Notable Ideas and Contributions
Soll established his reputation among Nietzsche scholars with his 1973 essay "Reflections on Recurrence: A Re-Examination of Nietzsche's Doctrine" which puts forth a novel interpretation of Nietzsche's idea of the eternal recurrence. Soll's interpretation states that the literal possibility of the eternal recurrence is not as important as taking on the idea for what its consequences imply. He argues that the implications of this idea force the individual to evaluate past, current, and future life choices.
Documented in the book Genius In Their Own Words: The Intellectual Journeys of Seven Great 20th-Century Thinkers edited by David Ramsay Steele (forward by Arthur Danto) a mediated series of questions posed by Soll were presented to the famed French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre on various aspects of Sartre's philosophy with Sartre providing his answers to Soll's questions.
Soll contributed three introductions to Walter Kaufmann's Discovering the Mind series of books which were some of the last published works from Kaufmann. Soll has also authored several encyclopedia entries on different topics of philosophy. He continues to be discussed by younger Nietzsche scholars like Bernard Reginster who engaged with his ideas in the 2006 book The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism.
Soll's courses on Nietzsche and Existentialism at the University of Wisconsin–Madison continue to be popular courses in the Wisconsin Philosophy Department. He regularly teaches Introduction to Philosophy thereby introducing the discipline to many new students.
Soll and his wife, Marta Gomez, have produced original artists' books collaboratively at their Tiramisu Press in Madison, Wisconsin.
Soll was a participant in the Peter Sloterdijk lecture series seminar and conference workshop, May 19 to 23, 2008 at the University of Warwick where he discussed the relationship between the philosophies of Sloterdijk and Nietzsche.
Soll completed an essay on Charles Darwin's influence on German philosophy for a volume on Darwin to be published in Turkey, and an essay on Nietzsche's anti-moralism for a conference in Britain in 2010. For the 2010 Summer he taught in Istanbul.
In 2010 he gave the lead-off lecture at a conference in England on Nietzsche's Postmoralism and the keynote address in German, titled Lob der Illusion (In Praise of Illusion), at a conference in Germany.
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