Pietro Gori dedicates Nietzsche's Pragmatism “To the wanderers and Good Europeans,” and Anglophone wanderers into Sarah de Sanctis's translation will indeed find good European Nietzsche scholarship. The table of contents is a helpful map of the book, with five chapters consisting of twenty-eight sections on a sequence of philosophical and interpretive topics. Perspectival thought, addressed in the subtitle, is the explicit topic of the third chapter. Pragmatism, mentioned in the title, is the explicit topic of the fifth and final chapter. While both topics also are discussed in many other places, the overall focus is on Nietzsche's views of epistemology and truth.The first chapter discusses Nietzsche's views of evolutionary epistemology, comparing them especially to other philosophers and scholars of the time. It follows Michael Bradie's (1986) distinction between two different traditions going by the name of “evolutionary epistemology.” One is a cognitive science project that understands human psychological mechanisms in terms of how they evolved (EEM). It claims that human minds have a significant innate structure explained by evolutionary fitness in an ancestral era, and it competes against theories that suggest less innate structure or explain the innate structure differently. The other is an intellectual history project seeking to understand the spread of knowledge using metaphors originating from the theory of evolution (EET). It seeks to understand the success of ideas using analogies to evolutionary fitness. It is obviously important to distinguish the cognitive science project (EEM) from the intellectual history project (EET), as they explain different parts of the mind in terms of different past events. So I would have thought it natural to use Bradie's distinction as a reason to make only one of them the topic of analysis.Gori's first chapter meticulously tracks both the scientific and historical projects, giving us a parallel study of various philosophical-scientific thinkers of the era engaged in evolutionary explanation of innate mental structures, or whether they used evolutionary concepts and metaphors to understand the growth of knowledge. He shows us how figures of the time, including Nietzsche, William James, and Ernst Mach, explained the human mind in evolutionary terms, and also used evolutionary metaphors to explain scientific progress. The extent to which and ways in which these different thinkers engage in each form of evolutionary explanation have their subtle differences, making the overall picture hard to summarize. Gori's account of the underlying situation is careful and detailed, though a narrower focus might have helped him discover more of interest in their views.Chapter 2 addresses Nietzsche's oft-quoted unpublished remark that “facts are just what there aren't, there are only interpretations” (1886–87) (KSA 12:7[60]). Gori immediately puts the remark in context, noting that it was “taken from a notebook and was not intended for publication” (41). He disagrees with those who regard it “as a motto exemplifying Nietzsche's late philosophical view,” and criticizes the methodology giving rise to such interpretations: sometimes they compare ideas that Nietzsche included in these published texts with some views that he merely sketched in his private papers and that he then left there, as rough and incomplete as any record that we ourselves write down on our notebooks every day; and they do that pretending to have found the proof of a contradiction within Nietzsche's thought, while in fact they only encountered the trace of a ceaseless reflection. (43 n. 3) Gori describes a mistake that can easily result from excessive reliance on unpublished material. Nietzsche may also have omitted clarifications when writing notes for himself that he would have included when writing for others. Some ideas may have been later rejected, while others may result from a ceaseless reflection that honestly considers objections to its own assumptions. That an idea appears in the notebooks therefore shows that Nietzsche considered some clarified version of it, but it does not confirm that he accepted it even when writing it down.Gori's understanding of the place of the texts in Nietzsche's life and thought raises confidence in his interpretation, and his reading of this passage does not disappoint. He understands Nietzsche as expressing support for a phenomenalist ontology over a positivist ontology. This fits the way Nietzsche begins the passage: “Against the positivism which halts at phenomena […].” Here “interpretations” refers to conscious experience itself, while “facts” refers to the physical substance posited by scientific positivists before Nietzsche. Perhaps these are unclear uses of the words, but Nietzsche begins with a clarifying remark, uses “facts” in indirect discourse, and was writing for himself in his own notebook. Gori moreover finds distinctions along these lines in Gustav Teichmuller's Die wirkliche und die scheinbare Welt (1882), which Nietzsche read in 1883 before writing this passage a few years later. Gori's interpretation is convincing. This passage should be read as arguing for phenomenalism over a version of positivism that includes eliminativism about consciousness.A short third chapter explores perspectivism, considering to whom the perspectives in question might belong: an individual, or some larger group, like a society or species? Gori allows any of these entities to have perspectives. He also allows perspectives to be ascribed to intrapersonal entities such as drives, as a number of passages suggest. Nietzsche's frequent discussion of conscience and moral judgment as originating in a “herd instinct” suggests that morality will look most natural from this social and animal perspective. Gori's interpretation helps us understand Nietzsche's frequent praise of immoral individuals. If conscience is a herd instinct that society instills with roughly equal strength in each individual, and most individuals follow their conscience for lack of any stronger contrary passion, those who violate conscience may have the strongest passions. Subjectivist conceptions of value will treat these strong passions as projecting the greatest subjective value onto the world.The fourth chapter considers to what extent Nietzsche's perspectivism is a form of pragmatism. Much of Gori's discussion explores the views of sympathetically inclined thinkers who read Nietzsche in the decades soon after his death. The first is Hans Kleinpeter, who advocated Mach's scientific philosophy and interpreted Nietzsche to share Mach's phenomenalism and support for pragmatism. Exactly what this pragmatism comes to is confusing. Gori first agrees with Kleinpeter's remark that Nietzsche “developed a pragmatist conception of truth” (108). But he later writes that “to argue that Nietzsche's view falls within pragmatism, does not mean that his epistemological conception is in fact a ‘pragmatic criterion of truth.’ It only means that Nietzsche was concerned with the notion of truth, with the problem of her value” (111). Gori then turns to the post-Kantian philosopher Hans Vaihinger, who draws a useful distinction between his own fictionalism and pragmatism. Pragmatism of William James's classic variety identifies the useful as the true, while fictionalism allows that the false can be useful. Vaihinger notes that these views contradict one another in attributing truth and falsity, despite sharing favorable evaluations of useful theories. What the pragmatist appreciates as useful and therefore true, the fictionalist appreciates as a useful falsehood.Sticking to a clear definition of pragmatism like the one Vaihinger offers would have improved both the fourth and fifth chapters. Gori's identification of many views favoring useful theories as a “pragmatism” not far from fictionalism, perspectivism, and phenomenalism prevents us from tracking important philosophical distinctions between them. One should not regard these as “Many Names for the Same Way of Thinking,” as Gori titles the fourth chapter, even if they agree in ascribing some sort of positive value to useful theories that fail to correspond with reality. Vaihinger, for example, recognizes that pragmatism about truth would destroy his fictionalism, which requires defining truth in robust terms like correspondence. If fictionalists follow pragmatists in calling useful theories true, how can they also call them useful fictions, as their theory requires?Defining truth as correspondence is also better for phenomenalists than adopting James's pragmatist definition. The epistemic arguments for phenomenalism discussed in Gori's second chapter require support from the correspondence theory or some similarly robust conception of truth. A first argument favors phenomenalist “interpretations” over positivist “facts”: “We cannot establish any fact ‘in itself’: perhaps it is folly to want to do such a thing” (KSA 12:7[60]). A second argument is reminiscent of David Hume in favoring phenomenalist “interpretations” over irreducible subjects of experience: “The ‘subject’ is not something given, it is something added and invented and projected behind what there is.—Finally, is it necessary to posit an interpreter behind the interpretation? Even this is invention, hypothesis” (KSA 12:7[60]). It's essential to both arguments that evidence favors belief in a phenomenalist reality, rather than a reality with positivist material facts or irreducible subjects. These epistemic arguments present material facts and irreducible subjects as inventions and unnecessary hypotheses, while phenomenal entities are given and can be established to exist.James's pragmatism undermines the significance of these epistemic distinctions in determining truth. If it's beneficial to believe in the invented and unnecessary positivist “facts,” calling them truths while denying the established and given phenomenalist “interpretations,” pragmatists will do so. Belief in the physical-material facts of positivism may indeed have this utility for human beings, helping them predict what will happen in the world. The arguments for phenomenalism therefore can lose their power within a pragmatist system where practical considerations overcome evidence about how reality is. The correspondence theory judges truth by considering evidence of how reality is, and it does not allow practical considerations to usurp this role. Whether or not Nietzsche was confident in his unpublished arguments for phenomenalism, the correspondence theory of truth gives them better support than James's pragmatic theory.Nietzsche's own brand of pragmatism seems to go well with defining truth in terms of correspondence or some other robust notion. When Nietzsche writes in BGE 4, “The falseness of a judgment is for us not necessarily an objection to a judgment” and allows that false judgments can be life-promoting, he cannot be invoking a pragmatic conception of truth, which would render the life-promoting judgments true rather than false. I therefore interpret Nietzsche as defining truth in terms of the correspondence theory, while holding a pragmatic theory of epistemic value according to which one should believe the useful rather than the true. Gori sees that Nietzschean pragmatism is fundamentally about the value of truth rather than its definition: “for Nietzsche, the fundamental problem is the value we attribute to that notion, while he is scarcely interested in the proper theoretical issue” of defining truth (151). Nietzsche should then be distinguished from James, who is interested in offering and defending a definition.There are many different ways to reject Kantian and Platonist metaphysical extravagances, with different consequences for value as well as metaphysics. Phenomenalists might regard pleasure as the only good thing because its value can be directly accessed within conscious experience, while pragmatists might obey practical rules with excellent consequences and dubious epistemic foundations. These theories should be distinguished because they lead to different places. Just as road signs should distinguish roads going to different places so that travelers won't get lost, scholars should distinguish theoretical options with different consequences so that theorists won't unwittingly commit themselves to unwanted results. Gori provides an excellent view of how Nietzsche and others of his era crossed paths; expertise in areas like epistemology and metaphysics is needed to show where the paths lead.The translation introduces significant errors. One appears at the beginning of section 1.1: “Although the biological conception of knowledge has been defended in modern time, especially during the nineteenth century, ‘evolutionary epistemology’ is a contemporary concept coined by Donald Campbell in his 1874 seminal paper on the topic” (7). As I had been unfamiliar with the origins of the concept, the subsequent pages left me fascinated by the sophistication of evolutionary epistemology in the 1870s. The publication dates of anthologies discussing Campbell's paper suggested that it had been the focus of celebratory centennial anthologies, even being included in an anthology otherwise dedicated to Popper! But as the Italian edition reveals, Gori originally wrote “1974” as the date of Campbell's paper, and “1874” was a typographical error somehow added in translation. While there were other amusing typos and infelicities, my fantastical journey to the world of late Victorian evolutionary epistemology was certainly the most exciting error added to the present edition.Communities of Nietzsche scholars around the world have long been divided by more than translation problems and bodies of water. Nietzsche's Pragmatism is a welcome reminder that good scholarship awaits us on the other sides of these divisions. Gori's phenomenalist interpretation of the “only interpretations” passage is an especially helpful contribution, and the fruitfulness of our subsequent disagreements suggests optimism for progress through further discussion. If the future of Nietzsche scholarship holds more interaction between the English-speaking community and good scholars like Gori, it will be better for all of us.