Andrew Huddleston - Böcker

In Nietzsche's first book The Birth of Tragedy (1872), cultural renewal is paramount among his concerns. In the person of Richard Wagner, Nietzsche saw someone who might bring together a fragmented and directionless modern society through the creation of tragic festival that, through its mythic content, would allegedly give renewed meaning and purpose to human life. The standard story about Nietzsche's philosophical development is that he becomes disillusioned with this project and his mature philosophy undergoes a radical shift. Instead of reposing his hopes in a broader culture, he comes to occupy himself instead with the fate of a few great individuals, or, at the extreme, perhaps mainly with his own quasi-artistic self-cultivation. On these readings, to the extent that he remains concerned with culture at all, it is only as something whose noxious influence threatens this cadre of elite individuals. Nietzsche on the Decadence and Flourishing of Culture questions this individualist reading that has become prevalent, and develops an alternative interpretation of Nietzsche as a more social thinker who sees collective cultural achievements as no less important. Great individuals are not all that matter. Andrew Huddleston uses Nietzsche's perfectionistic ideal of a flourishing culture and his diagnostics of cultural malaise as a point of departure for reconsidering many of the central themes in Nietzsche's ethics and social philosophy, as well as for understanding the interconnections with the form of cultural criticism that was part and parcel of his distinctive philosophical enterprise.

Friendship has been a central topic for philosophical reflection ever since philosophy itself was born in the circle of friends who gathered around Socrates to follow his probing examinations of how we should live.In this outstanding collection, which takes its lead from the work of Alexander Nehamas, a distinguished roster of contributors examines the many dimensions of the philosophy of friendship. They broaden the discussion beyond common questions about friendship obligations and their relation to the claims of morality to explore a much wider set of issues, including:friendship in the context of Plato, Aristotle, Montaigne, Kant, Goethe, William James, and Nietzschethe darker side of friendship and “frenemies”friendship in literature and film, including André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s The Return dogs and friendshipfriendship and aesthetic judgmentNehamas’s own distinctive analogy between the value of friendship and the value of beauty.Friendship: Philosophical Explorations will be of interest to those in philosophy studying and researching ethics and aesthetics, as well as students and scholars in related disciplines such as literature and film.

Friendship has been a central topic for philosophical reflection ever since philosophy itself was born in the circle of friends who gathered around Socrates to follow his probing examinations of how we should live.In this outstanding collection, which takes its lead from the work of Alexander Nehamas, a distinguished roster of contributors examines the many dimensions of the philosophy of friendship. They broaden the discussion beyond common questions about friendship obligations and their relation to the claims of morality to explore a much wider set of issues, including:friendship in the context of Plato, Aristotle, Montaigne, Kant, Goethe, William James, and Nietzschethe darker side of friendship and “frenemies”friendship in literature and film, including André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s The Return dogs and friendshipfriendship and aesthetic judgmentNehamas’s own distinctive analogy between the value of friendship and the value of beauty.Friendship: Philosophical Explorations will be of interest to those in philosophy studying and researching ethics and aesthetics, as well as students and scholars in related disciplines such as literature and film.