Nietzsche in Context presents a comprehensive reinterpretation of Nietzsche’s thought, placing Nietzsche in the context of the philosophers of his own time. Offering a survey of important philosophical themes, Robin Small identifies the writer or writers with whom Nietzsche most felt himself to be engaging in dialogue. This historical dimension is complemented by original analysis and interpretation of the ideas under discussion. Nietzsche in Context takes Nietzsche scholarship into new and fruitful directions. By locating his ideas within a broader context, this book provides a comprehensive reinterpretation of Nietzsche’s thought adding to the continuing interest of his contributions to philosophy.

    Contents: Introduction, Spir and time; Dühring and time; Teichmüller and perspective; Zöllner and space; Mechanism and beyond; Possibility, probability and finality; The mathematics of eternal recurrence; The physics of eternal recurrence; Sensualism and knowledge; Ressentiment, revenge and punishment; Bibliography; Index.

    Biography

    Robin Small

    ’As part of his project of inventing himself as a supremely independent, almost self-generating thinker, Nietzsche concealed the extent of his indebtedness to other thinkers of his own time. It is, however, only by locating the development of his ideas with the space provided by these suppressed sources that we can see him in the round, as part of a historical situation to which, though he may have wished to obscure it, he inevitably belonged. In Nietzsche in Context Robin Small has performed this task in a way that may never have to be bettered. Beautifully written in standard English, it is a work which expands our understanding of Nietzsche on a dozen fronts’. Reg Holindale ’Over the past few decades Robin Small has greatly illuminated key and often neglected aspects of Nietzsche's thinking and has made one of the most important contributions to Nietzsche-research in the English-speaking world. This book will be eagerly anticipated by many scholars and readers of Nietzsche. It is a very strong volume which will be of great interest not only to any serious student of Nietzsche but also to anyone with an interest in the philosophy of time’. Keith Ansell-Pearson, Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick, UK