Abstract

The introductory chapter states the book's primary ambition—to settle the question of whether and in what sense Nietzsche is a skeptic by taking Pyrrhonism, a powerful form of skepticism that originated in ancient Greece, as a model for understanding his philosophical project. The chapter locates this reading within the landscape of recent attempts to characterize Nietzsche's views of truth and knowledge, and previews some of the reasons in favor of constructing a skeptical reading of his work. It anticipates some resistance to reading him as a skeptic and contends that such resistance may turn on a confusion about ancient and modern varieties of skepticism and on a general neglect of the former variety by scholars of Nietzsche's thought. Finally, it indicates some of the power and potential of this skepticism for Nietzsche's project.