Alan D. Schrift

Schrift was born in Brooklyn, New York City. He earned his Bachelor of Arts (with honors) from Brown University in 1977, followed by a Master of Arts in 1980 and Doctor of Philosophy in 1983, both from Purdue University. He earned his PhD with a dissertation entitled Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation: Hermeneutics, Deconstruction, Pluralism.^[1][3][4][5] After two years teaching at Clarkson University in the Center for Liberal Studies, Schrift joined the Department of Philosophy at Grinnell College as Assistant Professor in 1987. Promoted to Associate Professor in 1991, to Full Professor in 1998, and to the Miller Chair in 2006, Schrift served as Department Chair in 1994-2000, 2003-2007, and from 2009 until he retired from teaching in 2013. In addition to teaching a range of courses in 19th- and 20th-century European philosophy, Schrift was the founding and inaugural Director of the Grinnell College Center for the Humanities (1999-2007) and served on several faculty committees, including the Gender and Women’s Studies Concentration Committee (1988-2007).

Beyond Grinnell, Schrift has served the profession in several capacities: as a member of the Executive Committee of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (2014-17); as Executive Co-Director of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (2019-2023); as a member of the Committee for the Status of Women of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (2003-2006); as Chair of the Program Committee of the North American Nietzsche Society (1998-2004); as Editor of the Annual North American Nietzsche Society issue published in the International Studies in Philosophy (1998-2004); and as a member of the Program Committee of the American Philosophical Association Central Division (2003, 2006). He has also served, since 2001, as the lead editor of the Stanford University Press translations of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Kritische Studienausgabe (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1984) as The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche.

• Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers. John Wiley & Sons. 4 February 2009. ISBN 978-1-4051-4394-3.^{[6][7][8][9][10][11]}

• Nietzsche's French Legacy. Routledge. 2014-03-18. doi:10.4324/9781315822211. ISBN 978-1-317-82820-4.
• Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation. 2014. doi:10.4324/9781315831893. ISBN 978-1-315-83189-3.

• Volume 1: The Birth of Tragedy /Unpublished Basel Writings (Winter 1869/70–Fall 1873) (2026).
• Volume 4: Human, All Too Human II and Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Human, All Too Human II (Spring 1878–Fall 1879) (2012).
• Volume 5: Dawn (2011)
• Volume 6: The Joyful Science / Idylls from Messina / Unpublished Fragments from the Period of The Joyful Science (Spring 1881–Summer 1882) (2023).
• Volume 7: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (2026)
• Volume 8: Beyond Good and Evil / On the Genealogy of Morality (2014).
• Volume 9: The Case of Wagner / Twilight of the Idols / The Antichrist / Ecce Homo / Dionysus Dithyrambs / Nietzsche Contra Wagner (2020).
• Volume 12: Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Human, All Too Human I (Winter 1874/75–Winter 1877/78) (2021).
• Volume 13: Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Dawn (Winter 1879/80–Spring 1881) (2023).
• Volume 14: Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Summer 1882–Winter 1883/84) (2019).
• Volume 15: Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Spring 1884–Winter 1884/85) (2021).
• Volume 16: Unpublished Fragments (Spring 1885–Spring 1886) (2021).
• Volume 17: Unpublished Fragments (Summer 1886–Fall 1887) (2024).

• The History of Continental Philosophy, University of Chicago Press, 2013-04-12, doi:10.7208/9780226740492/html#contents, retrieved 2025-07-01
  • Reviewed as “Essential” by Choice and awarded “Honorable Mention” in the category “Multi-volume Reference Work in the Humanities and Social Sciences” by American Publishers Awards for Scholarly Excellence.

• The History of Continental Philosophy
  • Volume 1: Kant, Kantianism, and Idealism: The Origins of Continental Philosophy. Ed. Thomas Nenon
  • Volume 2: Nineteenth-Century Philosophy: Revolutionary Responses to the Existing Order. Ed. Alan D. Schrift and Daniel Conway
  • Volume 3: The New Century: Bergsonism, Phenomenology and Responses to Modern Science. Ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson and Alan D. Schrift
  • Volume 4: Phenomenology: Responses and Developments. Ed. Leonard Lawlor
  • Volume 5: Critical Theory to Structuralism: Philosophy, Politics and the Human Sciences. Ed. David Ingram
  • Volume 6: Poststructuralism and Critical Theory’s Second Generation. Ed. Alan D. Schrift ^[12]
  • Volume 7: After Poststructuralism: Transitions and Transformations. Ed. Rosi Braidotti
  • Volume 8: Emerging Trends in Continental Philosophy. Ed. Todd May

• Wahl, Jean. Schrift, Alan D.; Moore, Ian Alexander (eds.). Transcendence and the Concrete. Fordham University Press (2016). doi:10.5422/fordham/9780823273010.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-8232-7301-0. JSTOR j.ctt1g2kn1q.^[13]
• Modernity and the Problem of Evil (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005).
• Why Nietzsche Still? Reflections on Drama, Culture, and Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
• The Logic of the Gift. Routledge. 1997. doi:10.4324/9780203760369. ISBN 978-1-134-71470-4.
• The Hermeneutic Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990). Co-edited with Gayle L. Ormiston.
• Transforming the Hermeneutic Context: From Nietzsche to Nancy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990). Co-edited with Gayle L. Ormiston.

• “Deleuze the Universitaire,” in The Deleuzian Mind, ed. Jeffrey E. Bell and Henry Sommers-Hall (London: Routledge, 2025). Pp. 9–23.
• “Nietzsche et l’émergence du poststructuralisme,” in Nietzsche et la France, ed. Paolo D’Iorio, Alexandre Avril, and David Simonin (Paris: CNRS-Éditions, 2025). Pp. 312–322.
• “Friedrich Nietzsche” and “The Concrete,” in Encyclopedia of Political Anthropology, ed. Arpad Szakolczai and Paul O’Connor (Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 2025). Pp. 210–16; Pp. 404–408.
• “Nietzsche and the Emergence of Poststructuralism,” in Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics, ed. Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala (New York: Routledge, 2020). Pp. 15-34.
• “Pluralism = Monism: What Deleuze learns from Nietzsche and Spinoza,” in Deleuze and Guattari’s Philosophy of Freedom: Freedom’s Refrains, ed. Dorothea Olkowski and Eftichis Pirovolakis (New York: Routledge, 2019). Pp. 155-167.
• Jean André WAHL (1888–1974), in Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Philosophers: https://www.bloomsburyphilosophers.com/article?docid=b- 9781350999992&tocid=b-9781350999992-0036&st=wahl.
• “Nietzsche and Foucault’s ‘Will to Know,’” in Foucault and Nietzsche: A Critical Encounter, ed. Joseph Westfall and Alan Rosenberg (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018). Pp. 59-78.
• “Foucault and Poststructuralism,” in A Companion to Literary Theory, ed. David Richter (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2018). Pp. 176-87.
• “Pourquoi les philosophes devraient toujours lire Mauss (aux Etats-Unis d’Amérique en particulier),” in Marcel Mauss, en théorie et en pratique -- Anthropologie, sociologie, philosophie, ed. Erwan Dianteill (Paris: L’Harmattan: Le Sandre / Archives Karéline, 2014).
• “Spinoza vs. Kant: Have I Been Understood?” in Nietzsche and Political Thought, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014). Pp. 107-122.
• “Man” and “Friedrich Nietzsche,” in The Cambridge Foucault Lexicon, ed. Leonard Lawlor and John Nale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Pp. 281-287, 662-668.
• “Discipline and Punish,” in A Companion to Foucault, ed. Christopher Falzon, Timothy O’Leary, and Jana Sawicki (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2013). Pp. 137-153.
• “Nietzsche’s Nachlass,” in A Companion to Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. Paul Bishop (London: Camden House, 2012). Pp. 405-428.
• “Le nietzschéisme comme épistémologie: la réception française de Nietzsche dans le moment philosophique des années 60,” trans. Patrice Maniglier, in Le moment philosophique des années 1960 en France, ed. Patrice Maniglier (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2011). Pp. 95-111.
• “French Nietzscheanism,” in Poststructuralism and Critical Theory’s Second Generation, Volume 6 of The History of Continental Philosophy (London: Acumen Press/Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). Pp. 19-46.
• “Psychoanalysis and Desire,” (co-authored with Rosi Braidotti) in Poststructuralism and Critical Theory’s Second Generation, Volume 6 of The History of Continental Philosophy (London: Acumen Press/Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). Pp. 311-35.
• “The Effects of the Agrégation de Philosophie on Twentieth-Century French Philosophy,” The Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 46, no. 3 (July 2008): 449-73.
• “Deconstruction,” “Friedrich Nietzsche,” and “Structuralism and Poststructuralism,” in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd edition, ed. Donald Borchert (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2006), 661-62, 607-17, 273-79.
• “Is There Such a Thing as ‘French Philosophy’? or Why Do We Read the French So Badly?” lead essay in After the Deluge: New Perspectives on Postwar French Intellectual and Cultural History, ed. Julian Bourg (Lantham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004). Pp. 21-47.
• “Le Mépris des Anti-Sémites: Kofman’s Nietzsche, Nietzsche’s Jews,” in Sarah Kofman’s Corpus, ed. Tina Chanter and Pleshette DeArmitt (Albany: SUNY Press, 2008). Pp. 75-90.
• “Nietzsche for Democracy?” Nietzsche-Studien 29 (2000): 220-33.
• “Rethinking the Subject, or How One Becomes-other than What One Is,” in Nietzsche’s Postmoralism: Essays on Nietzsche's Prelude to Philosophy's Future, ed. Richard Schacht (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Pp. 47-62.
• “Nietzsche’s French Legacy,” in Cambridge Companions to Philosophy: Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. Bernd Magnus and Kathleen Higgins (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Pp. 323-55.
• “On the Gynecology of Morals: Nietzsche and Cixous on the Logic of the Gift,” in Nietzsche and the Feminine, ed. Peter J. Burgard (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1994). Pp. 210-29.
• “Foucault and Derrida on Nietzsche and the ‘end(s)’ of ‘man,’” in Exceedingly Nietzsche: Aspects of Contemporary Nietzsche-Interpretation, ed. David F. Krell and David Wood (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1988). Pp. 131-49. Reprinted in Michel Foucault: Critical Assessments, Vol. II, ed. Barry Smart (London: Routledge, 1994). Pp. 278-92.