Abstract

The article discusses issues raised by Daniel Came, Ken Gemes, Peter Kail, and Stephen Mulhall in commentaries on Janaway, Beyond Selflessness: Reading Nietzsche's "Genealogy" (2008). The main topics are disinterestedness, aesthetic experience, perspectivism, affects and drives, the self, genealogical method, naturalistic psychology, and Nietzsche's rhetoric. The article argues that Nietzsche's criticisms of the conception of aesthetic experience as disinterested are justified, in particular his criticisms of Schopenhauer. Nietzsche's rejection of disinterestedness is linked to his claim that there is "only a perspectival knowing" and his conception of genealogical method. The article argues that perspectivism is the view that we understand best when we feel a multiplicity of affects, and that Nietzsche's own rhetorical method is a therapeutic provocation of affects which constitute the true basis of his readers' values. A particular example from Genealogy I. 14 is examined.--Correspondence to: cjanaway @soton.ac.uk