The Seeking out of Everything Strange and Questionable: New Books on Nietzsche and Philosophy

This review surveys four books published in the late 2010s on Nietzsche and philosophy. Nietzsche’s Search for Philosophy by Keith Ansell-Pearson highlights Nietzsche’s middle period, emphasizing Nietzsche’s view of philosophy as a means of cultivating the self. Nietzsche and the Philosophers , edited by Mark T. Conard, brings together a collection of essays on Nietzsche’s relationship to the philosophical canon, with a particular focus on ancient Greek thought and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century philosophers. Nietzsche’s Final Teaching by Michael Allen Gillespie reconsiders Nietzsche’s corpus from the perspective of his teaching of the eternal recurrence. What a Philosopher Is by Laurence Lampert turns to Nietzsche’s autobiographical reflections on his published works. The approach taken in these studies suggests a new trend in Nietzsche scholarship insofar as they encourage the reader to consider the whole of Nietzsche’s œuvre rather than focus on a single book or period of his writing. This is especially significant given the emphasis on Nietzsche’s late works and unpublished notes in existing philosophical considerations of his thought.