Morality, Culture, and History: Essays on German Philosophy

by Raymond Geuss

Raymond Geuss is the author of The Idea of a Critical Theory (CUP 1981), a now classic study of the philosophy of the Frankfurt School, and has been a distinctive contributor to the analysis and evaluation of German philosophy and to recent debates in ethics. In this new collection he treats a variety of topics in ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of history with special reference to the work of Hegel, Nietzsche, and Adorno.

Genres: Philosophy

216 pages, Paperback

First published January 13, 1999

About the author

Raymond Geuss, Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, is a political philosopher and scholar of 19th and 20th century European philosophy.

Reviews

[saizine · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book, though I find myself unable to wholeheartedly recommend it. I was primarily interested in the essays on Nietzsche’s thought, but since my university’s library edition was virtually unobtainable and I had to purchase my own, I thought I might as well read the lot. While Geuss does present interesting arguments, his prose is that of obstructive academia - and having read many an academic tome with engaging and lively prose, it is certainly not necessary to present complex philosophical arguments in this manner. Perhaps it’s because I’m a historian and not a philosopher, and therefore approach these essays in a slightly different way than is intended, but the insights Geuss offers are unnecessarily difficult to unpack.

[Misha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I especially enjoyed the essays on Art and Theodicy, Nietzsche's genealogy and Nietzsche's morality. Geuss is very good at carving out the tensions in many of the possible interpretations of Nietzsche's texts, and ultimately offers fairly minimalist but nonetheless charitable/thought-provoking interpretations himself.