Keith Ansell-Pearson

Professor of Philosophy, Warwick University, 1993-2021.Honorary President of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society, 2021-

For further details of my research see my personal website

Recent Research

Nietzsche's Earthbound Wisdom. The Philosopher, the Poet, and the Sage has recently been published by University of Chicago Press. In the book 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 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 the adventure of philosophy focused on the writings of Santayana (1863-1952), one of the most independent minds in twentieth century philosophy. I examine his criticism of apathetic naturalism and terrified idealisms and mine for insights his thought-provoking essays on various thinkers and writers, including Bergson, Emerson, Freud, William James, Lucretius, Nietzsche, Plato, Proust, Schopenhauer, Shakespeare, Shelley, Spinoza, and Walt Whitman. I illuminate his attachment to the figure of Hermes, and I devote special attention to topics of concern to the cultivation of a philosophical life centred on sobriety.

I am also researching a book on Emerson and philosophy as a way of life. I draw upon a range of interlocutors to engage with his writings, including George Eliot, Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, Nietzsche, Proust, and Virginia Woolf.

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
Nietzsche's Dawn: Philosophy, Ethics, and the Passion of Knowledge (co-authored with Rebecca Bamford) (Wiley Blackwell, 2020). 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

Recently published essays and forthcoming essays include:

'Sharing Secrets with the Sea. Nietzsche, Emerson, Santayana, and Feeling Sympathy with Nature,' Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 45: 2, 2024.
'Taking Flight from Oneself. Nietzsche on the Poets, Baudelaire, and the Little Parisian Decadents,' in
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 between Philosophy and Literature (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: CPR article
'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 Conduct of Life' (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).