Keith Ansell-Pearson

I specialise in the teaching and research of post-Kantian European philosophy with particular interests in Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bergson, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Foucault and the areas of ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophies of life, of nature, and of time. I serve on the editorial boards of, among others, Cosmos and History, Deleuze Studies, Nietzsche-Studien, and Journal of Nietzsche Studies. I did my graduate work at the University of Sussex in the early to mid 1980s, specialising in Nietzsche, and I have taught at Warwick since 1993. My first book, Nietzsche contra Rousseau, was published by Cambridge University Press in 1991. Since then I have published further books on Nietzsche as well as on Bergson and on Deleuze. These include Germinal Life (1999) and Philosophy and the Adventure of the Virtual (2002), and the edited volumes A Companion to Nietzsche (2006), The Nietzsche Reader (2006, with Duncan Large), and Bergson: Key Writings (2002, with John Mullarkey). My most recent book publication is a Reader's Guide to Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, co-authored with Christa Davis Acampora and published by Continuum Press (2011). My current projects include a study of Nietzsche's philosophy of the morning and a study of life and nature in Bergson and Whitehead.

I welcome PhD students wishing to work on particular topics in 19th and 20th century European philosophy and where I have the requisite expertise. Recent research has included working on (i) the project of the early Nietzsche; (ii) the therapeutic and other ambitions of the texts of Nietzsche's middle period, especially Dawn; (iii) Nietzsche's reception of Guyau ('the Spinoza of France'); (iv) the notion of the sublime in Nietzsche; (v) time and memory in Bergson and Deleuze; (vi) Bergson and Deleuze on ethics.

In 2012/13 I shall teach MA courses on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche (autumn term) and on topics in continental philosophy (spring term).

Current Research

I am finalising a commentary on Nietzsche's text, Dawn, entitled Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Morning.
New essays in the pipeline and forthcoming include: "Questions of the Subject in Nietzsche and Foucault"; "Problems of Morality: On Deleuze on Ethics with Guyau and Nietzsche"; "An Epicurean Attachment to Life: On Nietzsche and Death"; "True to the Earth: Nietzsche's Epicurean-inspired Care of Self and World"; "Philosophy of the Morning: Philosophy & Phenomenology in Nietzsche's Dawn"; "Possibilities of Life and of Philosophy: Nietzsche on Empedocles and Democritus".

I am also involved in several editing projects:

With Michael Ure a special issue of Journal of Nietzsche Studies on Nietzsche and the affects/emotions.
Specially commissioned volume of essays on 'Nietzsche and Political Thought' (Continuum Press).

Selected Recent and Forthcoming Publications

(with Duncan Large) The Nietzsche Reader, Basil Blackwell, 2006.
A Companion to Nietzsche, Basil Blackwell, 2006; pbk. 2009.
Henri Bergson Centennial Series, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
The New Century: Bergsonism, Phenomenology, and Responses to Modern Science (ed. with Alan D. Schrift), volume three of The History of Continental Philosophy (Acumen/University of Chicago Press, 2010), 438 pp.
(with Christa Davis Acampora) Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil: A Reader's Guide (Continuum), 2011, 270 pp.
"Beyond Compassion: On Nietzsche's Moral Therapy in Dawn", Continental Philosophy Review, 44: 2, 2011, pp. 179-204.
"The Gay Science", in Paul Bishop (ed.), A Companion to Nietzsche: Life and Thought (Camden House, forthcoming 2012), pp. 167-192.
"Bergson and Ethics", in Hugh LaFollette, The International Encyclopedia of Ethics (Wiley-Blackwell), forthcoming, 2012.
"Bergson and Politics", The Encyclopedia of Political Thought (Wiley-Blackwell), forthcoming, 2012.
"The Philosophy of the Morning: Philosophy & Phenomenology in Nietzsche's Dawn", in Christine Daigle and Elodie Boublil (eds.), Nietzsche and Phenomenology (Indiana University Press, forthcoming).
"Nietzsche and Existentialism: Recent Developments in Scholarship", in Jack Reynolds et. al (eds.), The Continuum Companion to Existentialism (Continuum), 2011, pp. 290-300.
'Afterword', Friedrich Nietzsche, Dawn: On the Prejudices of Morality, trans. Brittain Smith (Stanford University Press, 'Collected Works', volume 5, 2011), pp. 363-409.
"'Holding on to the Sublime': On Nietzsche's Early 'Unfashionable' Project", in K. Gemes & J. Richardson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook to Nietzsche (Oxford UP, forthcoming 2012).
"'We Are Experiments': Morality and Authenticity in Nietzsche", in Vanessa Lemm (ed.), Nietzsche and the Becoming of Life (Fordham University Press), forthcoming, 2012.
"Bergson and Nietzsche on Religion: Critique, Immanence, and Affirmation" (with Jim Urpeth), in A. Lefebvre (ed.), Bergson's Two Sources of Morality and Religion (Duke University Press), forthcoming 2012.
"In Search of Authenticity and Personality: Nietzsche on the Purifications of Philosophy", American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Spring 2010, 84: 2, pp. 283-313.
"Nietzsche, the Sublime, and the Sublimities of Philosophy", Nietzsche-Studien, Band 39, 2010, pp. 201-32.
"For Mortal Souls: Philosophy and Therapeia in Nietzsche's Dawn', in Jonardon Ganeri & Clare Carlisle (eds.), Philosophy as Therapeia (Royal Institute of Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 137-165.
"Responses to Evolution: Spencer's Evolutionism, Bergsonism, and Contemporary Biology" (with Paul-Antoine Miquel & Michael Vaughan), The History of Continental Philosophy, volume three (Acumen/University of Chicago Press, 2010), pp. 347-79.
"Bergson on Memory"
& "Deleuze on the Overcoming of Memory", both in S. Radstone & B. Schwarz (eds.), Memory: Histories, Theories, Debates, Fordham University Press (2010), pp. 61-77 & pp. 161-79.
""Bergson" in D. Moyar (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Nineteenth Century Philosophy, pp. 403-31 (Routledge, 2010).
"On the Sublime in Nietzsche's Dawn", Pli 19, 2009, pp. 165-94; The Agonist II: 1, 2009, pp. 5-30 (full version).
"'Holding on to the Sublime': Nietzsche on Philosophy's Perception and Search for Greatness", in H. Siemens (ed.), Nietzsche, Power, and Politics, Walter de Gruyter, 2009, pp. 767-801.
"Nietzsches Materialismus und Nietzsches Idealismus", in Marc Jongen, Koenraad Hemelsoet, & Sjoerd van Tuinen (eds.), Die Vermessung des Ungeheuren. Philosophie nach Peter Sloterdijk (Wilhelm Fink, 2009), pp. 467-84.
"The Transfiguration of Existence and Sovereign Life: Sloterdijk and Nietzsche on Posthuman and Superhuman Futures", Society and Space, 27: 1, 2009, pp. 139-56 (special issue on Sloterdijk).
"Free Thinkers and Free Spirits: Nietzsche and Guyau on the Future of Morality", in J. Metzger (ed.), Nietzsche, Nihilism and the Philosophy of the Future (Continuum 2009), pp. 102-24.
"The Incorporation of Truth", in A Companion to Nietzsche (Wiley Blackwell, 2009, pbk), pp. 230-50.
Review Essay of Evan Thompson, Mind in Life (Harvard UP), Journal of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science, 8: 1 (2009), pp. 151-8.
"Beyond the Human Condition: An Introduction to Deleuze's Lecture Course", Substance, 36: 3, 2007, pp. 1-15.