Editorial Note

Abstract

The North American Nietzsche Society held its second biannual conference at Stanford University on October 5–7, 2018. The three-day event featured invited keynotes by Jessica Berry (Georgia State University) and John Richardson (NYU). In addition, the program committee selected seven papers from a pool of over seventy submissions. The conference concluded with a group discussion on Nietzsche's attitude toward empirical science, featuring invited presentations by Maudemarie Clark (UC Riverside) and Tsarina Doyle (Galway).Lanier Anderson deserves special thanks for organizing the conference at Stanford. I would also like to thank Lanier Anderson, Robert Guay, Tom Bailey, Allison Merrick, Andrew Huddleston, Béatrice Han-Pile, and Bernard Reginster for their work on the Program Committee. Finally, Justin Remhof, Rachel Cristy, Richard Elliot, Gudrun von Tevenar, Matt Dill, Matt Meyer, and Gabriel Zamosc-Regueros served as commentators for papers at the conference; their contributions to the lively and insightful discussions were greatly appreciated.Many of the papers from the conference are included as articles in this issue. The first is Jessica Berry's keynote address, in which she develops a position that she terms “doxastic skepticism.” In particular, Berry argues that Nietzsche sees a particular notion of belief, or “faith” (Glaube), as pathological, in part because an exaggerated emphasis on Glaube undermines other cognitive capacities. The second keynote, by John Richardson, was titled “Nietzsche's New Gods.” Richardson argues that although Nietzsche is critical of traditional religion, he nonetheless believes that the notion of gods can be used to cultivate and sustain certain affective states. The text of Richardson's talk is not reprinted here but is forthcoming as a chapter in his new book, provisionally titled Nietzsche's Values.A selection of six papers from the conference follows. These are wide ranging: Kaitlyn Creasy asks how we might overcome a particular form of nihilism; Joel van Fossen analyzes Nietzsche's notion of shame; Tom Hanauer asks how Nietzsche's claim that we are “strangers to ourselves” relates to his critical project in GM; Scott Jenkins looks at the way in which Nietzsche takes up and alters the notion of pessimism; Daisy Laforce distinguishes three modes of history at work in GM; and Avery Snelson examines Nietzsche's notion of conscience and obligation.Further details on the North American Nietzsche Society, including information on past conferences and the upcoming conference, to be held at Georgia State University in Atlanta (October 2020), can be found at www.northamericannietzschesociety.com.