This document provides a review of the book "Nietzsche: The Key Concepts" by Peter Sedgwick. It summarizes that the book aims to distill Nietzsche's key concepts and make them accessible to students. It is part of a series focused on defining important terms in order to increase access to education. The review praises Sedgwick's ability to examine Nietzsche's work without falling to extremes and to rationally reconstruct the philosopher's core ideas.

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BOOK REVIEW
PETER SEDGWICK ON FRIEDRICH NIETSZCHE
Peter R. Sedgwick (2009). Nietzsche: The Key Concepts (London and New York:
Routledge), Routledge Key Guides Series.
INTRODUCTION
In order to understand the significance of a book in this series of key concepts, the
reader must begin with the introduction to a book that Raymond Williams first
published in 1976 titled Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society.1 This book was
an attempt to bring into ‘general availability’ the technical terms that literary critics,
cultural theorists, and sociologists used in their theoretical work. One of the reasons
why Williams felt that this book was worth doing was because he was working in
adult education. Williams believed that an important point of entry into the areas
that he was teaching was to identify and define the keywords and the cluster of
terms related to these. In terms of lexical form, Williams incorporated important
elements of both a dictionary and a thesaurus without intimidating his readers or
losing out on the readability of his text. His methodological hope was that if readers
were willing to dip into these keywords, ever so often, it would be a useful
companion in their attempts to educate themselves. Williams was probably thinking
mainly of his working class students when he went about putting his book of
keywords together. He did not anticipate the impact that his ‘vocabulary of culture
and society’ would have on British academia and the common reader as a whole.
The term ‘vocabulary’ was important for Williams because what he wanted to
identify were the terms that we use without necessarily being fully aware of their
origins, history, or range of meanings. Nonetheless we find it difficult to substitute
these words for others; that is because these words have been strongly internalised
by British speakers across the classes. Reading Williams would not only acquaint
these working class readers in adult education programmes with words missing in
1 See Raymond Williams (1976, 1983). ‘Introduction,’ Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and
Society (London: Fontana Press), pp. 11-26.

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their vocabulary, but also make them conscious of what they have always known to
some extent albeit without conscious awareness of doing so. British publishers were
quick to take notice of what Williams had pulled off in his book; it was an
unexpected commercial success. There was a huge market of students who would
benefit from reading a book on keywords in the humanities. They could not only fill
in the gaps in their socio-cultural vocabulary, but also learn new words as they went
deeper into a subject. So what started as a remedial measure in adult education
programmes became a successful intervention in not only Britain but also in
America. A number of American academics like E. D. Hirsch Jr., for example, began
to argue that a book of keywords would make it possible to compile at least a
minimal cultural vocabulary that all students and educated citizens could share in
common in a multicultural society.2 These methods and approaches became well-
known in Canada as well. There is no reason however why this approach should be
restricted only to the study of culture and society. Needless to say, it spread to the
study of literature, critical theory, cultural theory, and philosophy. Peter Sedgwick
and his colleague Andrew Edgar at the Department of Philosophy at Cardiff
University, Wales belong to this tradition of thinking about education. They have
put in a lot of effort to make the vocabulary of cultural theory available outside the
narrow confines of the classroom. This culminated in two compendious volumes
from Routledge where they brought together the key concepts and key thinkers in
cultural theory.3
KEY CONCEPTS & KEY THINKERS
It will become possible to appreciate the significance of this book on Nietzsche only
if we understand why this approach to the study of mind, culture, and society is
becoming increasingly important in Anglo-American education. Though this is a
typically British approach to increasing access to adult education, it is a model that
has caught on in many other parts of the world; that is why this book was published
both in Britain and in America. Sedgwick’s intention here is to distil the essence of
the Nietszchean vocabulary under the aegis of the term ‘key concepts’ and make
them available to as many students as possible. An unspoken anxiety that animates
pedagogical attempts like this is to ensure that the key concepts from areas like
cultural theory and philosophy percolate into the cultural unconscious and become a
part of the working vocabulary of the educated population rather than remain the
2 E. D. Hirsch Jr. (1988). Cultural Literacy:What Every American Needs to Know (New York:
Vintage Books).
3 See Andrew Edgar and Peter R. Sedgwick (1999, 2008). Cultural Theory: The Key Concepts
(London and New York: Routledge) and Andrew Edgar and Peter R. Sedgwick (2002).
Cultural Theory: The Key Thinkers (London and New York: Routledge).

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exclusive preserve of academia. Furthermore, it is important to note that books like
this can serve as teaching guides. Most British universities have a large
undergraduate enrolment in areas like cultural theory and philosophy. While it is
not difficult to understand that undergraduates should be interested in the study of
culture, most visitors to British universities will find it hard to understand that so
many students are willing to major in philosophy. Answering endless queries in the
British undergraduate and adult education classrooms about the definitions of
important concepts can be quite an undertaking for instructors; a book like this can
relieve them of the tedium of having to do so year after year. That is why books like
this are increasingly taking up a lot of shelf space in the textbook or reserved
sections of British university libraries. The main challenge then in doing such books
is to decide whether it should take the form of an edited volume or whether its scope
can be narrowly defined (as is the case here) to keep it within the reach of the main
author. Sedgwick has demonstrated his ability to excel in both formats; his earlier
books on the key concepts and key thinkers of cultural theory were co-edited with
Andrew Edgar, but this book has been written in its entirety by Peter Sedgwick
himself. The main reason for this is that Sedgwick has made a name for himself in
Nietzsche studies during the period when he and Andrew Edgar were putting
together their two books on cultural theory. Sedgwick has also edited an important
book of critical essays on Nietzsche and teaches courses in this area at Cardiff.4 So
putting together a concise book like this is a way of helping him to take stock of
what he knows about Nietzsche even while he does his share of theoretical
exposition to entice the next generation of readers to take Nietzsche seriously.
KEY CONCEPTS AND KEY METAPHORS
It is important to remember that this book is titled ‘key concepts.’ I often wonder
why publishers have not attempted a series on ‘key metaphors.’ This is an important
distinction that will be especially relevant in Nietzsche studies given that the
theoretical preoccupation with how concepts relate to metaphors took on a great
urgency in Nietzsche’s texts. While Peter Sedgwick, like most deconstructionists
trained at Cardiff, does not take the position that concepts are reducible to
metaphors or forms of figuration, this is a position that Nietzsche flirted with rather
heavily. An important question in Nietzsche studies then is precisely whether the
reader should take the Derridean position which, simply put, is that there is an
interdependent relationship between concepts and metaphor or a postmodernist
position that concepts are reducible to metaphor. The fact that this book is about key
concepts rather than key metaphors gives us an indication that Peter Sedgwick is a
moderate in these matters. I would argue that on the whole Sedgwick is able to read
Nietzsche and define the key concepts without falling prey to extremes formulations
4 Peter R. Sedgwick (1995). Nietzsche: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell).

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which would have epistemological implications for recent controversies on the
relationship between structuralism, deconstruction, and postmodernism. Sedgwick
does not come across as a sceptic either; there is something rather healthy and
wholesome in his reading of Nietzsche.
RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION
I think this has to do with the fact that a lexical approach to a philosopher
necessarily involves a form of ‘rational reconstruction’ of the core concepts in his
texts. This is a method that is associated in my mind with the philosophers at Cardiff
University. I think the choice of the key concepts and the basic approach that Peter
Sedgwick takes in this book are influenced by this method of reading philosophical
texts. This method is associated with names like Bertrand Russel, Raymond
Williams, and Christopher Norris. It is an approach that prepares young
philosophers in terms of method to write on not only specific philosophers on whom
they specialize; but, above all, to prepare themselves to write a history of
philosophy. This interestingly enough is what Peter Sedgwick himself went on to
do.5 Learning to write a history of philosophy (which Jacques Derrida himself never
did) requires a broad range of philosophical sympathies since the young philosopher
who attempts to do this must learn to live with endless theoretical conflicts,
contradictions, and controversies without succumbing to cognitive dissonance. This
is an area that Peter Sedgwick feels at home in both Nietzsche studies and in the
history of philosophy. Sedgwick is positioned as more interested in sharing what is
happening in Nietzsche studies with both fellow academics and lay readers rather
than as somebody imposing a narrow interpretation of what he thinks is right or
wrong in contemporary interpretations of Nietzsche. There are sixty-odd concepts in
this book; a number of them are comparable to brief essays rather than terse lexical
entries.
HOW TO READ THIS BOOK
Given my interest in Nietzsche and Peter Sedgwick (who served as the internal
examiner of my doctoral thesis at Cardiff University in 1996), I read through the
book in sequential order. But readers who are not acquainted with Nietzsche might
want to identify the key concepts that animate any given Nietzschean text by first
working through a given chapter while dipping simultaneously into the main
concepts analysed in this guide. Or, alternatively, they can browse through this book
until they encounter a key concept that excites them and follow through the
suggestions at the end of every entry for further reading. The latter would be a better
approach for beginners and the former for more experienced readers of Nietzsche.
5 Peter R. Sedgwick (2001). Descartes to Derrida: An Introduction to European Philosophy
(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell).

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There is no specific guideline on how to use this book; that is probably because the
entries are self-explanatory. My only regret is that this book was not available when
I first attempted to read Nietzsche on my own at Cardiff during the period 1990-96.
But I am reasonably sure that reading this book will excite prospective readers of
Nietzsche to think seriously about questions and controversies in continental
philosophy, critical theory, and cultural theory in the way that meeting academics
like Christopher Norris, Andrew Edgar, and Peter Sedgwick did for me at Cardiff
University during this period.
I would strongly urge all students of cultural theory and philosophy and the lay
reader interested in these areas to engage with this lucid introduction to the key
concepts in the texts of Friedrich Nietzsche.
SHIVA KUMAR SRINIVASAN