The impact of Nietzsche's engagement with the Greek skeptics has never been systematically explored in a book-length work—an inattention that belies the interpretive weight Nietzsche scholars otherwise attribute to his early career as a professor of classical philology and to the fascination with Greek literature and culture that persisted throughout his productive academic life. This book brings together and expands on previously published work on Nietzsche and the Greek skeptics to fill this gap in the literature on Nietzsche by demonstrating how an understanding of ancient skepticism—the Py ... More

The impact of Nietzsche's engagement with the Greek skeptics has never been systematically explored in a book-length work—an inattention that belies the interpretive weight Nietzsche scholars otherwise attribute to his early career as a professor of classical philology and to the fascination with Greek literature and culture that persisted throughout his productive academic life. This book brings together and expands on previously published work on Nietzsche and the Greek skeptics to fill this gap in the literature on Nietzsche by demonstrating how an understanding of ancient skepticism—the Pyrrhonian tradition in particular—promises to illuminate Nietzsche's own reflections on truth, knowledge, and ultimately, the nature and value of philosophic inquiry. It also presents an entirely new reading of Nietzsche's epistemological and ethical views, one that promises to make sense out of some of his most perplexing remarks on these topics. The reading of Nietzsche's work developed here helps to make clear and render coherent his provocative but often opaque remarks on the topics of truth and knowledge and to grant us further insight into his ethics, since the Greek skeptics, like Nietzsche, take up the position they do as a means of promoting well-being and psychological health. In addition, it allows us to recover a portrait of Nietzsche as a philologist and philosophical psychologist that has been too often obscured by commentaries on his thought.