is still worth considering given Reginster's presence.

New York University: the best department in the Anglophone world, with three senior faculty with interests in Nietzsche: Robert Hopkins, John Richardson, and Tamsin Shaw (though only Richardson has worked on Nietzsche in recent years, and even these days he is focused on other topics). The department now also has strong coverage of ancient philosophy and through Richardson and Anja Jauernig solid coverage of Kant and the post-Kantian Continental traditions. Given the department's dominant strengths in other areas to date (e.g., metaphysics, philosophy of mind), so far there have been hardly any students there working on Nietzsche, and only a handful working on other post-Kantian figures--something a prospective student should investigate. 

Oxford University: a very strong faculty (top 2-3 in the Anglophone world), with strong coverage of the history of philosophy, with one significant senior Nietzsche scholar (Peter Kail) and one strong younger Nietzsche specialist (Alexander Prescott-Couch). Stephen Mulhall, Joseph Schear and Mark Wrathall offer good coverage of other aspects of the post-Kantian Continental traditions, especially Heidegger and phenomenology. Also outstanding in ancient philosophy. 

University of Chicago: a strong, if somewhat idiosyncratic, department (top 20ish in the US), with particular strengths in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy and in Kant and post-Kantian German philosophy. Chicago has to have more scholars interested in Nietzsche from more divergent points of view than anywhere else: besides me, also James Conant, Martha Nussbaum, Robert Pippin, David Wellbery, and (part-time still) Michael Forster.   There tend to be a lot of graduate students interested in Nietzsche (six of the ten Chicago PhD students I've worked closely with over the last decade have had serious Nietzsche interests, two have published on Nietzsche, and another wrote a dissertation with a significant Nietzsche component). (Note: All of Pippin's supervision in German philosophy in recent years has been of students working on Kant or Hegel, and he is no longer supervising PhD students in the philosophy department.) 

University of Warwick: a good department overall (top 10ish in the UK), with one well-known Nietzsche scholar (Andrew Huddleston) and one junior scholar working on Nietzsche (Timothy Stoll), plus strong coverage generally of Kant and the post-Kantian Continental traditions (e.g., Quassim Cassam, Stephen Houlgate). 

Here are some other departments a student interested in Nietzsche might consider as well, although they are not as strong as the preceding in my judgment: 

Boston University: a solid department (top 50ish in the US), with a strong commitment to the history of philosophy, including Kant and the post-Kantian Continental traditions (e.g., Daniel Dahlstrom, Sally Sedgwick). BU has one well-known Nietzsche specialist (Paul Katsafanas, though he is pushing a rather distinctive, and to my mind, implausible line about Nietzsche these days, though I still highly commend several of his earlier papers that we've discussed on this blog in the past--but students sympatico to his approach would no doubt find him an excellent person with whom to work). 

Stanford University: a strong department (top 15 in the US), with two senior faculty who have done important work on Nietzsche: Lanier Anderson and Nadeem Hussain. In the past, I would have put Stanford in the top group, but Nadeem tells me he's not really working much on Nietzsche anymore. Also strong in ancient philosophy and, with Anderson and Michael Friedman, also very good for Kant. The department's center of gravity, judging from its PhD graduates, does appear to be more in logic, language, mind, metaphysics and epistemology. 

University of California, Riverside: a solid department overall (top 30 in the US) and  traditionally one of the best places in the U.S. to study the Continental traditions in philosophy with two important senior faculty--Maudemarie Clark (a leading Nietzsche specialist) and Pierre Keller (Kant, German Idealism, phenomenology)--as well as the recently tenured Sasha Newton (Kant, German Idealism) and Georgia Warnke (Critical Theory) in Political Science. The department is especially notable for the way in which the study of the Continental traditions is closely integrated with the study of the rest of philosophy, to the enrichment of both. (It's also a very collegial place, one of my favorite departments to visit in the country.) There is also a large and impressive group of graduate students working on the post-Kantian traditions and/or interested in Nietzsche.  The problem now is that Clark will soon retire, and it's unclear whether the department will appoint another Nietzsche specialist.

University College London: a good department (top 10 in the UK), with two faculty who publish on Nietzsche: Sebastian Gardner and Tom Stern. Gardner is a major scholar of Kant and German Idealism. Gardner is excellent, Stern's work is weak. 

University of Essex: a narrow department, but strongly focused on Kant and the post-Kantian Continental traditions. One well-known Nietzsche specialist on faculty: Beatrice Han-Pile. 

University of Southampton: A solid but not top 15 UK department, with a particular strength in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche--most notably Christopher Janaway, but others in philosophy or cognate units include David Owen and Aaron Ridley.

Yale University:  Robert Gooding-Williams is moving from Columbia to Yale, and he continues to be interested in Nietzsche, although much of his published work is on philosophy of race in recent years.   The Department is strong in 19th-century German philosophy (Paul Franks, Jake McNulty), and also outstanding in the history of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy and modern philosophy.

For a student looking to do a terminal M.A. first, s/he might consider any of the UK departments (where students first do a master's degree or B.Phil. before doing the PhD), or, in the U.S., Georgia State University remains far and away the best choice: in addition to solid coverage of moral, political and legal philosophy, ancient philosophy, and philosophy of mind and cognitive science, the department has two well-known scholars who work on Nietzsche (Jessica Berry and Gregory Moore), and two other faculty who work on Kant and post-Kantian German philosophy (Sebastian Rand and Eric Wilson). 

The best Nietzsche scholar on the European Continent is Mattia Riccardi, now at the University of Porto in Portugal. Also in Portugal, The New University of Lisbon continues to have a lively philosophical community interested in Nietzsche led by Joao Constancio. Andreas Urs Summer at the University of Freiburg in Germany is doing interesting historical and philological work, albeit of somewhat less clear philosophical import.

Wednesday, October 5, 2022

NANS conference both live and on Zoom this weekend

 Paul Katsafanas (Boston University) shared this information, which may interest some readers:

As you know, the NANS 2022 Conference takes place this Friday and Saturday at Brown University.  I'm delighted to let you know that for those who can't attend in person, the event will be hosted on Zoom.  You can find the conference schedule here: 

 http://www.northamericannietzschesociety.com/nans-2022.html

 All times are EST.  If you'd like to join via Zoom, you can use the information below:

 Topic: 2022 North American Nietzsche Conference

Join Zoom Meeting
https://brown.zoom.us/j/93500774489

Meeting ID: 935 0077 4489
One tap mobile
+13092053325,,93500774489# US
+13126266799,,93500774489# US (Chicago)

Dial by your location
        +1 309 205 3325 US
        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
        +1 646 558 8656 US (New York)
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        +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
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        877 853 5247 US Toll-free
Meeting ID: 935 0077 4489
Find your local number: https://brown.zoom.us/u/aGBrOqnQb

Sunday, September 4, 2022

"Nietzsche on Morality" in Japan

I owe to Yuma Oto the translation of the 2nd edition of NOM into Japanese. Mr. Oto writes:
1. The publication of the Japanese translation has made the Japanese academic philosophy magazine Philcul feature "Analytic Nietzsche Studies" with articles by three Nietzsche scholars (Tsunafumi Takeuchi [Ryukoku University], Kota Umeda [Sophia University], Kota Taniyama [Kyorin University]) and notably by Takashi Iida (Professor emeritus of Keio University, ex-president of the Philosophical Association of Japan, also known as an eminent philosopher of language and logic [he has studied philosophy at the University of Michigan back in the 1970s] and a translator of Quine’s From a Logical Point of View). Of course, all the articles address the book. It has been just published yesterday!


2. In The Shukan Dokushojin (one of the two major weekly book-review-newspapers in Japan) July 22, the book has been selected as one of the three most impressive books published in the first half of the year by Susumu Morimura (Professor emeritus of Hitotsubashi University, ex-president of Japan Association of Legal Philosophy, also known as a translator of Parfit’s Reasons and Persons and On What Matters I & II).

 

3. Also in the same Dokushojin March 18, Takao Eguchi (Professor of Rikkyo University, known as a leading scholar of Deleuze in Japan) has published a generally positive review of the book.
I'm delighted by this and grateful to Mr. Oto for making this work available to Japanese scholars and students.

Monday, November 22, 2021

Sommer on the Genealogy and naturalism

I've started reading Andreas Urs Sommer's learned (but not very philosophical) commentary on the Genealogy (Kommentar zu Nietzsches Zur Genealogie der Moral [Berlin:  de Gruyter, 2019]).  He writes regarding my naturalist reading:  "If this concept ["naturalism"] means that one avoids supernatural explanations and also that the mind is taken to be something natural, it is of course trivial" (p. 41).  I suppose that might be taken as a concession that the naturalist reading is correct, except there's more involved in my naturalist reading; indeed, I can't tell whether Sommer actually read my discussion of naturalism from his superficial characterizations.  I was even more surprised when Sommer proceeded to dismiss the idea of Nietzsche's naturalism by invocation of Anthony Jensen's (implausible to my mind) reading of the Genealogy, without further discussion or argument (p. 42).

Checking the index references for discussions of naturalism, there is nothing more substantive to be found.  At p. 580, for example, Sommer refers readers to the (interesting but unconvincing) paper by Sebastian Gardner (discussed here) regarding Nietzsche's "alleged or doubtful" naturalism, which is now reduced to the view that man is "one animal among other animals," which is pronounced a "commonplace" of the evolutionary theory of the time.  Indeed, it was, but no defender of the naturalist reading, including me, thinks that is what is at stake in Nietzsche's naturalism.  Earlier he refers to the "peculiarities of the [Anglophone] naturalism debate," but in the context, bizarrely, of discussing Daniel Conway's "strictly naturalistic explanation" of the origins of civilized society (at the hands of the "blond beasts") in GM II:17 (p. 356).  Here again the reading is not described in any detail, and is dismissed as anachronistic.  What bearing any of this has on my naturalistic reading--which Sommer admits (p. 41) popularized the "specter" of Nietzsche's naturalism--is unclear.  If Sommer has an actual argument against that "specter," I haven't yet found it, but I don't get the sense that philosophical argument, as opposed to diligent scholarship, is his strong suit, and that he has a tendency to assume that philosophy he doesn't understand is really just the result of bad philology.

I will dig further into the volume, but what I've read so far tends to confirm what Mattia Riccardi (Porto) says in his review of the Sommer volume in  Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie:

Though [he] implicitly recognizes that GM transcends these [historical] “contexts” – Sommer also adds that the point is not at all to “diminish its originality” –, the Kommentar does often seem – at least to me – to treat GM as the mere result of Nietzsche’s engagement with a host of contemporary authors working in the most disparate fields. My impression, on the contrary, is that Nietzsche often uses their work as a Tractarian ladder to be promptly thrown away. (Indeed, Sommer’s Kommentar seems to confirm that this pattern occurs frequently.) To be clear: I am not at all suggesting that Sommer’s careful reconstruction of Nietzsche’s intellectual environment has nothing to contribute to a proper understanding of his thought....Rather, what I am contesting is simply that a knowledge of that background, no matter how exhaustive, suffices to make sense of GM qua philosophical work....
 
The recurrent charge [against some philosophical scholarship] is that because of its severe lack of philological accuracy it ends up construing a more or less fictional Nietzsche. See, for instance: “From these discussions much can be learnt about the effects that the lack of philology can produce in philosophy as well as about the way in which interesting thought experiments in the style of analytical philosophy can be mounted on the basis of Nietzsche snippets, without any serious reading of his works” (80).... In my view, this criticism fails to hit its target. First, as I have suggested before, no bottom-up reconstruction of Nietzsche’s text can settle the interpretive puzzles it raises. Second, and relatedly, those puzzles concern the questions posed and the claims put forward by Nietzsche,
which – as Sommer acknowledges – clearly transcend all the “contexts” that played some role in the textual genesis of his work. Their resolution demands philosophical insight and scrutiny, skills that can’t be replaced by philological discoveries and that philosophers trained in analytic philosophy may very well display.

 

We've seen the consequences of the attitude Riccardi here criticizes in the feeble work of Tom Stern, who is much influenced by Sommer, but lacks the latter's redeeming virtue of doing original work on the historical context and sources.

Saturday, November 6, 2021

Most cited Anglophone books on Nietzsche according to Google Scholar

(These are scholarly monographs on Nietzsche published originally in English.  Citations are rounded to the nearest 10.)

Rank by total citations

Rank

Author

Book

Year first published

Total citations

1

Alexander Nehamas (emeritus, Princeton)

Nietzsche: Life as Literature

1985

2410

2

Walter Kaufmann (late of Princeton)

Nietzsche:  Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist

1950

2220

3

Maudemarie Clark (UC Riverside; also emerita, Colgate)

Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy

1990

1070

4

Brian Leiter (Chicago)

Nietzsche on Morality

2002

  990

5

Arthur Danto (late of Columbia)

Nietzsche as Philosopher

1965

  870

 

Rank by citations per year since publication

Rank

Author

Book

Year first published

Citations per year

1

Alexander Nehamas (emeritus, Princeton)

Nietzsche: Life as Literature

1985

67

2

Brian Leiter (Chicago)

Nietzsche on Morality

2002

52

3

Bernard Reginster (Brown)

The Affirmation of Life:  Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihlism

2006

43

4

Maudemarie Clark (UC Riverside; also emerita, Colgate)

Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy

1990

35

5

Walter Kaufmann (late of Princeton)

Nietzsche:  Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist

1950

31