Fifteen essays examine the work of German philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer to provide feminist interpretations of his views on science, language, history, literature, and other topics.

Although Nietzsche has been considered by some critics to be a misogynist for his treatment of woman, women, and the feminine, Frances Nesbitt Oppel offers a radical reinterpretation of the philosopher's ideas on sex, gender, and sexuality. In Nietzsche on Gender: Beyond Man and Woman, she argues that a closer reading of Nietzsche's texts and rhetorical style (especially his use of metaphor and irony), as well as his letters and notes, shows that he was strategically and deliberately dismantling dualistic thinking in general, not only the logical hierarchies of western thought (God/human, heaven/earth, mind/body, reason/emotion, ethos/pathos) but also the assumed gender opposition of man/woman. In the process, she pulls the rug out from under the accusation of his alleged misogyny. Oppel's is the first study to combine recent speculations in gender study and queer theory with an in-depth analysis of Nietzsche's texts. This approach enables her to break through the impasse in feminist studies that has stalled for so long on the question of his misogyny, to redirect attention to the importance he gives to human creativity and self-fashioning rather than convention, and to gesture toward a future human sexuality beyond rivalry and resentment in favor of a sensual materialism in relationship with others and the earth. Oppel concludes that for Nietzsche, breaking the gender barrier liberates human beings as individuals and as a species to love themselves, each other, and their earthly home as they choose. By emphasizing the physical and material stuff of human existence (bodies and the earth), she says, Nietzsche reclaims for all humanity concepts that have been traditionally associated with "woman" and the feminine. No longer seen as a strong masculine hero, Nietzsche's "superman" becomes a supreme human achievement: the complete acceptance of time, change, and mortality in which human beings will possess the best characteristics of each gender in themselves. Nietzsche on Gender should be equally engaging for readers interested in Nietzsche in particular and in sexual politics and in philosophy and literature more generally.

Published in France in 1980, Marine Lover is the first in a trilogy in which Luce Irigaray links the interrogation of the feminine in post-Hegelian philosophy with a pre-Socratic investigation of the elements. Irigaray undertakes to interrogate Nietzche, the grandfather of poststructuralist philosophy, from the point of view of water. According to Irigaray, water is the element Nietzsche fears most. She uses this element in her narrative because for her there is a complex relationship between the feminine and the fluid. Irigaray's method is to engage in an amorous dialogue with the male philosopher. In this dialogue, she ruptures conventional discourse and writes in a lyrical style that defies distinction between theory, fiction, and philosophy.

First Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.