"This is a fine book. Beginning with Nietzsche and proceeding through three of his important but under-studied followers, Woodford traces the fortunes of the notion that a broadly Darwinian understanding of life provides a basis for reflecting on what values truly inform human existence. If Nietzsche’s work inaugurated an important set of discussions in this area, Woodford demonstrates that neither his own conclusions nor his way of framing the matter dominated what we now refer to as the Lebensphilosophie movement. He also argues, convincingly, that the questions over which Nietzsche, Overbeck, Simmel, and Rickert argued have hardly been settled today. Expect a revival of interest in these figures, and in the idea of Lebensphilosophie in general, to follow from this work."
— Andrew Dole, Amherst College
“In The Moral Meaning of Nature, Peter Woodford raises the question of the impact of naturalistic approaches to life on conceptions of value, science, and religion in the late nineteenth century, taking Friedrich Nietzsche as his point of departure. Woodford does an excellent job of showing how the concept of ‘life’ connects many strands of Nietzsche’s thought while also engaging a constellation of authors and their approaches, such as Overbeck and the study of religion, Simmel and the study of sociology, and Rickert and the neo-Kantian approach to values.”
— John H. Smith, University of California, Irvine
"Woodford offers a compelling account of an extremely important problem of European philosophical thought that needs more attention than it tends to receive. His cogent summaries of Rickert’s work in particular are a valuable service, considering only Rickert’s work on the philosophy of history and historical sciences is very widely read in English."
— Reading Religion
"There is much of value here. Deeply insightful is Woodford’s account of Nietzsche’s focus on power and how often that is the motivation behind moral codes and their enforcement. . . . Peter Woodford has written a most interesting work that is highly stimulating and that left one reviewer all ready for a (Darwinian?) fight. The best kind of book!"
— Isis