Ken Gemes
Biographic Data
| ID | 992243 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ken Gemes |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ken |
| FAMILY NAME | Gemes |
| SIGNATURE | GEMES K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Birkbeck, University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4454-7537 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 53 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Who are Nietzsche's slaves
This paper argues that Nietzsche is deliberately imprecise in his characterization of what he calls the slave revolt in morality. In particular, none of the people or groups he nominates as instigators of the slave revolt, namely, Jewish priests, the Jewish people, the prophets, Jesus, and Paul, were literally slaves. Analysis of Nietzsche's texts, including his usage of the term “slaves,” and his sources concerning those he nominates as the inst…
Who are Nietzsche’s Christians
Nietzsche famously rails against Christian virtues such as humility and compassion. Yet he is well aware that historical Christians, especially those in positions of power, typically preached such values but did not practice them. This raises the question whom Nietzsche is really targeting in his animadversions against Christian virtues. The answer developed here is that his real targets are his contemporaries, including atheist, socialists such …
Replies to Commentators on “The Biology of Evil”
In this article, I reply to commentators Leonard Feldblyum, Robert Holub, and David Owen on my article “The Biology of Evil.” While I concede that Nietzsche often invoked standard degenerationist rhetoric about breeding, I argue that Nietzsche, unlike other degenerationists, never offered any concrete plans for such breeding and was not interested in raising the capacities of average citizens, but rather was concerned with the exceptional few. I …
The Biology of Evil: Nietzsche on Degeneration ( Entartung ) and Jewification ( Verjüdung )
This article examines Nietzsche's use of the rhetorics of degeneration (Entartung) and “jewification” (Verjüdung), arguing that he often, though not always, uses them in unconventional ways to undermine his audience's comfortable assumptions about their values and identity. In doing so, he challenges the idea of health as the isolation of alleged infectious elements and promotes the ideal of a “great health” predicated on the incorporation of suc…
The Culture of Myth and the Myth of Culture
Nietzsche’s Illusion
It is sometimes claimed that Nietzsche’s primary focus was the problem of suffering. Against this, the central contention of this chapter is that Nietzsche’s focus was on the existential lack of meaning, which he took to be particular apposite to modern times. Thus, in contrast to Schopenhauer, for Nietzsche suffering as such was never the fundamental objection to life. The authors locate this position in the third essay of the Genealogy where Ni…
Individual and Community in Nietzsche's Philosophy
Life’s Perspectives
Book synopsis: The diversity of Nietzsche's books, and the sheer range of his philosophical interests, have posed daunting challenges to his interpreters. This Oxford Handbook addresses this multiplicity by devoting each of its 32 essays to a focused topic, picked out by the book's systematic plan. The aim is to treat each topic at the best current level of philosophical scholarship on Nietzsche. The first group of papers treat selected biographi…
The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche
A unifying theme in Nietzsche’s early works (1870–6) is the claim that ‘illusion’, ‘deception’ and ‘lies’ are necessary to make tolerable one’s experience of the world. e central mes- sage of Nietzsche’s first published work, e Birth of Tragedy (1872), is that the affirmation of life requires ‘illusion’ which allows us to cope with the ‘insight into the horrible truth’ of our condition (BT 7). In a recent book (Reginster 2006), Bernard Reginster …
Nietzsche’s Metaphysical Sketches
An international team of scholars offer a broad engagement with the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, discussing the main topics of his philosophy, under the headings: values, epistemology and metaphysics, and will to power. Other sections discuss his life, his relations to other philosophers, and his individual works.
Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy
Nietzsche on Free Will, Autonomy, and the Sovereign Individual
In some texts Nietzsche vehemently denies the possibility of free will; in others he seems positively to countenance its existence. This chapter distinguishes two different notions of free will. Agency free will is intrinsically tied to the question of agency; what constitutes an action as opposed to a mere doing. Deserts free will is intrinsically tied to the question of desert; of who does and does not merit punishment and reward. It is shown t…
Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy
Nietzsche is a central figure in our modern understanding of the individual as freely determining his or her own values. These essays by leading Nietzsche scholars investigate what this freedom really means.
Freud and Nietzsche on Sublimation
The notion of sublimation is essential to Nietzsche and Freud. However, Freud's writings fail to provide a persuasive notion of sublimation. In particular, Freud's writings are confused on the distinction between pathological symptoms and sublimation and on the relation between sublimation and repression. After rehearsing these problems in some detail, it is proposed that a return to Nietzsche allows for a more coherent account of sublimation, it…
Nihilism and the Affirmation of Life: A Review of and Dialogue with Bernard Reginster 1
Verisimilitude and Content
Irrelevance: Strengthening the Bayesian requirements
I — Ken Gemes
I—Ken Gemes Get access Ken Gemes Ken Gemes Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, Volume 80, Issue 1, 1 June 2006, Pages 321–338, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8349.2006.00146.x Published: 11 August 2015
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…
Postmodernism's Use and Abuse of Nietzsche
I focus on Nietzsche's architectural metaphor of self‐construction in arguing for the claim that postmodern readings of Nietzsche misunderstand his various attacks on dogmatic philosophy as paving the way for acceptance of a self characterized by fundamental disunity. Nietzsche's attack on essentialist dogmatic metaphysics is a call to engage in a purposive self‐creation under a unifying will, a will that possesses the strength to reinterpret his…
Inductive Skepticism and the Probability Calculus I: Popper and Jeffreys on Induction and the Probability of Law-Like Universal Generalizations
1. Introduction . Attempts to utilize the probability calculus to prove or disprove various inductive or inductive skeptical theses are, I believe, highly problematic. Inductivism and inductive skepticism are substantive (logically consistent) philosophical positions that do not allow of merely formal proofs or disproofs. Often the problems with particular alleged formal proofs of inductive or inductive sceptical theses turn on subtle technical c…
Hypothetico-Deductivism, Content, and the Natural Axiomatization of Theories
In Gemes (1990) I examined certain formal versions of hypothetico-deductivism (H-D) showing that they have the unacceptable consequence that “Abe is a white raven” confirms “All ravens are black”! In Gemes (1992) I developed a new notion of content that could save H-D from this bizarre consequence. In this paper, I argue that more traditional formulations of H-D also need recourse to this new notion of content. I present a new account of the vexi…
Nietzsche's Critique of Truth
Citations from Nietzsche's works are by section numbers with abbreviations of the relevant title prefixed. A list of these abbreviations and the editions used is given below. In the case of Ecce HIomo and Baeumler's edition of the Collected Works this method was inappropriate. For citations from Ecce Homo page numbers from the below listed translation are used. In citations from the Baeumler edition, volume and page number are cited. A The Antich…
Horwich, Hempel, and Hypothetico-Deductivism
In his paper, “Explanations of Irrelevance” (1983), Paul Horwich proposes an amended version of hypothetico-deductivism, (H-D*). In this discussion note it is shown that (H-D*) has the consequence that “ A is a non-black raven” confirms “All ravens are black” relative to any tautology! It is noted that Horwich's (H-D*) bears a strong resemblance to Hempel's prediction criterion of confirmation and that the prediction criterion faces the same obst…
A Refutation of Popperian Inductive Scepticism
Hypothetico-Deductivism, Content, and the Natural Axiomatization of Theories
In Gemes (1990) I examined certain formal versions of hypothetico-deductivism (H-D) showing that they have the unacceptable consequence that “Abe is a white raven” confirms “All ravens are black”! In Gemes (1992) I developed a new notion of content that could save H-D from this bizarre consequence. In this paper, I argue that more traditional formulations of H-D also need recourse to this new notion of content. I present a new account of the vexi…
Freud and Nietzsche on Sublimation
The notion of sublimation is essential to Nietzsche and Freud. However, Freud's writings fail to provide a persuasive notion of sublimation. In particular, Freud's writings are confused on the distinction between pathological symptoms and sublimation and on the relation between sublimation and repression. After rehearsing these problems in some detail, it is proposed that a return to Nietzsche allows for a more coherent account of sublimation, it…
Nietzsche's Critique of Truth
Citations from Nietzsche's works are by section numbers with abbreviations of the relevant title prefixed. A list of these abbreviations and the editions used is given below. In the case of Ecce HIomo and Baeumler's edition of the Collected Works this method was inappropriate. For citations from Ecce Homo page numbers from the below listed translation are used. In citations from the Baeumler edition, volume and page number are cited. A The Antich…
Verisimilitude and Content
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…
Postmodernism's Use and Abuse of Nietzsche
I focus on Nietzsche's architectural metaphor of self‐construction in arguing for the claim that postmodern readings of Nietzsche misunderstand his various attacks on dogmatic philosophy as paving the way for acceptance of a self characterized by fundamental disunity. Nietzsche's attack on essentialist dogmatic metaphysics is a call to engage in a purposive self‐creation under a unifying will, a will that possesses the strength to reinterpret his…
Horwich, Hempel, and Hypothetico-Deductivism
In his paper, “Explanations of Irrelevance” (1983), Paul Horwich proposes an amended version of hypothetico-deductivism, (H-D*). In this discussion note it is shown that (H-D*) has the consequence that “ A is a non-black raven” confirms “All ravens are black” relative to any tautology! It is noted that Horwich's (H-D*) bears a strong resemblance to Hempel's prediction criterion of confirmation and that the prediction criterion faces the same obst…
A Refutation of Popperian Inductive Scepticism
Irrelevance: Strengthening the Bayesian requirements
Inductive Skepticism and the Probability Calculus I: Popper and Jeffreys on Induction and the Probability of Law-Like Universal Generalizations
1. Introduction . Attempts to utilize the probability calculus to prove or disprove various inductive or inductive skeptical theses are, I believe, highly problematic. Inductivism and inductive skepticism are substantive (logically consistent) philosophical positions that do not allow of merely formal proofs or disproofs. Often the problems with particular alleged formal proofs of inductive or inductive sceptical theses turn on subtle technical c…
The world in itself: Neither uniform nor physical
A Refutation of Popperian Inductive Scepticism
Horwich, Hempel, and Hypothetico-Deductivism
In his paper, “Explanations of Irrelevance” (1983), Paul Horwich proposes an amended version of hypothetico-deductivism, (H-D*). In this discussion note it is shown that (H-D*) has the consequence that “ A is a non-black raven” confirms “All ravens are black” relative to any tautology! It is noted that Horwich's (H-D*) bears a strong resemblance to Hempel's prediction criterion of confirmation and that the prediction criterion faces the same obst…
Nietzsche's Critique of Truth
Citations from Nietzsche's works are by section numbers with abbreviations of the relevant title prefixed. A list of these abbreviations and the editions used is given below. In the case of Ecce HIomo and Baeumler's edition of the Collected Works this method was inappropriate. For citations from Ecce Homo page numbers from the below listed translation are used. In citations from the Baeumler edition, volume and page number are cited. A The Antich…
Hypothetico-Deductivism, Content, and the Natural Axiomatization of Theories
In Gemes (1990) I examined certain formal versions of hypothetico-deductivism (H-D) showing that they have the unacceptable consequence that “Abe is a white raven” confirms “All ravens are black”! In Gemes (1992) I developed a new notion of content that could save H-D from this bizarre consequence. In this paper, I argue that more traditional formulations of H-D also need recourse to this new notion of content. I present a new account of the vexi…
Inductive Skepticism and the Probability Calculus I: Popper and Jeffreys on Induction and the Probability of Law-Like Universal Generalizations
1. Introduction . Attempts to utilize the probability calculus to prove or disprove various inductive or inductive skeptical theses are, I believe, highly problematic. Inductivism and inductive skepticism are substantive (logically consistent) philosophical positions that do not allow of merely formal proofs or disproofs. Often the problems with particular alleged formal proofs of inductive or inductive sceptical theses turn on subtle technical c…
Postmodernism's Use and Abuse of Nietzsche
I focus on Nietzsche's architectural metaphor of self‐construction in arguing for the claim that postmodern readings of Nietzsche misunderstand his various attacks on dogmatic philosophy as paving the way for acceptance of a self characterized by fundamental disunity. Nietzsche's attack on essentialist dogmatic metaphysics is a call to engage in a purposive self‐creation under a unifying will, a will that possesses the strength to reinterpret his…
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…
I — Ken Gemes
I—Ken Gemes Get access Ken Gemes Ken Gemes Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, Volume 80, Issue 1, 1 June 2006, Pages 321–338, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8349.2006.00146.x Published: 11 August 2015
Verisimilitude and Content
Irrelevance: Strengthening the Bayesian requirements
Nihilism and the Affirmation of Life: A Review of and Dialogue with Bernard Reginster 1
Nietzsche on Free Will, Autonomy, and the Sovereign Individual
In some texts Nietzsche vehemently denies the possibility of free will; in others he seems positively to countenance its existence. This chapter distinguishes two different notions of free will. Agency free will is intrinsically tied to the question of agency; what constitutes an action as opposed to a mere doing. Deserts free will is intrinsically tied to the question of desert; of who does and does not merit punishment and reward. It is shown t…
Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy
Nietzsche is a central figure in our modern understanding of the individual as freely determining his or her own values. These essays by leading Nietzsche scholars investigate what this freedom really means.
Freud and Nietzsche on Sublimation
The notion of sublimation is essential to Nietzsche and Freud. However, Freud's writings fail to provide a persuasive notion of sublimation. In particular, Freud's writings are confused on the distinction between pathological symptoms and sublimation and on the relation between sublimation and repression. After rehearsing these problems in some detail, it is proposed that a return to Nietzsche allows for a more coherent account of sublimation, it…
Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy
Life’s Perspectives
Book synopsis: The diversity of Nietzsche's books, and the sheer range of his philosophical interests, have posed daunting challenges to his interpreters. This Oxford Handbook addresses this multiplicity by devoting each of its 32 essays to a focused topic, picked out by the book's systematic plan. The aim is to treat each topic at the best current level of philosophical scholarship on Nietzsche. The first group of papers treat selected biographi…
The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche
A unifying theme in Nietzsche’s early works (1870–6) is the claim that ‘illusion’, ‘deception’ and ‘lies’ are necessary to make tolerable one’s experience of the world. e central mes- sage of Nietzsche’s first published work, e Birth of Tragedy (1872), is that the affirmation of life requires ‘illusion’ which allows us to cope with the ‘insight into the horrible truth’ of our condition (BT 7). In a recent book (Reginster 2006), Bernard Reginster …
Nietzsche’s Metaphysical Sketches
An international team of scholars offer a broad engagement with the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, discussing the main topics of his philosophy, under the headings: values, epistemology and metaphysics, and will to power. Other sections discuss his life, his relations to other philosophers, and his individual works.
The Culture of Myth and the Myth of Culture
Nietzsche’s Illusion
It is sometimes claimed that Nietzsche’s primary focus was the problem of suffering. Against this, the central contention of this chapter is that Nietzsche’s focus was on the existential lack of meaning, which he took to be particular apposite to modern times. Thus, in contrast to Schopenhauer, for Nietzsche suffering as such was never the fundamental objection to life. The authors locate this position in the third essay of the Genealogy where Ni…
Individual and Community in Nietzsche's Philosophy
Replies to Commentators on “The Biology of Evil”
In this article, I reply to commentators Leonard Feldblyum, Robert Holub, and David Owen on my article “The Biology of Evil.” While I concede that Nietzsche often invoked standard degenerationist rhetoric about breeding, I argue that Nietzsche, unlike other degenerationists, never offered any concrete plans for such breeding and was not interested in raising the capacities of average citizens, but rather was concerned with the exceptional few. I …
The Biology of Evil: Nietzsche on Degeneration ( Entartung ) and Jewification ( Verjüdung )
This article examines Nietzsche's use of the rhetorics of degeneration (Entartung) and “jewification” (Verjüdung), arguing that he often, though not always, uses them in unconventional ways to undermine his audience's comfortable assumptions about their values and identity. In doing so, he challenges the idea of health as the isolation of alleged infectious elements and promotes the ideal of a “great health” predicated on the incorporation of suc…
Who are Nietzsche’s Christians
Nietzsche famously rails against Christian virtues such as humility and compassion. Yet he is well aware that historical Christians, especially those in positions of power, typically preached such values but did not practice them. This raises the question whom Nietzsche is really targeting in his animadversions against Christian virtues. The answer developed here is that his real targets are his contemporaries, including atheist, socialists such …
Philosophy (23 works) · Epistemology (22 works) · Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Hegel (16 works) · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Philosophical Ethics and Theory (7 works) · Mathematics (6 works) · Metaphysics (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Philosophy and History of Science (6 works)