In this book Peter Sedgwick puts forward a new case for viewing Nietzsche as an economic thinker, worthy to rank alongside Marx. Analysing Nietzsche's conception of economy, Sedgwick shows how it is taken by him to constitute the basic condition under which the 'human animal' developed. Economy, Nietzsche argues, endowed us with futurity: the ability to live with a view to long-term future possibilities rather than impulsively, as do other animals. Economy, in other words, is a defining aspect of human behaviour, underpinning the ways in which we estimate value, relate to others and attain self-understanding.

This critical survey of issues in European philosophy offers detailed accounts of crucial texts by important thinkers. Sedgwick draws key ideas from these sources, analyzing the various relationships between them and linking them to central themes in philosophical enquiry, such as the nature of subjectivity, reason and experience, anti-humanism, and the nature of language.

Areas explored include epistemology, metaphysics and ontology, ethics and politics. Aspects of the work of a broad range of thinkers is considered in detail, including Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Adorno and Horkheimer, Heidegger, Deleuze and Guatarri, Levinas, Derrida, Althusser, Foucault and Lyotard.

This intriguing new work presents the complex ideas of European philosophy in a straightforward manner, and will be of interest to both introductory and advanced-level readers.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) has exerted a decisive and radical influence on the central themes of twentieth-century philosophy, art and literature.This volume collects together for the very first time a record of the key readings which comprise the three principal traditions or methodologies of Nietzsche interpretation: the Anglo-American, German and French traditions. In so doing, the volume provides a vital record of and guide to the central elements of Nietzsche scholarship, and encourages an appreciation of the divergences and similarities which both separate and unify these interpretations of Nietzsche's work.

This book proposes that Nietzsche should be viewed as an economic thinker to rank alongside Marx. Peter Sedgwick shows how Nietzsche views economy as the basic condition under which the 'human animal' developed. Economy, Nietzsche argues, endowed us with futurity, and is a defining aspect of human behaviour.