The recommendations are premised on three assumptions about what is
needed to do good PhD work on Nietzsche: (1) a strong, general
philosophical education; (2) one or more serious Nietzsche scholars to supervise the
work; and (3) a philosophical environment in which one can get a solid
grounding in the history of philosophy, especially ancient philosophy,
Kant, and post-Kantian German philosophy.
Unfortunately, there are fewer viable choices now than in the past. Here's the five programs I'd strongly recommend for someone certain they plan to focus on Nietzsche:
Brown University:
a strong department overall (still top 20ish in the US), with one leading
Nietzsche specialist, Bernard Reginster; unfortunately, two other senior faculty
with sympathetic and complementary interests (Paul Guyer and Charles
Larmore) have both retired. So Reginster is "more on his own" than before, but the department is still worth considering given Reginster's presence.
New York University:
the best department in the Anglophone world, with three senior faculty
with interests in Nietzsche: Robert Hopkins, John Richardson, and
Tamsin Shaw (though only Richardson has worked on Nietzsche in recent years, and even these days he is focused on other topics). The department now also has strong coverage of
ancient philosophy and through Richardson and Anja Jauernig solid
coverage of Kant and the post-Kantian Continental traditions. Given the
department's dominant strengths in other areas to date (e.g.,
metaphysics, philosophy of mind), so far there have been hardly any
students there working on Nietzsche, and only a handful working on other post-Kantian
figures--something a prospective student should investigate.
Oxford University:
a very strong faculty (top 2-3 in the Anglophone world), with strong
coverage of the history of philosophy, with one significant senior
Nietzsche scholar (Peter Kail) and one strong younger Nietzsche
specialist (Alexander Prescott-Couch). Stephen Mulhall, Joseph Schear
and Mark Wrathall offer good coverage of other aspects of the
post-Kantian Continental traditions, especially Heidegger and
phenomenology. Also outstanding in ancient philosophy.
University of Chicago:
a strong, if somewhat idiosyncratic, department (top 20ish in the US),
with particular strengths in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy and in
Kant and post-Kantian German philosophy. Chicago has to have more
scholars interested in Nietzsche from more divergent points of view than
anywhere else: besides me, also James Conant, Martha Nussbaum, Robert Pippin, David
Wellbery, and (part-time still) Michael Forster. There tend to be a lot of graduate students interested in
Nietzsche (six of the ten Chicago PhD students I've worked closely with over the last decade have had serious Nietzsche interests, two have published on
Nietzsche, and another wrote a dissertation with a significant Nietzsche
component). (Note: All of Pippin's supervision in German philosophy in
recent years has been of students working on Kant or Hegel, and he is no longer supervising PhD students in the philosophy department.)
University of Warwick:
a good department overall (top 10ish in the UK), with one well-known Nietzsche scholar (Andrew Huddleston) and one junior scholar working on Nietzsche (Timothy Stoll), plus strong coverage generally of
Kant and the post-Kantian Continental traditions (e.g., Quassim Cassam,
Stephen Houlgate).
Here
are some other departments a student interested in Nietzsche might consider as well, although they are not as strong as the
preceding in my judgment:
Boston University: a solid
department (top 50ish in the US), with a strong commitment to the
history of philosophy, including Kant and the post-Kantian Continental
traditions (e.g., Daniel Dahlstrom, Sally Sedgwick). BU has one
well-known Nietzsche specialist (Paul Katsafanas, though he is pushing a
rather distinctive, and to my mind, implausible line about Nietzsche
these days, though I still highly commend several of his earlier papers
that we've discussed on this blog in the past--but students sympatico to
his approach would no doubt find him an excellent person with whom to
work).
Stanford University: a strong department (top
15 in the US), with two senior faculty who have done important work
on Nietzsche: Lanier Anderson and Nadeem Hussain. In the past, I
would have put Stanford in the top group, but Nadeem tells me he's not
really working much on Nietzsche anymore. Also strong in ancient
philosophy and, with Anderson and Michael Friedman, also very good for
Kant. The department's center of gravity, judging from its PhD
graduates, does appear to be more in logic, language, mind, metaphysics
and epistemology.
University of California, Riverside:
a solid department overall (top 30 in the US) and traditionally one of the best
places in the U.S. to study the Continental traditions in philosophy
with two important senior faculty--Maudemarie Clark (a leading Nietzsche
specialist) and Pierre Keller (Kant, German Idealism,
phenomenology)--as well as the recently tenured Sasha Newton (Kant,
German Idealism) and Georgia Warnke (Critical Theory) in Political Science. The
department is especially notable for the way in which the study of the
Continental traditions is closely integrated with the study of the rest
of philosophy, to the enrichment of both. (It's also a very collegial
place, one of my favorite departments to visit in the country.) There
is also a large and impressive group of graduate students working on the
post-Kantian traditions and/or interested in Nietzsche. The problem now is that Clark will soon retire, and it's unclear whether the department will appoint another Nietzsche specialist.
University College London: a good
department (top 10 in the UK), with two faculty who publish on
Nietzsche: Sebastian Gardner and Tom Stern. Gardner is a major
scholar of Kant and German Idealism. Gardner is excellent, Stern's work
is weak.
University of Essex: a narrow department, but
strongly focused on Kant and the post-Kantian Continental traditions.
One well-known Nietzsche specialist on faculty: Beatrice Han-Pile.
University of Southampton:
A solid but not top 15 UK department, with a particular strength in
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche--most notably Christopher Janaway, but others
in philosophy or cognate units include David Owen and Aaron Ridley.
Yale University: Robert Gooding-Williams is moving from Columbia to Yale, and he continues to be interested in Nietzsche, although much of his published work is on philosophy of race in recent years. The Department is strong in 19th-century German philosophy (Paul Franks, Jake McNulty), and also outstanding in the history of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy and modern philosophy.
For a student
looking to do a terminal M.A. first, s/he might consider any of the UK
departments (where students first do a master's degree or B.Phil. before
doing the PhD), or, in the U.S., Georgia State University
remains far and away the best choice: in addition to solid coverage of
moral, political and legal philosophy, ancient philosophy, and
philosophy of mind and cognitive science, the department has two
well-known scholars who work on Nietzsche (Jessica Berry and Gregory
Moore), and two other faculty who work on Kant and post-Kantian German
philosophy (Sebastian Rand and Eric Wilson).
The best Nietzsche scholar on the European Continent is Mattia Riccardi, now at the University of Porto in Portugal. Also in Portugal, The New University of Lisbon continues to have a lively philosophical community interested in Nietzsche led by Joao Constancio. Andreas Urs Summer at the University of Freiburg in Germany is doing interesting historical and philological work, albeit of somewhat less clear philosophical import.