Simon May presents a fresh and wide-ranging critique of Nietzsche's famous attack on traditional morality, and of his controversial ethics of 'life-enhancement'. He reveals Nietzsche as both revolutionary and conservative–as one who repudiates traditional 'moral' conceptions of God, guilt, asceticism, pity, and truthfulness, and yet retains a demanding ethics of discipline, conscience, 'self-creation', generosity, and honesty. In particular, May shows how Nietzsche rejects truthfulness as an unconditional value and yet celebrates it as one of his own highest values, whose worth is determined by who is pursuing it, for what end, and when in their lives. May is strongly critical of various aspects of Nietzsche's thought–his self-defeating conception of justice, his assumption that 'life-enhancement' necessarily demands world-affirmation, his ambition to de-deify the world, and the impossible and undesirable autonomy of the Übermensch. But Nietzsche is shown to offer modernity key elements of a coherent ethic, and to provide moral philosophy with important tools for reassessing some of its most cherished values and concepts. May's book will be illuminating not just for scholars and students of Nietzsche, in philosophy, literature, and history of ideas, but for anyone interested in current debates about ethics and modernity.

In sum ... this is a serious and thought provoking analysis that challenges both Nietzsche and his interpreters. May's book stands out from the rest in his rigorous analysis of the implicit principles of life-enhancement and in his challenging of both the necessity of Nietzsche's rejection of the transcendent and the viability of his individualism to his overall project of life-enhancement. * International Philosophical Quarterly Vol XLI, No.1, issue 161 *
This book has many strengths, one of which is May's rigorous and patient scrutiny of each of Nietzsche's transvalued ethical concepts. * International Philosophical Quarterly Vol XLI, No.1, issue 161 *
lucid and rigorous * International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol XLI, No.1, issue 161 *
his [May] claims offer significant challenges to entrenched understandings of many aspects of Nietzsche's moral philosophy, and further consideration of these challenges is likely to be fruitful. * Tom Bailey, New Nietzsche Studies Journal *
These discussions ... provide numerous stimulating approaches to particular aspects of Nietzsche's moral philosophy. * Tom Bailey, New Nietzsche Studies Journal *
Most impressive among these discussions is that of the second essay of The Genealogy. Tom Bailey, New Nietzsche Studies Journal

Simon May is Departmental Fellow in Philosophy, Birkbeck College, University of London. He is author of The Pocket Philosopher, a book of his own aphorisms (Metro, 1999).