Nietzsche's Philosophy of Nature and Cosmology (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 301 genres within Kierkegaard's authorship are not invariably demarcated with absolute rigidity but that the same works can, on occasion, operate simultaneously on a number of different levels, and that the different methods of reading are necessary in order to realise the full complexity of the authorship" (125)Pattison continues this hermeneutical concern in the sixth and final chapter: "Reading , Repentance and the Crucifixion of the Image." Here he focuses primarily on the edifying and Christian discourses. Convinced that "we need to learn what it is to read religiously," Pattison observes that "Kierkegaard himself was at pains to distinguish between.., those he called 'upbuilding' (or 'edifying') and those which were decisively 'Christian' " 056). Pattison contrasts dogmatics with rhetoric, and attempts to show how Kierkegaard directs his reader to religious experience, or repentance, through the persuasive dynamics of the aesthetic literature. Inspite of my disagreements with Pattison, I think that his book is a welcome contribution to Kierkegaard scholarship. In particular, I appreciate the emphasis he places on the hermeneutical approach to the works of SCren Kierkegaard. RoY MARTINEZ Spelman College Alistair Moles. Nietzsche's Philosophy of Nature and Cosmology. American University Studies , Series V: Philosophy, Volume 8o. New York: Peter Lang, x99o. Pp. xvii + 434Cloth , $63.95. A presupposition of Moles's book is that Nietzsche's philosophy constitutes a systematic whole, and that within that systematic whole is a unified and coherent cosmology. In support of the interpretation of Nietzsche as a systematic philosopher Moles cites Nietzsche's 1888 letter to Georg Brandes: "It all hangs together; it was all going in the right direction for years now; one builds one's philosophy like a beaver; one is a necessity and does not know it. However, one must see the whole as I have seen it now, to believe it." Moles's purpose is to explicate and expound this "whole," or at least the metaphysical and cosmological aspects of it, as well as to relate it to its sources in seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century science and philosophy. Nietzsche, of course, published no systematic and unified metaphysical treatises. So Moles reconstructs a systematic metaphysics for Nietzsche by collation, as it were, using the full panoply of Nietzsche's writings--the published works, the roughly five thousand pages of notes, and thousands of letters. Thus, Moles is firmly in the camp of what Bernd Magnus has called the "lumpers." Lumpers are those Nietzsche scholars who are willing to include Nietzsche's voluminous notes along with his published writings as reflecting his philosophical views. The "splitters," on the other hand, insist on a sharp separation between the published works and the notes. Most splitters view the notes as of inferior quality and as not reflecting Nietzsche's settled philosophical ideas. The heart of Nietzsche's metaphysics is his theory of the will to power as the 302 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 3~:~ APRIL ~993 fundamental, and indeed only, force. Moles's book has chapters on the will to power in human nature, in societies and organic nature, and in inorganic nature. Other topics that Moles discusses extensively are Nietzsche's philosophy of time and space, his theory of eternal recurrence, and his criticisms of the metaphysical notions of substance , cause, and self. Moles makes an attempt to connect Nietzsche with the central philosophical traditions as well as to use modern and contemporary science to help shed light on Nietzsche's cosmology. Moles seems to be well versed in contemporary physics and cosmology and he connects advances in these areas with Nietzsche's cosmology and especially his doctrine of recurrence in interesting ways. One baffling and inexcusable omission is that Moles's book has no index. The lack of an index seriously limits the usefulness of the book. This work should be able to serve as a resource for those interested in Nietzsche's metaphysics and cosmology and their sources. However, no one but a straight-through reader would be aware of or have any idea how to locate the extensive comparisons of Nietzsche's cosmology with Leibniz's and Spinoza's, the discussions of Nietzsche and Kant, Nietzsche and Darwin, Lange, and Boscovich as well as...