R. Lanier Anderson

During his year at CASBS, R. Lanier Anderson will be working on Nietzsche’s “perspectivism,” exploring the nature of the perspectival limitations that (Nietzsche thought) render it impossible for us to achieve absolute representations, unrestricted by the effects of our particular cognitive situation. Nietzsche’s claim that human cognitive perspectives are always rooted in affective and motivational life will be a special focus. Early work from this project appeared as “What is Nietzschean about Nietzsche’s Perspectivism?” (Inquiry, 2023), and “Nietzschean Perspectivism: Representation and Values” (Monist, 2024).  Aside from Nietzsche, Anderson’s main current project is a nearly complete book about Montaigne (Montaigne and the Life of Philosophy).  He is also at work on two edited volumes: the Cambridge Companion to Literature and Philosophy (with Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé), and a Routledge volume on the philosophy of friendship (with Jessica Moss and Andrew Huddleston).
 

Anderson is professor of philosophy and the J.E. Wallace Sterling Professor in Humanities at Stanford University. Anderson works in the history of modern philosophy, with foci on Kant, Nietzsche, Montaigne, and special topics at the intersection of philosophy and literature.  He is the author of The Poverty of Conceptual Truth (OUP, 2015) and articles on Kant, Nietzsche, neo-Kantianism, and Virginia Woolf.