Nietzsche's Therapy

I cannot praise this book highly enough. It offers a set of rich insights into the texts of Nietzsche's unduly neglected 'middle period' and returns us to the congenial Nietzsche who is a great psychologist of the pathologies of human vanity and wounded narcissism and a philosopher of modesty and probity. His book succeeds in taking us beyond the aestheticist clichés that have impaired our reception and appreciation of Nietzsche in recent years. Michael Ure is a highly able and subtle reader of Nietzsche who has fresh things to say on Nietzsche's relation to Stoicism and psychoanalysis and on Nietzsche's use of the ironic and the comic. The book merits a wide readership and I am confident that it will inspire a major renewal of interest in the middle period texts both in terms of pedagogy and scholarship. -- Keith Ansell Pearson, University of Warwick
Fresh perspectives on Nietzsche are becoming increasingly hard to find, but in this book Michael Ure opens up some new and illuminating angles by taking him seriously as a philosophical therapist. Tracing significant connections with the Stoics before him and Freud and Foucault after, Nietzsche's Therapy shows its subject to be a subtle and profound practitioner of the difficult art of self-cultivation. -- Graham Parkes, Professor of Philosophy, University College Cork
The aim of this book is well defined....At less than three hundred pages it is impressive how many connections are linked from within the philosophical tradition and also the psychoanalytic field....Ure does an outstanding job of clearly articulating complex ideas in a concise and accessible way....This book will be well received by Nietzsche fans and scholars ....Ure is able to to persuasively argue against popular readings....and also brings original contributions to a neglected period in Nietzsche's writing. * Metapsychology Online, September 2008 *
...profound and insightful as a descriptive and prescriptive text on self-cultivation and relating to the other.... Those of us who, like Ladelle McWhorter, find in Foucault a source of inspiration for our work and our lives, will see Ure’s account of self-cultivation as a fascinating and important contribution. . . . The book is animated from its dedication to its final page by themes or grief, yet the tone is gay and rhapsodic. * Foucault Studies, February 2010 *
This is a wise, humane, and extremely interesting work. Having discussed the influential and important work of Nehamas and Foucault on Nietzsche, Michael Ure offers a persuasive and insightful Freudian reading of Nietzsche's middle works. Contending that Nietzsche drew heavily on ancient conceptions of philosophy as a therapeutic practice whose real value is to be found in its effects on the philosopher's life outside his or her writings, Ure explores Nietzsche's psychological insights into narcissism, subjecting melancholia, revenge and pity to critiques which enable the reader to come closer to self-knowledge. Elegantly and economically written, and ending with a discussion of Nietzsche's conception of friendship, the overall effect of this book is not simply that of enriching our understanding of Nietzsche, but also that of delivering a tonic effect not usually to be found in contemporary philosophy. -- Christopher Hamilton, King's College, London