Nickolas Pappas reads Nietzsche's books with care, giving nuanced, critical attention to the causal explanations they propose, while insightfully emphasizing the agonistic posture they adopt in relation to various other books (Plato's Symposium, the Gospel of John and so forth). His fresh and illuminating interpretations recall us to the seductive power of Nietzsche's writing, even as they insist on Nietzsche's ... Read morefailure to deliver on his ambitious philosophical promises. The Nietzsche Disappointment is no disappointment, but an original, first-rate, and welcome contribution to Nietzsche scholarship.
Robert Gooding-Williams, Northwestern University Pappas has put his finger on the problem—Nietzsche's repeated failure to deliver a complete history, an entire causal explanation, to keep his appointments—and explains how this failure is at the root of a learned disappointment that most of us have after studying Nietzsche. I can easily imagine this work becoming to future Nietzsche studies what Walter Kaufmann's Nietzsche has been to scholarship so far.
Brian Domino, Editor, Journal of Nietzsche Studies Nick Pappas has not only written his book in a manner that does not betray Nietzsche, he has written one that makes much of the fact that Nietzsche was in constant and fruitful critical dialogue with the philosophical tradition. Thus Pappas reads texts of Nietzsche against and with those of Descartes, Plato, the New Testament, and Saint Augustine, among others. The result is a richer understanding both of Nietzsche and of those texts.
Tracy B. Strong, Professor of Political Thought and Philosophy, University of Southampton Show Less