Keith Ansell-Pearson

Professor of Philosophy, Warwick University, 1993-2021.

Honorary President of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society, 2021-

For details of my research see also personal website

Recent Research

In Nietzsche's Earthbound Wisdom. The Philosopher, the Poet, and the Sage (University of Chicago Press, 2025) I set out to recover Nietzsche’s love for a philosophy that guides us through our passions and opens us more fully to the possibilities of life and the joy of knowledge. I illuminate Nietzsche on philosophical cheerfulness; the intellectual virtue of honesty and the passion of knowledge; the philosopher as a wanderer or spiritual nomad; the passions; the poets; and on philosophy as intellectual vision and perception. I offer close readings of Nietzsche’s texts in conversation with philosophical and literary figures including Augustine, Baudelaire, Dostoevsky, Emerson, Flaubert, Stendhal, and more. I probe Nietzsche’s critique of literary naturalism and his alternative conception of the poet as seer who has a deep longing for a new earth. The book covers the full span of Nietzsche's extraordinary corpus with a focus on his mature middle and late writings.

In recent years I have contributed to research in several areas of philosophical inquiry, including philosophy as a way of life, the philosophy of time, and the philosophy of the emotions. I have carried out quite extensive research on the reception of Hellenistic philosophy in modern European thought, notably Epicurean teaching and Stoicism. This research has resulted in a number of articles and book chapters, as well as the edition of Jean-Marie Guyau's The Ethics of Epicurus (1878), translated and co-edited by Federico Testa and published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2021. In 2018 a study of Nietzsche's middle writings entitled Nietzsche's Search for Philosophy was published by Bloomsbury Academic. I wrote the Afterword to a new translation and edition of Dawn published by Stanford University Press in 2011 and co-authored a close reading of this text with Rebecca Bamford, which was published by Wiley Blackwell in 2021. In 2022 a specially commissioned volume of essays, co-edited with Paul S. Loeb, on Nietzsche's text, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, was published by Cambridge University Press. Bloomsbury also published a book on Bergson, Thinking Beyond the Human Condition in 2018.

Current Research

I am researching a book with the working title Ways of Living, Ways of Seeing, and focused on the writings of Bergson, Nietzsche, Ortega y Gasset, and Santayana. Topics examined include: the emotions; perception; intuition; imagination and fabulation; vital life and reason; idealism, realism, and naturalism; perspectivism; and the relations between philosophy and science and philosophy and mysticism.

Selected Book Publications

Authored

• Nietzsche contra Rousseau (Cambridge University Press, 1991). Read Review / Read Review
• Nietzsche's Search for Philosophy: On the Middle Writings (Bloomsbury Press, 2018). Read Review / Read Review / Read Review / Read Review / Read Review / Read Review/ Read Review
• Nietzsche's Dawn: Philosophy, Ethics, and the Passion of Knowledge (co-authored with Rebecca Bamford) (Wiley Blackwell, 2020). Read Review / Read Review / Read Review
• Philosophy and the Adventure of the Virtual. Bergson and the Time of Life (Routledge, 2002). Read Review
• Bergson: Thinking Beyond the Human Condition (Bloomsbury Press, 2018). Read review / Read review / Read Review
• Nietzsche's Earthbound Wisdom. The Philosopher, the Poet, and the Sage (University of Chicago Press, 2025).

Edited

• Nietzsche and Modern German Thought (Routledge, 1991).
• A Companion to Nietzsche (Blackwell, 2006).
• The Nietzsche Reader (Blackwell, 2006), with Duncan Large.
• Bergson: Key Writings (Bloomsbury Press, 2002, second edition 2014), with John O Maoilerca.
• The New Century: Bergsonism, Phenomenology, and Responses to Modern Science (Acumen/University of Chicago Press, 2010). Read review 
• Jean-Marie Guyau, The Ethics of Epicurus, ed. with Federico Testa, trans. F. Testa (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021).
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Critical Guide, co-edited with Paul S. Loeb (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
• The Empathetic Emotions in the History of Philosophy, co-edited with David James (Oxford University Press, 2025).

Book Series

Critical Guides to NietzscheLink opens in a new window

Re-inventing Philosophy as a Way of LifeLink opens in a new window

Selected Essays

I have published more than a hundred essays in journals and edited volumes. A selection appears below, featuring recent essays first.

• 'Sharing Secrets with the Sea. Nietzsche, Emerson, Santayana, and Feeling Sympathy with Nature,' Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 45: 2, 2025.

• Taking Flight from Oneself. Nietzsche on the Poets, Baudelaire, and the Little Parisian Decadents,'Vincent Le and Paris Lettau (eds.), 150 Years of Tragedy: Nietzsche, Art, Philosophy (Index Books, forthcoming).

• 'Schopenhauer on Stoicism as a Way of Life and on the Wisdom of Life,' in David Woods & Timothy Stoll, The Schopenhaurian Mind (Routledge, 2023).

• 'Nietzsche on the Task of the Poets in his Middle Writings,' in James I. Porter, Nietzsche and Literary Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2023).
• 'Philosophy as a Way of Life in Thus Spoke Zarathustra' (with Marta Faustino), in Ansell-Pearson & Paul S. Loeb, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Critical Guide (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
• 'How to make sense of Nietzsche as a Sceptic,' in Nietzsche on Making Sense of Nietzsche, ed. M. Béland, C. Denat, C. Piazzesi et P. Wotling (Editions et presses de l’université de Reims, 2021).
• 'Friedrich Nietzsche: Cheerful Thinker and Writer. A Contribution to the Debate on Nietzsche’s Cheerfulness' (with Lorenzo Serini), Nietzsche-Studien, 2022.
• 'Nietzsche on the Passions and Self-Cultivation,' Continental Philosophy Review, 2022.
• 'Nietzsche on Transforming the Passions into Joys: On the Middle Writings and Thus Spoke Zarathustra,' in Nietzsche, penseur de l'affirmation: Relecture d'« Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra », ed. CL. Bertot et. al (Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 2019).
• 'Bergson and Philosophy as a Way of Life,' in Alexandre Lefebvre and Nils Schott (eds.), Interpreting Bergson (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
• 'Bergson on the Emotions,' in Mark Sinclair (ed.), The Bergsonian Mind (Routledge, 2022).
• 'Jean-Marie Guyau on Epicurus and the Art of Living' (with Federico Testa), Introduction to Guyau, The Ethics of Epicurus (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021).
• 'Guyau on Life and Morality' (with Federico Testa), in Mark Sinclair & Daniel Whistler (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern French Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2024).
• 'Morality and the Philosophy of Life in Guyau and Bergson,' Continental Philosophy Review 2014.
• 'Beyond Obligation? Jean-Marie Guyau on Life and Ethics,' Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 2015.
• 'Nietzsche on the Incorporation of Truth,' A Companion to Nietzsche (Blackwell, 2006).
• 'Sloterdijk and Nietzsche on Posthuman and Transhuman Futures', Society and Space 2009.
• 'Nietzsche on the Sublime and the Sublimities of Philosophy,' Nietzsche-Studien (2010).
• 'Holding onto the Sublime. On Nietzsche's Unfashionable Observations', The Oxford Handbook to Nietzsche (2013).
• 'Attachment to Life, Understanding Death: Nietzsche and D. H. Lawrence,' Parrhesia 2013.
• 'Heroic-Idyllic Philosophizing. Nietzsche and the Epicurean Tradition,' Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 2014.
• 'Care of Self in Dawn: Nietzsche's Resistance to Bio-political Modernity,' in Manuel Knoll & Barry Stocker (eds.), Nietzsche as Political Philosopher (de Gruyter, 2014).
• 'Contra Kant: Experimental Ethics in Nietzsche and Guyau', with Michael Ure, in Joao Constancio & Tom Bailey (eds.), Nietzsche and Kantian Ethics (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017).
• 'Nietzsche on Enlightenment and Fanaticism,' in Paul Katsafanas (ed.), The Nietzschean Mind (Routledge, 2018).
• 'Nietzsche on the Knowledge of the Sufferer,' The Agonist 2020.
• 'Bergson's Reformation of Philosophy,' Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 2016.
• 'Bergson on Education and the Art of Life,' in A. J. Bartlett & Justin Clemens (eds.), What is Education? (Edinburgh University Press, 2016).
• 'Affirmative Naturalism. Deleuze and Epicureanism,' Cosmos and History 2014.
• 'Deleuze and New Materialism: Naturalism, Norms, and Ethics,' in Sarah Ellenzweig & John H. Zammito (eds.), The New Politics of Materialism (Routledge, 2017).