Christopher Janaway
Biographic Data
| ID | 434770 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christopher Janaway |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christopher |
| FAMILY NAME | Janaway |
| SIGNATURE | JANAWAY C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Birkbeck, University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9600-8837 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 51 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 21 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 8 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Schopenhauer and anti-natalism
This paper assesses the common assertion that Arthur Schopenhauer holds a position similar to David Benatar’s anti-natalism: (1) Never-existing is preferable to coming into existence as a human individual; (2) There is a moral duty not to bring human individuals into existence. Evidence of Schopenhauer’s acceptance of (1) is fairly strong. However, a possible reading of Schopenhauer calls this into question. The ‘highest good’ of negation of the …
Nietzsche's perspectives on suffering
Suffering figures in a number of related and sometimes overlapping themes throughout Nietzsche's works, from The Birth of Tragedy to the works of his last productive year: representing suffering artistically so as to affirm life, undergoing suffering, inflicting it, witnessing it, inflicting it on oneself, seeking redemption through it, interpreting it retrospectively and giving it significance in one's life, wanting to prevent it in others and r…
Nietzsche’s Struggle against Pessimism
Patrick Hassan’s book traces Nietzsche’s engagement with pessimism from its onset prior to the writing of BT, through the change of HH, and into his later works. The book’s governing aims are to clarify what the term “pessimism” applied to in German intellectual life of the 1860s to 1880s and to establish that Nietzsche’s understanding of and reaction to pessimism is not all about Schopenhauer. As the progenitor of philosophical pessimism, Schope…
Desinterestedness and objectivity: Nietzche on Schopenhauer and Kant
No‐self and compassion: Nietzsche and Buddhism
The article examines two claims made by Antoine Panaïoti: (1) That both Nietzsche and Buddhists denounce the self as a misleading fiction. (2) That Buddhist compassion is close to a “compassion of strength” that Nietzsche approves. This article agrees with (1) and disagrees with (2). The descriptive metaphysical commitments of Nietzsche and Buddhism are subordinate to their divergent normative projects. Both reject a single, enduring, and indepen…
The Will to Nothingness: An Essay on Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality
In Bernard Reginster’s account of On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche’s genealogical exercise is ‘functional.’ Nietzsche aims, in his view, to expose the functional role of moral beliefs in serving particular emotional needs of agents. The focus on this theme is tight, to the exclusion of some traditional topics, including perspectivism or truthfulness, as Reginster himself notes. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 tackle essays 1, 2, and 3 of the Genealog…
Worse than the best possible pessimism? Olga Plümacher's critique of Schopenhauer
Olga Plümacher (1839–1895) published a book entitled Der Pessimismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart in 1884. It was an influential book: Nietzsche owned a copy, and there are clear cases where he borrowed phraseology from Plümacher. Plümacher specifies philosophical pessimism as comprising two propositions: ‘The sum of displeasure outweighs the sum of pleasure’ and ‘Consequently the non-being of the world would be better than its being’. Plümache…
Schopenhauer: ‘The World as Will and Representation’ Volume 2
The purpose of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Schopenhauer is to offer translations of the best modern German editions of Schopenhauer's work in a uniform format for Schopenhauer scholars, together with philosophical introductions and full editorial apparatus. The World as Will and Representation contains Schopenhauer's entire philosophy, ranging through epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and action, aesthetics and philosophy of…
Nietzsche as a Scholar of Antiquity and Plato and Nietzsche: Their Philosophical Art
The editors of Nietzsche as a Scholar of Antiquity claim with some justification that few philosophers, and even fewer classicists, have “taken the time to understand [Nietzsche] on his own terms as a scholar of antiquity” (xviii). “Our primary aim,” Jensen and Heit say, “is to show not how Nietzsche's earlier works on antiquity help us to understand Nietzsche, but how they may improve our understanding of antiquity.” I shall suggest that not eve…
More Modesty, Less Charity
This essay is one of ten contributions to a special editorial feature in The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 49.2 (Autumn 2018), in which authors were invited to address the following questions: What is the future of Nietzsche studies? What are the most pressing questions its scholars should address? What texts and issues demand our urgent attention? And as we turn to these issues, what methodological and interpretive principles should guide us? The…
On the Very Idea of “Justifying Suffering”
Many commentators have said that Nietzsche is concerned, either in all or in some parts of his career, with providing a kind of “theodicy,” or with justifying or finding meaning in suffering. In this article, I examine these notions, questioning whether terms such as “theodicy” or “justifying suffering” are helpful in getting Nietzsche's views into focus, and exploring some unclarities concerning the way in which such terms themselves are underst…
Attitudes to suffering: Parfit and Nietzsche
In On What Matters, Derek Parfit argues that Nietzsche does not disagree with central normative beliefs that ‘we’ hold. Such disagreement would threaten Parfit’s claim that normative beliefs are known by intuition. However, Nietzsche defends a conception of well-being that challenges Parfit’s normative claim that suffering is bad in itself for the sufferer. Nietzsche recognizes the phenomenon of ‘growth through suffering’ as essential to well-bei…
Arthur Schopenhauer: Short Philosophical Essays
With the publication of Parerga and Paralipomena in 1851, there finally came some measure of the fame that Schopenhauer thought was his due. Described by Schopenhauer himself as 'incomparably more popular than everything up till now', Parerga is a miscellany of essays addressing themes that complement his work The World as Will and Representation, along with more divergent, speculative pieces. It includes essays on method, logic, the intellect, K…
Schopenhauer: Parerga and Paralipomena : Volume 2
Beauty is False, Truth Ugly: Nietzsche on Art and Life
Against the claim that Nietzsche’s early and late views on confronting the truth about human existence differ widely, this article argues that in The Birth of Tragedy tragic art is affirmative of life and not limited to beautifying illusion, while later works still contain the idea that artistic production of beauty is a falsification necessary to make existence bearable for us. Nietzsche did not start with the view that art’s value lies in sheer…
Schopenhauer: Parerga and Paralipomena Volume 1: Short Philosophical Essays
With the publication of the Parerga and Paralipomena in 1851, there finally came some measure of the fame that Schopenhauer thought was his due. Described by Schopenhauer himself as 'incomparably more popular than everything up till now', the Parerga is a miscellany of essays addressing themes that complement his work The World as Will and Representation, along with more divergent, speculative pieces. It includes his 'Aphorisms on the Wisdom of L…
Nietzsche's Psychology as a Refinement of Plato's
Clark and Dudrick claim that Nietzsche takes Plato's theory of the soul to be “a hypothesis, which his own psychology is an attempt to refine.” This essay accepts that claim, but argues for a more streamlined account of the relation between Nietzsche and Plato than Clark and Dudrick give. (1) There is no justification for their suggestion that Nietzsche diagnoses an “atomistic need” as responsible for what he objects to in Plato's model. (2) The …
Self and Style: Life as Literature Revisited
This article reappraises some aspects of Alexander Nehamas's Nietzsche: Life as Literature. It recognizes as strengths of the book Nehamas's emphasis on Nietzsche's mode of writing and his idea that unified selfhood is an exceptional state that is achieved rather than given. However, it takes issue with the claim that Nietzsche holds a superessentialist view of the self. That view is not clearly supported by textual evidence, does not follow from…
Nietzsche on Morality, Drives, and Human Greatness
Authored item in a collection of original research papers, arising out of the University of Southampton's AHRC-funded research project 'Nietzsche and Modern Moral Philosophy'.
Schopenhauer: On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason and Other Writings
This volume of translations unites three shorter works by Arthur Schopenhauer that expand on themes from his book The World as Will and Representation. In On the Fourfold Root he takes the principle of sufficient reason, which states that nothing is without a reason why it is, and shows how it covers different forms of explanation or ground that previous philosophers have tended to confuse. Schopenhauer regarded this study, which he first wrote a…
Necessity, Responsibility and Character: Schopenhauer on Freedom of the Will
This paper gives an account of the argument of Schopenhauer's essay On the Freedom of the Human Will , drawing also on his other works. Schopenhauer argues that all human actions are causally necessitated, as are all other events in empirical nature, hence there is no freedom in the sense of liberum arbitrium indifferentiae . However, our sense of responsibility or agency (being the ‘doers of our deeds’) is nonetheless unshakeable. To account for…
Nietzsche, Naturalism, and Normativity
Schopenhauer: 'The World as Will and Representation'
First published in 1818, The World as Will and Representation contains Schopenhauer's entire philosophy, ranging through epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and action, aesthetics and philosophy of art, to ethics, the meaning of life and the philosophy of religion, in an attempt to account for the world in all its significant aspects. It gives a unique and influential account of what is and is not of value in existence, the striving and…
Better Consciousness: Schopenhauer's Philosophy of Value
Better Consciousness: Schopenhauer's Philosophy of Value reassesses Schopenhauer's aesthetics and ethics and their contemporary relevance. Features a collection of new essays from leading Schopenhauer scholars Explores a relatively neglected area of Schopenhauer's philosophy Offers a new perspective on a great thinker who crystallized the pessimism of the nineteenth century and has many points of contact with twenty-first century thought.
Autonomy, Affect, and the Self in Nietzsche's Project of Genealogy
The chapter focuses on two areas of Nietzsche's mature philosophy: his perspectivism and his treatment of free will and autonomy. It argues that the notion of ‘perspectival knowing’ put forward in Genealogy of Morality III,12 should be understood as tightly linked with a notion of interpretation achieved through the feeling of multiple affects. Nietzsche's own project of understanding morality in Genealogy, undertaken with a rhetorical technique …
Naturalism and Value in Nietzsche
This book is a major contribution to Nietzsche studies. While it focuses mainly on the Genealogy of Morality, the work generally taken to contain Nietzsche's most sustained arguments and many of his central contributions to philosophy, the book offers an overall interpretation that draws on Nietzsche's total oeuvre. Leiter presents his argument with a high standard of rigour, clarity and scholarship. Non-specialists will be delighted to find such…
Attitudes to suffering: Parfit and Nietzsche
In On What Matters, Derek Parfit argues that Nietzsche does not disagree with central normative beliefs that ‘we’ hold. Such disagreement would threaten Parfit’s claim that normative beliefs are known by intuition. However, Nietzsche defends a conception of well-being that challenges Parfit’s normative claim that suffering is bad in itself for the sufferer. Nietzsche recognizes the phenomenon of ‘growth through suffering’ as essential to well-bei…
Kant's Aesthetics and the 'Empty Cognitive Stock
It is sometimes assumed that Kant’s claim that a judgement of taste is grounded in a pleasure ‘without concepts’ leaves little room for any credible account of critical judgements of art. I argue that even Kant’s conception of free (as opposed to dependent) beauty can provide the framework for an analysis of aesthetic judgements about art works. It is a matter of understanding what roles for concepts Kant prohibits in his analysis of pure judgeme…
On the Very Idea of “Justifying Suffering”
Many commentators have said that Nietzsche is concerned, either in all or in some parts of his career, with providing a kind of “theodicy,” or with justifying or finding meaning in suffering. In this article, I examine these notions, questioning whether terms such as “theodicy” or “justifying suffering” are helpful in getting Nietzsche's views into focus, and exploring some unclarities concerning the way in which such terms themselves are underst…
What a Musical Forgery Isn't
Journal Article WHAT A MUSICAL FORGERY ISN'T Get access Christopher Janaway Christopher Janaway Department of Philosophy, Birkbeck CollegeLondon Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 39, Issue 1, January 1999, Pages 62–71, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/39.1.62 Published: 01 January 1999
Two Kinds of Artistic Duplication
Borges and Danto: A Reply to Michael Wreen
Journal Article BORGES AND DANTO: A REPLY TO MICHAEL WREEN Get access Christopher Janaway Christopher Janaway Dept of Philosophy, Birkbeck CollegeMalet Street, London WC1E 7HX, England Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 32, Issue 1, January 1992, Pages 72–76, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/32.1.72 Published: 01 January 1992
More Modesty, Less Charity
This essay is one of ten contributions to a special editorial feature in The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 49.2 (Autumn 2018), in which authors were invited to address the following questions: What is the future of Nietzsche studies? What are the most pressing questions its scholars should address? What texts and issues demand our urgent attention? And as we turn to these issues, what methodological and interpretive principles should guide us? The…
Beauty in Nature, Beauty in Art
Journal Article BEAUTY IN NATURE, BEAUTY IN ART Get access Christopher Janaway Christopher Janaway Department of Philosophy, Birkbeck CollegeMalet Street, London WC1E 7HX, England Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 33, Issue 4, October 1993, Pages 321–332, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/33.4.321 Published: 01 October 1993
Self and world in Schopenhauer's philosophy
Centres on Schopenhauer's conception of the self and how it relates to the world, primarily dealing with his book The World as Will and Representation. It locates Schopenhauer in relation to Kant, of whom he was both a follower and a critic. While accepting Kant's transcendental idealism and the associated notion of the 'I' as a pure subject of knowledge distinct from the world of objects, Schopenhauer undercuts this notion with a conception of t…
Plato's Analogy Between Painter and Poet
Journal Article PLATO'S ANALOGY BETWEEN PAINTER AND POET Get access Christopher Janaway Christopher Janaway Christopher Janaway, Dept of Philosophy, Birkbeck College, Malet Street, London WCiE 7HX, England Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 31, Issue 1, January 1991, Pages 1–12, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/31.1.1 Published: 01 January 1991
Arts and Crafts in Plato and Collingwood
Borges and Danto: A Reply to Michael Wreen
Journal Article BORGES AND DANTO: A REPLY TO MICHAEL WREEN Get access Christopher Janaway Christopher Janaway Dept of Philosophy, Birkbeck CollegeMalet Street, London WC1E 7HX, England Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 32, Issue 1, January 1992, Pages 72–76, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/32.1.72 Published: 01 January 1992
The Republic of Art and Other Essays
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access The Republic of Art and Other Essays. By T.J. Diffey. (New Studies in Aesthetics, 6; New York: Peter Lang, 1991. Pp. viii + 345. Price $31.00.) Christopher Janaway Christopher Janaway Birkbeck College, University of London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 43, Issue 171, April 1993, Pages 250–251, https://doi.org/10.2307/2220379 Publ…
Beauty in Nature, Beauty in Art
Journal Article BEAUTY IN NATURE, BEAUTY IN ART Get access Christopher Janaway Christopher Janaway Department of Philosophy, Birkbeck CollegeMalet Street, London WC1E 7HX, England Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 33, Issue 4, October 1993, Pages 321–332, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/33.4.321 Published: 01 October 1993
Knowledge and tranquility: Schopenhauer on the value of art
Bertrand Russell claimed that Schopenhauer owed less to Plato than he thought he did. I want to begin by challenging that judgment. On the surface there appears little doubt as to which of Schopenhauer's revered predecessors, Plato and Kant, exerts the greater influence. A large part of Schopenhauer's philosophical vocabulary is appropriated from Kant, and he engages with him in a prolonged, detailed dialogue (seen in most concentrated form in th…
Aesthetic Autonomies: A Discussion of Paul Guyer, Kant and the Experience of Freedom
There are two familiar strategic approaches to Kant's Critique of Judgement which commentators have not always found easy to combine. One would regard the work as fitting snugly into Kant's enterprise as the keystone that absorbs the forces of his theoretical and practical philosophies, uniting them and itself into a single sound structure. That Kant saw it this way is obvious from his Introduction to the Critique . But the other approach has som…
Kant's Aesthetics and the 'Empty Cognitive Stock
It is sometimes assumed that Kant’s claim that a judgement of taste is grounded in a pleasure ‘without concepts’ leaves little room for any credible account of critical judgements of art. I argue that even Kant’s conception of free (as opposed to dependent) beauty can provide the framework for an analysis of aesthetic judgements about art works. It is a matter of understanding what roles for concepts Kant prohibits in his analysis of pure judgeme…
Two Kinds of Artistic Duplication
Images of Excellence: Plato's Critique of the Arts
The book is an examination of Plato's philosophy of art. Central to the book are Plato's arguments in the Republic that traditionally accepted forms of poetry, drama, and music are of questionable value, on the grounds that they do not arise from knowledge on the part of artists, and that they can be harmful because they appeal to the emotional side of the psyche. The book suggests that Plato has a better case for his views than has often been cl…
Willing and Nothingness: Schopenhauer as Nietzsche’s Educator
Willing and Nothingness illuminates Nietzsche's philosophy by examining his relationship with Schopenhauer. Though Nietzsche was influenced by Schopenhauer's work in his early years, in his later writings he often appears dismissive of Schopenhauer. It is a mistake to take either of these facts at face value: a proper assessment demands an independent understanding of Schopenhauer's philosophy, a close look at Nietzsche's development, and an anal…
Images of Excellence: Plato's Critique of the Arts
The Cambridge Companion to Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) is something of a maverick figure in the history of philosophy. He produced a unique theory of the world and human existence based upon his notion of will. This collection analyses the related but distinct components of will from the point of view of epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, aesthetics, ethics, and the philosophy of psychoanalysis. This volume explores Schopenhauer's philosophy of death, his r…
Self and World in Schopenhauer's Philosophy
Centres on Schopenhauer's conception of the self and how it relates to the world, primarily dealing with his book The World as Will and Representation. It locates Schopenhauer in relation to Kant, of whom he was both a follower and a critic. While accepting Kant's transcendental idealism and the associated notion of the ‘I’ as a pure subject of knowledge distinct from the world of objects, Schopenhauer undercuts this notion with a conception of t…
Schopenhauer’s Pessimism
In Book Five of The Gay Science Nietzsche writes that 'unconditional and honest atheism' is 'the locus of Schopenhauer's whole integrity' and 'the presupposition of the way he poses his problem'. If we reject the 'meaning' Christianity assigns to the world, then, writes Nietzsche, 'Schopenhauer's question immediately comes to us in a terrifying way: Has existence any meaning at all?' (Gay Science §357). It is true that, for Schopenhauer, everythi…
Will and Nature
A recent short entry on 'will' in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy uses one-tenth of its word length to inform us that 'the will reached its philosophical apotheosis in Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Idea (1818, 1844)'. This is correct insofar as the central term of that work's account of human nature, and of the nature of the whole world, is Wille, a word we can translate only as will. But it is apt to mislead. For in the history of the …
Schopenhauer's Pessimism
This series of lectures was originally scheduled to include a talk on Schopenhauer by Patrick Gardiner. Sadly, Patrick died during the summer, and I was asked to stand in. Patrick must, I am sure, have been glad to see this series of talks on German Philosophy being put on by the Royal Institute, and he, probably more than anyone on the list, deserves to have been a part of it. Patrick Gardiner taught and wrote with unfailing integrity and quiet …
What a Musical Forgery Isn't
Journal Article WHAT A MUSICAL FORGERY ISN'T Get access Christopher Janaway Christopher Janaway Department of Philosophy, Birkbeck CollegeLondon Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 39, Issue 1, January 1999, Pages 62–71, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/39.1.62 Published: 01 January 1999
Schopenhauer: A Very Short Introduction
From the Publisher: Schopenhauer is considered to be the most readable of German philosophers. This book gives a succinct explanation of his metaphysical system, concentrating on the original aspects of his thought, which inspired many artists and thinkers including Nietzsche, Wagner, Freud, and Wittgenstein. Schopenhauer's central notion is that of the will-a blind, irrational force that he uses to interpret both the human mind and the whole of …
Naturalism and Value in Nietzsche
This book is a major contribution to Nietzsche studies. While it focuses mainly on the Genealogy of Morality, the work generally taken to contain Nietzsche's most sustained arguments and many of his central contributions to philosophy, the book offers an overall interpretation that draws on Nietzsche's total oeuvre. Leiter presents his argument with a high standard of rigour, clarity and scholarship. Non-specialists will be delighted to find such…
Naturalism and Genealogy
Plato and the Arts
Beyond Selflessness
Janaway presents a full commentary on Nietzsche's most studied work, 'On the Geneaology of Morality', and combines close reading of key passages with an exploration of Nietzsche's wider aims. The book will be essential reading for historians of moral philosophy.
Beyond Selflessness: Reading Nietzsche's Genealogy
Philosophy (39 works) · Epistemology (38 works) · Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Hegel (33 works) · Art (20 works) · Philosophical Ethics and Theory (16 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Aesthetics (12 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Literature (11 works) · Law (9 works)