Nietzsche's Struggle against Pessimism (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781009380294)

On what grounds could life be made worth living, given its abundant suffering? Friedrich Nietzsche was among many who attempted to answer this question. While always seeking to resist pessimism, Nietzsche's strategy for doing so, and the extent to which he was willing to concede conceptual grounds to pessimists, shifted dramatically over time. His reading of pessimists such as Eduard von Hartmann, Olga Plümacher, and Julius Bahnsen--as well as their critics, such as Eugen Dühring and James Sully--has been under-explored in the secondary literature, isolating him from his intellectual context. Patrick Hassan's book seeks to correct this. After closely mapping Nietzsche's philosophical development on to the relevant axiological and epistemological issues, it disentangles his various critiques of pessimism, elucidating how familiar Nietzschean themes (e.g. eternal recurrence, aesthetic justification, will to power, and his critique of Christianity) can and should be assessed against this philosophical backdrop.

Author: Patrick Hassan
ISBN-10: 100938029X
ISBN-13: 9781009380294
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 05/22/2025
Pages: 290
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.87lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.61d