Keith Ansell-Pearson

Professor of Philosophy, Warwick University, 1993-2021.

Honorary President of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society, 2021-

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 now researching a book on Nietzsche and philosophical heroism, which I am co-authoring with Paul S. Loeb. I am also researching a book with the working title Ways of Living, Ways of Seeing, and focused on four thinkers: Bergson, Nietzsche, Ortega y Gasset, and Santayana. I am writing for publication in edited volumes new essays on Ortega y Gasset on the art of life and the task of life, and on Gilles Deleuze’s interpretation of the notion of the tragic in Nietzsche.

Selected Book Publications

Authored

Nietzsche contra Rousseau (Cambridge University Press, 1991). Read Review/ 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/ Read Review
Bergson: Thinking Beyond the Human Condition (Bloomsbury Press, 2018). Read Review/ 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). Read Review
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. Read Review
The New Century: Bergsonism, Phenomenology, and Responses to Modern Science (Acumen/University of Chicago Press, 2010), with Alan D. Schrift. 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.

Nietzsche

'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).

'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 inThus 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 andThus Spoke Zarathustra,' in Nietzsche, penseur de l'affirmation: Relecture d'« Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra », ed. CL. Bertot et. al (Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 2019).

'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.

'For Mortal Souls. Philosophy and Therapeia in Nietzsche's Dawn,' Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 2010.

'Beyond Compassion. On Nietzsche's Moral Therapy in Dawn,' Continental Philosophy Review 2011.

'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 inDawn: 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,' Th e Agonist 2020.

Schopenhauer

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

Henri Bergson

'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).

'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).

'Morality and the Philosophy of Life in Guyau and Bergson,' Continental Philosophy Review 2014.

'Bergson on Memory,' in Susannah Radstone & Bill Schwarz (eds), Memory. Histories, Theories, Debates (Fordham University Press, 2010).

Gilles Deleuze

'Deleuze on Memory,' in Susannah Radstone & Bill Schwarz (eds), Memory. Histories, Theories, Debates (Fordham University Press, 2010).

'Beyond the Human Condition: An Introduction to Deleuze's lecture course,' SubStance 2007.

'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).

Jean-Marie Guyau

'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.