For the past three decades Howard Caygill has been one of the two or three leading practitioners and exponents of European philosophy in the UK. This remarkable collection of selected essays is an intellectual event in itself, demonstrating Caygill’s remarkable range, depth and unique form of critical engagement. Of especial note are the five exquisite essays on Nietzsche, the parallel essays on life and the life sciences, and the defiant series of essays that anticipate and complement Caygill’s resistance trilogy. And then there is the beautiful, moving, and great demystifying opening essay on Gillian Rose.

J. M. Bernstein, University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, The New School for Social Research, USA

Caygill is one of our foremost practitioners of the past, present and future philosophical difficulties of Kant’s [so-called] Copernican revolution. This collection essays the life force of understanding, resisting both metaphysics and the death of metaphysics with a non-resentful joyous living in the turmoil of the loss of the ‘object in-itself’.

Nigel Tubbs, Professor of Philosophical and Educational Thought, University of Winchester, UK

Ringing true and brilliant and crystal clear, <i>Force and Understanding </i>confirms what we have long thought and have yet to say: Howard Caygill is to be counted among the great thinkers of our time.

George Smith, Edgar E. Coons, Jr. Professor of New Philosophy and Founder and President of the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts, Portland, USA