One hundred years after his death, Friedrich Nietzsche remains the most influential philosopher of the modern era. Basic Writings of Nietzsche gathers the complete texts of five of Nietzsche's most important works, from his first book to his last: The Birth of Tragedy; Beyond Good and Evil; On the Genealogy of Morals; The Case of Wagner; and Ecce Homo. Edited and translated by the great Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann, this volume provides a definitive guide (...) to the full range of Nietzsche's thought. Included also are seventy-five aphorisms, selections from Nietzsche's correspondence, and variants from drafts for Ecce Homo. (shrink)

A group of the last notebooks that Nietzsche wrote from 1888 to the final notebook of 1889. -/- Translator Daniel Fidel Ferrer. See: "Nietzsche's Notebooks in English: a Translator's Introduction and Afterward". pages 265-272. Total pages 390. Translation done June 2012. -/- Nietzsche's notebooks from the last productive year of life, 1888. Nietzsche's unpublished writings called the Nachlass. These are notebooks (Notizheft) from the year 1888 up to early January 1889. Nietzsche stopped (...) writing entirely after January 6, 1889. -/- The German notebooks of Nietzsche's included in these English translations: 12[1-2] Anfang 1888 13[1-5] Anfang 1888 - Fruhjahr 1888 14[1-227] Fruhjahr 1888 (first note says: Nizza, den 25. Marz 1888) 15[1-120] Fruhjahr 1888 16[1-89] Fruhjahr - Sommer 1888 17[1-9] Mai - Juni 1888 18[1-17] Juli - August 1888 19[1-11] September 1888 20[1-168] Sommer 1888 21[1-8] Herbst 1888 22[1-29] September - Oktober 1888 23[1-14] Oktober 1888 24[1-10] Oktober - November 1888 25[1-21] December 1888 - Januar 1889. (shrink)

These are the 22 notebooks of Nietzsche’s last notebooks from 1886-1889. Nietzsche stopped writing entirely around 6th of January 1889. There are 1785 notes translated here. This group of notes translated in this book is not complete for the year 1886. There are at least two other notebooks that were done in the year 1886. However, Nietzsche wrote in his notebooks sometime from back to front and currently the notebooks are only in a general chronological order. (...) Refer to the German Nietzsche philology literature for more exact dating. (shrink)

For much of his adult life, Nietzsche wrote notes on philosophical subjects in small notebooks that he carried around with him. After his breakdown and subsequent death, his sister supervised the publication of some of these notes under the title The Will to Power, and that collection, which is textually inaccurate and substantively misleading, has dominated the English-speaking discussion of Nietzsche's later thought. The present volume offers, for the first time, accurate translations of a selection of writings (...) from Nietzsche's late notebooks, dating from his last productive years between 1885 and 1889. Many of them have never before been published in English. They are translated by Kate Sturge from reliable texts in the Colli-Montinari edition, and they are edited by Rüdiger Bittner, whose introduction places them in the context of Nietzsche's philosophy as a whole. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s Ecce homo, Notebooks and Letters: 1888-1889 / Translation by Daniel Fidel Ferrer. ©2023 Daniel Fidel Ferrer. All rights reserved. -/- Ecce homo: How One Becomes What One Is (Ecce homo: Wie man wird, was man ist). -/- Who should read Nietzsche? You can disagree with everything Nietzsche wrote and re-read Nietzsche to sharpen your attack. Philosophy. Not for use without adult supervision (required). Philosophy is a designated area for adults only. Read at your own risk. (...) You have the pleasure of reading and of course disagree with all philosophy. Warning philosophical ideas are present. Reading Nietzsche does not mean you will gain anything, in fact, you might lose your previous ideas. -/- Nietzsche does not call this book an autobiography (he has written many short autobiographical sketches before); but rather, uses the expression “I tell myself my life”. -/- Nietzsche was the past philosopher who wrote about our future, “The time is coming when the struggle for the domination of the earth will be waged - it will be waged in the name of basic philosophical doctrines.” KGWB/NF-1881, 11[273]. The world has seen plenty of wars and death, since 1881. The process of the domination of the earth and world is still on-going. -/- What is Nietzsche’s overall project with Ecce homo? -/- Main Leitmotifs in Ecce homo. -/- Christianity as the denial of the will to life, revaluation of all values (Umwerthung aller Werthe), Amor fati, Dionysus as a god and his philosophy (future project for Nietzsche), overthrowing idols, two worlds (“true world" finally became a fable) against Plato eternal world and forms, eternal recurrence or the eternal return of the same (Nietzsche heaviest thought, also his most abysmal thought “abgründlichsten Gedanken”), opposite and counterpart to type of person decadent (décadent), “I count the overcoming of pity among the noble virtues”, against the concept of God (Christian), overman or superman (Übermensch), Will to Power (Wille zur Macht), great politics, immoralist, morality of the Christian church, and Declaration of war (“Kriegserklärung”). -/- Table of Contents -/- Motto [page 3]. Epigraph [pages 4-6]. -/- Preface to the Translation of Ecce homo [pages 7-16] -/- Major Leitmotifs in Nietzsche [pages 17-24]. -/- Translations from Nietzsche’s German to English include. -/- 1). Ecce homo: How One Becomes What One Is (Ecce homo: Wie man wird, was man ist. [pages 25-113]. -/- 2). This poem was included in the first publications of Ecce homo (1908). Glory and Eternity (Ruhm und Ewigkeit). [pages 114-124]. -/- 3). These are all of Nietzsche’s last notebooks (complete) they are numbered 21, 22, 23, and 24. There are a total of 82 notes. Final notes by Nietzsche from the Nachlass (Nachlaß). Sometime in German called the Notizheft. Nietzsche’s notebooks that include some drafts for Ecce homo and other topics he was thinking during his last writings. Dating from October 1888 until early Janurary 1889. [pages 125-191]. -/- 4). Nietzsche’s Letters Regarding Ecce homo. Nietzsche’s letters starting at the end of October 1888 discussing Ecce homo. These are not always the complete letters but include all of the passages of Nietzsche discussing Ecce homo. Complete translation of the last letter Nietzsche wrote. Dated until BVN-1889. #1256. Letter to Jacob Burckhardt in Basel. Turin, about 6 January 1889. [pages 192-223]. -/- Bibliographies [pages 224-254]. -/- Nietzsche’s Philosophy Final Thoughts [pages 255-259]. -/- Enjoy reading Nietzsche's last book. (shrink)

For much of his adult life, Nietzsche wrote notes on philosophical subjects in small notebooks that he carried around with him. After his breakdown and subsequent death, his sister supervised the publication of some of these notes under the title The Will to Power, and that collection, which is textually inaccurate and substantively misleading, has dominated the English-speaking discussion of Nietzsche's later thought. The present volume offers, for the first time, accurate translations of a selection of writings (...) from Nietzsche's late notebooks, dating from his last productive years between 1885 and 1889. Many of them have never before been published in English. They are translated by Kate Sturge from reliable texts in the Colli-Montinari edition, and they are edited by Rüdiger Bittner, whose introduction places them in the context of Nietzsche's philosophy as a whole. (shrink)

For much of his adult life, Nietzsche wrote notes on philosophical subjects in small notebooks that he carried around with him. After his breakdown and subsequent death, his sister supervised the publication of some of these notes under the title The Will to Power, and that collection, which is textually inaccurate and substantively misleading, has dominated the English-speaking discussion of Nietzsche's later thought. The present volume offers, for the first time, accurate translations of a selection of writings (...) from Nietzsche's late notebooks, dating from his last productive years between 1885 and 1889. Many of them have never before been published in English. They are translated by Kate Sturge from reliable texts in the Colli-Montinari edition, and they are edited by Rüdiger Bittner, whose introduction places them in the context of Nietzsche's philosophy as a whole. (shrink)

The book proposes a critique of Nietzsche's works 'from within'. In doing so, it answers the continuing question asked by any reader of Nietzsche: Why did he decide not to write the major work he said he would write?

In Nietzsche's Justice, Peter Sedgwick takes the theme of justice to the very heart of the great thinker's philosophy. He argues that Nietzsche's treatment of justice springs from an engagement with the themes charted in his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, which invokes the notion of an absolute justice grasped by way of artistic metaphysics. Nietzsche's encounter with Greek tragedy spurs the development of an oracular conception of justice capable of transcending rigid social convention. Sedgwick argues (...) that although Nietzsche's later writings reject his earlier metaphysics, his mature thought is not characterized by a rejection of the possibility of the oracular articulation of justice found in the Birth. Rather, in the aftermath of his rejection of traditional accounts of the nature of will, moral responsibility, and punishment, Nietzsche seeks to rejuvenate justice in naturalistic terms. This rejuvenation is grounded in a radical reinterpretation of the nature of human freedom and in a vision of genuine philosophical thought as the legislation of values and the embracing of an ethic of mercy. The pursuit of this ethic invites a revaluation of the principles explored in Nietzsche's last writings. Smart, concise, and accessibly written, Nietzsche's Justice reveals a philosopher who is both socially embedded and oriented toward contemporary debates on the nature of the modern state. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nietzsche's Free SpiritAmy MullinOn the back cover of the original 1882 edition of The Gay Science, Nietzsche tells us that this book represents "the conclusion of a series of writings by Friedrich Nietzsche whose common goal is to erect a new image and ideal of the free spirit."1 He furthermore tells us that to this series belong: Human, all too Human (1878), The Wanderer and (...) His Shadow (1880), Daybreak (1881), and The Gay Science (1882, Books 1-4).2 Nietzsche's interest in the topics of fate and freedom dates back to some of his earliest writings, those written in the spring of 1862 and recently translated by George Stack as "Fate and History" and "Freedom of Will and Fate."3 Furthermore, Nietzsche's writings after 1882 remain dedicated, unto the last, to the importance of this new ideal of the free spirit. Thus, for instance, Part Two of Beyond Good and Evil (1886) is entitled "The Free Spirit," and in the autumn of 1888, in plans for his never written Revaluation of All Values, Book 2 was to be entitled "The Free Spirit. Critique of Philosophy as a Nihilistic Movement."4Yet little attention has been paid to interpreting Nietzsche's corpus, particularly [End Page 383] the works from his middle period, as characterized by a common goal, that of erecting a new image and ideal of the free spirit.5 Furthermore, too often little distinction is made between what Nietzsche admired in the past, nobility or the master, what he admires in the present, the free spirit, and what he hopes to come in the future, philosophers of the future and the Übermensch. The philosophers of the future will be very free spirits, but they will not be merely free spirits. Nietzsche tells us that he and his fellow free spirits are merely the "heralds and precursors" of the philosophers of the future.6 This suggests that we cannot simply equate, as Alexander Nehamas does, the free spirit and the "philosopher of the future,"7 and we should not speak interchangeably of masters or nobles, free spirits, philosophers of the future, and Übermenschen.8In a related error, free spirits are said to possess all the traits Nietzsche praises. Ruth Abbey, for instance, characterizes the values constitutive of free spirithood as "autonomy in thought and action, intellectual strength and daring, desire and ability to pursue the truth, capacity for cruelty and the skills of dialogue."9 While it is true that Nietzsche does suggest that the dialogue is the perfect conversation,10 he nowhere associates skills in dialogue with a free spirit. Instead, the free spirit is strongly associated with isolation, which would tend to preclude conversation, skilful or otherwise.We need to give an account of the free spirit which distinguishes it from Nietzsche's other ideals, while also connecting the new ideal of a free spirit to other aspects of Nietzsche's thought, most particularly his condemnation of [End Page 384] universalistic moralities, and his account of the possibility of controlling one's interpretations of the world in order to carry on experiments in knowledge. It is only once we have become clear about what a free spirit is like that we can evaluate Nietzsche's claim to have constructed a new ideal, and begin to consider whether this ideal has any appeal for us today, and why.In order to understand what a free spirit is and is not, we need (1) to distinguish between so-called free spirits and Nietzsche's new ideal of a free spirit, and (2) to appreciate the radical distinction between freedom of spirit and freedom of will.11 We will then be in a position (3) to see that, far from being opposed to necessity, free spirits are a product of it. We will then need (4) to look at the details of Nietzsche's account of the free spirit. Do free spirits share characteristic traits? Since free spirits all begin as fettered spirits, we will need to see what trajectory Nietzsche sees free spirits taking from fetters to freedom. Here it will be important to recognize that Nietzsche speaks of several stages of free... (shrink)

Nietzsche's Antichrist is subtitled "A Curse on Christianity." In its last numbered section, he pronounces his "eternal indictment" of two millennia of tradition: —Now I have come to the end and I pronounce my judgment. I condemn Christianity, I indict the Christian church on the most terrible charges an accuser has ever had in his mouth. I consider it the greatest corruption conceivable, it had the will to the last possible corruption. [...] I want to write this (...) eternal indictment of Christianity on every wall, wherever there are walls,—[...] I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great innermost corruption, the one great instinct of revenge that does not consider any method to be poisonous... (shrink)

Readers and scholars of Nietzsche’s works have their particular preferences for certain of Nietzsche’s books. Many prefer Zarathustra but others have preferences for Nietzsche’s last writings such...

This Element explains Nietzsche's ethics in his late works, from 1886 onwards. The first three sections explain the basics of his ethical theory – its context and presuppositions, its scope and its central tension. The next three sections explore Nietzsche's goals in writing a history of Christian morality, the content of that history, and whether he achieves his goals. The last two sections take a broader look, respectively, at Nietzsche's wider philosophy in light of his ethics (...) and at the prospects for a Nietzschean ethics after Nietzsche. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most important philosophers of the last two hundred years, whose writings, both published and unpublished, have had a formative influence on virtually all aspects of modern culture. This volume offers introductory essays on all of Nietzsche's completed works and also his unpublished notebooks. The essays address such topics as his criticism of morality and Christianity, his doctrines of the will to power and the eternal recurrence, his perspectivism, his theories of (...) tragedy and nihilism and his thoughts on ancient and modern culture. Written by internationally recognized scholars, they provide the interested reader with an up-to-date and authoritative overview of the thought of this fascinating figure. (shrink)

Este artigo retoma o debate acerca da relação entre natureza e liberdade a partir das reflexões sobre o tema apresentadas por Nietzsche nos seus últimos escritos. O objetivo é apresentar aspectos de sua crítica á noção de liberdade moral como algo inerente à natureza humana e, em seguida, caracterizar a liberdade decorrente de uma auto-superação da moral. This article revisits the debate over the relationship between nature and freedom from the reflections on this issue provided by Nietzsche in (...) his last writings. The objective is both to p r e s e nt some aspects of his critique of the notion of moral freedom as something inherent in human nature and to characterize the freedom that follows from one's own act of overcoming morals. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche was among the figures from the history of nineteenth century philosophy that, perhaps surprisingly, some of the Vienna Circle’s members had presented as one of their predecessors. While, primarily for political reasons, most Anglophone figures in the history of analytic philosophy had taken a dim view of Nietzsche, the Vienna Circle’s leader Moritz Schlick admired and praised Nietzsche, rejecting what he saw as a misinterpretation of Nietzsche as a militarist or proto-fascist. Schlick, Frank, Neurath, (...) and Carnap were in different ways committed to the view that Nietzsche made a significant contribution to the overcoming of metaphysics. Some of these philosophers praised the intimate connection Nietzsche drew between his philosophical outlook and empirical studies in psychology and physiology. In his 1912 lectures on Nietzsche, Schlick maintained that Nietzsche overcame an initial Schopenhauerian metaphysical-artistic phase in his thinking, and subsequently remained a positivist until his last writings. Frank and Neurath made the weaker claim that Nietzsche contributed to the development of a positivistic or scientific conception of the world. Schlick and Frank took a further step in seeing the mature Nietzsche as an Enlightenment thinker. (shrink)

Resumo Como rebento de uma família de tradição luterana, Nietzsche não poderia estar ausente do rico material produzido nos quase cem anos da presença da Escola Superior de Teologia. Mesmo que o acervo bibliográfico da dita Escola esteja eminentemente voltado ao atendimento do curso de teologia, há um acervo filosófico digno de nota. Entre os diversos volumes que preenchem as dezenas de estantes da filosofia, se encontram textos escritos por Nietzsche, bem como livros escritos sobre este autor. A (...) maioria destes escritos em língua alemã na Alemanha, mas também inúmeros escritos em alemão, porém no Brasil. Neste artigo pretendemos analisar estes últimos escritos, de maneira a realizar uma leitura de como foi a recepção de Nietzsche na primeira escola de formação de pastores do Brasil.As descendant of a Lutheran and tradition family, Nietzsche could not be absent of the rich material produced in almost one hundred year of presence of the High School of Theology. Even though the bibliography of that school is eminently turned to theology course, there are several books of philosophy. Between this books that fulfil many philosophy’s stands, occur texts written by Nietzsche, as well books written about this author. The majority of this books were written on german language, many of those written on german, but in Brazil. In this article we intend analyze this last writing so as to realize a lecture of as was the Nietzsche’s reception in the first school of pastor formation in Brazil. (shrink)

This review essay expands on two excellent collections dealing with Nietzsche and Wagner and is drawn from the proceedings of conferences in the bicentennial year of Wagner’s birth. It points to four areas underplayed in the contributions. The first involves Nietzsche’s adoption of Wagnerian ideology, especially anti-Judaism, in the late 1860s and early 1870s. The second deals with Nietzsche’s actual activities and sentiments regarding the inaugural Bayreuth festival in 1876 and his later reports of these activities and (...) sentiments. A third topic concerns the break from Wagner, its likely causes, and its stylization in Nietzsche’s recollections from the 1880s. And lastly the essay examines the ambivalence toward Wagner in Nietzsche’s writings from 1888 as part of an autobiographical imperative. In general, the collections reviewed place too much trust in Nietzsche’s own accounts of the relationship with Wagner and fail to recognize that, especially in the 1880s, the philosopher is engaged in a process of self-fashioning to bring his current views into harmony with a history embellished and manipulated to give the appearance of linear development and consistent beliefs. (shrink)

Nietzsche did not write a completed magnum opus, a ‘Hauptwerk’, but he planned to do so during at least the last 5 years of his active life. I will show that during and after the writing of Also sprach Zarathustra this was his main aim and ambition. The projected work passed through a number of related phases, of which the much discussed and controversial ‘Will to Power’ was merely one. This intention to write a magnum opus has been (...) denied or almost completely ignored by almost all commentators . I will bring attention to this intention, discuss why it has been ignored and show that an awareness of it is important for our understanding of the late Nietzsche's thinking and for determining the value and originality of his late notes. It has been a failure of historians of philosophy, intellectual historians and Nietzsche scholars not to have taken this into consideration and account. (shrink)

At the turn of the nineteenth century, the problem of the overman becomes one of the most discussed problems in Russia. This was mainly a consequence of the boom in the popularity of Nietzsche's writings; however, to a significant degree it was conditioned also by Solov'ev's works. The religious pathos of Solov'ev's philosophy prepared Russian specialists in the humanities to take an attentive interest in and eventually to accept precisely the "overhuman" aspect of Nietzschean thought. It would not (...) be wrong to assert that the special nature of the Russian Nietzscheanism of the Silver Age consists precisely in the fact that the idea of the overman firmly occupied a central place in it. While the representatives of academic scholarship and religious writers in the final years of the nineteenth century recoiled in horror from the Nietzschean overman, seeing in him the mark of Satanic origin, the embodied idea of evil, indeed the Antichrist himself, the young generation of idealist philosophers, the activists of the Russian religious renaissance of the beginning of the twentieth century, on the contrary, welcomed the Nietzschean image as a symbol of the approaching religious renewal of culture. The general mood of those years was accurately conveyed by D. Merezhkovskii: "The overman is the last point, the sharpest summit of the great mountain ridge of European philosophy, with its age-old roots in the rebellious, solitary, and aloof personality. One can go no further: precipice and abyss, fall or flight: the way of the overman-religion.". (shrink)

A slow study of the letters written by Nietzsche in the last five years of his conscious life shows a suffering man who trans-values the sorrow of his body recognizing it as both a face and a mask. The subject fades within history, art, science, within the time that becomes eternal through the death and beyond it, through the speech that becomes the seal of the world. Despite every insufficient reading which underlines the pathological feature in Nietzsche’s (...) last writings madness has been a real fiction: it became the Great Health in which “it’s finished” and the ego multiplies and vanishes in “all the names of History”. (shrink)

No other thinker so engaged the Russian cultural imagination of the early twentieth century as did Friedrich Nietzche. The Revolution of Moral Consciousness shows how Nietzschean thought influenced the brilliant resurgence of literary life that started in the 1890s and continued for four decades. Through an analysis of the Russian encounter with Nietzsche, Edith Clowes defines the shift in ethical and aesthetic vision that motivated Russia's unprecedented artistic renascence and at the same time led its followers to the brink (...) of cultural despair. Clowes shows how in the last years of the nineteenth century a diverse array of writers and critics discovered Nietzsche's thought, embracing or repudiating it with equal vigor. The literary storm brewing around Nietzsche and the concurrent relaxation of censorship combined to attract a public eager to follow the new intellectual fashion. Young writers, such as Andreev and Kuprin, welcomed the idea of the "superman" as a promising path to personal fulfillment. The tragic fates of their protagonists and the alluring gospel of the vulgar Zarathustra-like characters of such bestselling authors as Boborykin, Artsybashev, and Verbitskaia found enthusiastic, if indiscriminating, audiences ready to be "taught" how to "find themselves." By considering this Nietzschean cult, Clowes draws fresh insight into the nature of the budding popular-culture industry in Russia and the fast-growing reading public. From this ferment emerged the greatest Russian literary voices of the early twentieth century. The revolutionary romantics, Gorky and Lunacharsky, sought in Nietzsche's writing a new vision of total social and cultural change. Merezhkovsky led a generation of mystic symbolists in the search for a literary myth of resurrection. Ivanov, Blok, and Belyi appropriated the image of the "crucified Dionysus" as the central symbol of spiritual transfiguration. Their encounters with Nietzschean thought disclose an even more profound creative struggle with their own cultural past and its established formulations of nation and individual, culture and history. Clowes uses the term future anxiety to speak of a creative mentality that strove to assert itself by diminishing the impact of powerful literary precursors, such as Tolstoi, Dostoevsky, and Solovyov, and opening to the imagination the vision of a future full of vast creative possibility. (shrink)

Few philosophers have been as widely misunderstood as Nietzsche. His detractors and followers alike have often fundamentally misinterpreted him, distorting his views and intentions and criticizing or celebrating him for reasons removed from the views he actually held. Now __Nietzsche__ assesses his place in European thought, concentrating upon his writings in the last decade of his productive life.

This article addresses the role and meaning of prayer as well as the language of piety and praise in Nietzsche’s writings, notably in Zarathustra. This essay was first presented as a talk in German at the 2017 Nietzsche colloquium in Sils Maria, the theme of which was “Zarathustra und Dionysos”. In preparing it for a publication in English, the argument has been reworked and expanded and references have been added, while partly preserving the tone and structure of (...) the oral delivery. I am grateful to the instructive comments and suggestions of the anonymous reviewers for Nietzsche-Studien. Nietzsche can be read as an uncompromising critic of religion but also as the initiator of a new form of faith, described by some scholars as a “Dionysian piety”. The analysis takes its lead from the way in which Z refers to his yes-saying as also saying “amen”, exploring how Nietzsche explicitly incorporates the language of religious discourse into his writing. Examining passages where he explicitly questions the adoption of confessional language and prayer, it criticizes as overly simplistic the view of his thinking as seeking a new piety. The discussion of the significance of prayer from a psychological, linguistic, and poetological perspective highlights the experience of “inspiration” as a key to the adoption of confessional language in Z. In an interpretation of the last part of this book, it shows how its concluding scenes coalesce precisely around the role and possibility of prayer and piety, and how a crisis in the narrative is triggered by the inability of Zarathustra’s visitors to properly understand his message in this regard. A concluding interpretation of the section “Before Sunrise” in the third part of the book shows how it gathers the philosophical stakes involved in Nietzsche’s understanding of prayer, piety, and confessional praise. (shrink)

This essay, the last in a series, focuses on the relationship between Nietzsche’s mental illness and his philosophical art. It is predicated upon my original diagnosis of his mental condition as bipolar affective disorder, which began in early adulthood and continued throughout his creative life. The kaleidoscopic mood shifts allowed him to see things from different perspectives and may have imbued his writings with passion rarely encountered in philosophical texts. At times hovering on the verge of psychosis, (...) Nietzsche was able to gain access to unconscious images and the music of language, usually inhibited by the conscious mind. He reached many of his linguistic, psychological and philosophical insights by willing suspension of the rational. None of these, however, could have been communicated had he not tamed the subterranean psychic forces with his impressive discipline and hard work. (shrink)

Nietzsche repeatedly portrays himself as an advocate of what he calls a ‘philosophy of becoming’. While in his early Untimely Meditations he had considered the ‘doctrine of sovereign becoming’ to be ‘true but deadly’, from the middle-period Human, All Too Human up to and including his last writings he urges us to embrace this doctrine wholeheartedly. He consistently links the view of the world as being in a state of constant flux with the teachings of Heraclitus, the (...) one philosopher whom he praises to the very end of his sane life. Exactly what such a doctrine amounts to is a question that has not hitherto been subjected to the substantial treatment that it deserves, and it is this issue that Robin Small sets out to address. (shrink)

Beautifully packaged reissue of the vividly lyrical biography of Nietzsche that John Banville called 'a major intellectual event' In 1888, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche moved to Turin. This would be the year in which he wrote three of his greatest works: Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, and Ecce Homo; it would also be his last year of writing. He suffered a debilitating nervous breakdown in the first days of the following year. In this probing, elegant biography of (...) that pivotal year, Lesley Chamberlain undoes popular clichés and misconceptions about Nietzsche by offering a deeply complex approach to his character and work. Focusing as much on Nietzsche's daily habits, anxieties and insecurities as on the development of his philosophy, Nietzsche in Turin offers a uniquely lively portrait of the great thinker, and of the furiously productive days that preceded his decline. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.3 (2002) 501-519 [Access article in PDF] Nietzsche and Early Romanticism Judith Norman Nietzsche was in many ways a quintessentially romantic figure, a lonely genius with a tragic love-life, wandering endlessly (through Italy, no less) before going dramatically mad, taken by his gods into the protection of madness (to quote Heidegger's epithet on Hölderlin, one of Nietzsche's childhood favorites). 1 (...) But this is to be a romantic in an uncapitalized manner, and has nothing to do with the literary movement of Romanticism, a movement from which, as is well-known, Nietzsche distanced himself loudly and vigorously. Nietzsche famously follows Goethe in his verdict that Romanticism is a form of sickness and classicism a form of strength, and commentators, for the most part, have accepted this self-description. 2 That is, they do not blithely identify Nietzsche with that nineteenth-century artistic movement, whose proponents include Victor Hugo, Eugene Delacroix, and Richard Wagner. 3But Romanticism is a plural phenomenon. When Goethe made his famously dismissive remark, he was clearly not talking about Hugo and Wagner; he meant Romanticism in an earlier incarnation. Commentators have been less reticent about finding all sorts of affinities between Nietzsche and some of these earlier movements. In particular Nietzsche is frequently and positively compared to Jena Romanticism (also known as early Romanticism), a movement whose principal figures included August and Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis, Tieck, Schleiermacher, and Schelling, and the writings they published in the 1790s, principally in the journal, Athenaeum. It is this romantic movement that will be the focus of my paper. Jena romantics, while Grecophile, had nothing to do with Rousseauean primitivism (they were well aware that their image of the [End Page 501] Greeks reflected contemporary fantasies more than historical reality), they had no cult of the genius, and they did not valorize emotion above reason. 4 What was central to their movement was profound skepticism about the viability of traditional attitudes towards truth, an intellectually rigorous theory of art that gave particular weight to playfulness, fragmented writing, the notion of literary irony, a sense that the philosopher ought to be or become more of an artist (though not a genius)—and, correlatively, that philosophy is or ought to become more artistic. All of which sounds decidedly Nietzschean. Romanticizing Nietzsche While Nietzsche himself never makes the connection, he never explicitly distances himself from the authors of Jena romanticism in the way he does from later romantic figures. 5 Indeed, he barely mentions the Jena romantics by name and probably never read Friedrich Schlegel, the figure most closely associated with this romantic movement. 6 As such, there is certainly space for commentators to argue for a close if tacit intellectual connection between Nietzsche and Jena romanticism; indeed, one commentator speaks of a fundamental affinity, 7 another calls Nietzsche the last romanticist, and yet another claims that "[Nietzsche's] story makes sense only when read in the larger context of his Romantic predecessors' history." 8It is undeniable that Nietzsche came out of a philological tradition inaugurated by the Schlegels (and developed by Schelling) which juxtaposed the Dionysian and the Apollinian in Greek tragedy. According to Lacoue-Labarthe, "an entire tradition of academic philosophy (which, on his own initiative, Nietzsche had joined) revolved around precisely this opposition." 9 At least in [End Page 502] his earlier works Nietzsche's view of the Greeks was influenced by (if not predicated on) the scholarly research and interpretative theories of figures associated with Jena romanticism. How profound and enduring this influence might have been is an interesting question, but not one I will explore at present. I will not discuss the influence of the Jena romantics in their scholarly capacity as classical philologists, but rather focus on any impact they may have had as philosophically minded literary critics during the 1790s. Similarly, I will not look at The Birth of Tragedy but rather focus on claims made concerning the romantic tendencies of Nietzsche's later work. A body of scholarship has been building which claims that the critical theories of Jena... (shrink)

Cheerfulness or serenity is one of the most important themes in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Throughout his writings, from first to last, he can be found wrestling with conceptions of cheerfulness and promoting a cheerful mode of philosophizing. Despite the importance and recurrence of the theme of cheerfulness in Nietzsche’s entire œuvre, there have been relatively few studies specifically devoted to it. An important debate on cheerfulness has recently taken place in the literature on Nietzsche between Robert (...) Pippin and Lanier Anderson and Rachel Cristy. Both sides of the debate have explored Nietzsche’s practice of cheerfulness in direct relation to Montaigne. According to Pippin, Nietzsche never succeeds in writing with the kind of cheerfulness of Montaigne. In contrast, Anderson and Cristy have contended that both Nietzsche and Montaigne conceive of cheerfulness as a complex, non-naïve spiritual state or attitude that is to be cultivated through the practice of philosophy as a way of life. According to Anderson and Cristy, this is a deep form of love of life that both Nietzsche and Montaigne practice and perhaps achieve at least in part by and through writing. In this essay, we aim to contribute to this debate by offering a threefold argument. First, we argue that Nietzsche conceives of cheerfulness not only as a psychological ideal, as a desirable state or attitude of the spirit, but also as an aesthetic ideal, as a desirable quality or style of thinking and writing. Second, we argue that, in addition to Montaigne, Ralph Waldo Emerson is an equally important but neglected influence on Nietzsche’s conception and practice of cheerfulness. Third, by reconstructing Nietzsche’s self-presentation as a cheerful thinker and writer in the 1886 prefaces and in Ecce homo, we conclude that it is possible to argue that starting from his middle writings Nietzsche thinks and writes cheerfully in some of his works, including a number of his most significant texts. (shrink)

Cheerfulness or serenity (Heiterkeit) is one of the most important themes in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Throughout his writings, from first to last, he can be found wrestling with conceptions of cheerfulness and promoting a cheerful mode of philosophizing. Despite the importance and recurrence of the theme of cheerfulness in Nietzsche’s entire œuvre, there have been relatively few studies specifically devoted to it. An important debate on cheerfulness has recently taken place in the literature on Nietzsche between (...) Robert Pippin and Lanier Anderson and Rachel Cristy. Both sides of the debate have explored Nietzsche’s practice of cheerfulness in direct relation to Montaigne. According to Pippin, Nietzsche never succeeds in writing with the kind of cheerfulness of Montaigne. In contrast, Anderson and Cristy have contended that both Nietzsche and Montaigne conceive of cheerfulness as a complex, non-naïve spiritual state or attitude that is to be cultivated through the practice of philosophy as a way of life. According to Anderson and Cristy, this is a deep form of love of life that both Nietzsche and Montaigne practice and perhaps achieve at least in part by and through writing. In this essay, we aim to contribute to this debate by offering a threefold argument. First, we argue that Nietzsche conceives of cheerfulness not only as a psychological ideal, as a desirable state or attitude of the spirit, but also as an aesthetic ideal, as a desirable quality or style of thinking and writing (sections 1–2). Second, we argue that, in addition to Montaigne, Ralph Waldo Emerson is an equally important but neglected influence on Nietzsche’s conception and practice of cheerfulness (section 2). Third, by reconstructing Nietzsche’s self-presentation as a cheerful thinker and writer in the 1886 prefaces and in Ecce homo (1888), we conclude that it is possible to argue that starting from his middle writings Nietzsche thinks and writes cheerfully in some of his works, including a number of his most significant texts (section 3). (shrink)

As the Nietzsche industry continues to thrive, offering Zarathustra zealots everything from coffee table photography books to quasi-fictional accounts of Nietzsche’s mad dance into insanity and posterity, Daniel Conway offers a sober account of Nietzsche’s late writings, choosing to address quite seriously the shrill excesses that mark Nietzsche’s work from 1885–8. Conway undertakes to present Nietzsche’s own decadence and inheriting readership as evidence of the failure of his later project. Nietzsche embarks on voyages (...) toward terrible seas, seeking to unsterilize wisdom and set his revaluation of values in motion by announcing his presence as “dynamite”; Conway exposes Nietzsche’s later works as just that, a tremendous power with erratic and often misguided aim. Whereas Kaufmann, Schacht, and others defend Nietzsche’s thought as apolitical, and gloss over or ignore altogether the vitriol and self-aggrandizement of Nietzsche’s last five works, Conway treats Nietzsche’s critique of modernity in light of Nietzsche’s self-referential motif. Unfortunately, Nietzsche crumbles under the burden of such scrutiny, as he emerges as the decaying embodiment of those upon whom he sets. Conway portrays Nietzsche as a cunning strategist who employs various techniques to obfuscate his own enervation. Nietzsche here is cast as the self-avowed decadent whose descent is marked by his solicitation of discipleship, and who knows full well that those worthy heirs will turn on him in an act of perfidy. The shameless shepherding of flatterers, reprobates, and misfits signals his decadence; Nietzsche recruits scions from the fringes of society instead of fostering his militia from within the latently noble ranks. Resuscitating the modern community is rejected as a futile project for Nietzsche; he casts himself as the neo-Christ figure whose immediate audience, owing to their own decadence, has a flash point too high for Nietzsche to ignite. The modern pilot light has been snuffed out, Nietzsche concedes, and a new one must be lit. (shrink)

This essay claims that, despite the explicit opposition to Darwin in his writings, Nietzsche is regarded as a Darwinist both by the educated public and, increasingly, by Anglo analytic philosophers. In part, the problem is that, while scholars correctly observe the influence on Nietzsche's thinking of Spencer and Malthus, Roux and Haeckel — names commonly associated with Darwin — they pay no attention to the greater impact on Nietzsche's thought of Empedocles and other ancient scientists. (...) class='Hi'>Nietzsche mounted a cogent condemnation of Darwin's views, moreover, on the empirical insight that there is more calm and abundance in the natural world than civilized humanity supposes, with its fantasies of nature red in tooth and claw. Nietzsche continues to be associated with Darwin owing to Darwin's class-based racism, but Nietzsche's argument was that slave morality inexorably works against the triumph of the master in favor of the average man. This insight drives Nietzsche's view of the “last man,” or slavishly moral human being, and of what he called the Übermensch, which, it is inadequately recognized, was is a concept drawn from Lucian and used satirically to contrast Dionysian abundance with vapid social values that promote ruthless competition for supposedly limited resources. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nietzsche's Ecce Homo and the Revaluation of All Values: Dionysian Versus Christian Values by Thomas H. BrobjerCharles P. RodgerThomas H. Brobjer. Nietzsche's Ecce Homo and the Revaluation of All Values: Dionysian Versus Christian Values. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. Pp. viii + 210. Hardback, $115.00.It is difficult to review a book so rich in consequences and seemingly sui generis. To categorize it as the work of a (...) "lumper" or "splitter," for example, would only confuse matters. Granted, Brobjer dismisses The Will to Power as the tendentious forgery of Nietzsche's sister. Methodologically, he also appears as a "moderate" splitter who provides a close textual reading and draws on the Nachlass only so far as this serves to elucidate the claims Nietzsche made in his published works. Nonetheless, Brobjer's central hypothesis might, albeit falsely, suggest that he is an old-fashioned lumper, for he holds that Mazzino Montinari was wrong to claim Nietzsche abandoned his plans for a Hauptwerk ("Nietzsches Nachlaß von 1885 bis 1888 oder Textkritik und Wille zur Macht," in Nietzsche Lesen [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1982], 92–119).Granted, Montinari admitted that after abandoning plans for The Will to Power, Nietzsche did, in the fall of 1888, entertain a new plan for a four-volume Hauptwerk titled The Revaluation of All Values. According to these plans, The Antichrist would be its first volume, followed by The Free Spirit, containing a critique of philosophy as a nihilistic movement; The Immoralist, containing a critique of morality and its dangers; and Dionysos Philosophos. Nonetheless, Montinari claimed, these plans also collapsed when, sometime after mid-November 1888, Nietzsche decided to make The Antichrist into the whole of The Revaluation of All Values. Indeed, Montinari's hypothesis was that Nietzsche finally realized, at the last minute, that the work of the past five years and what he had previously regarded as his life task was untenable and, having published everything he could salvage from his failed Hauptwerk project, "Nietzsche's collapse in Turin came when he had literally finished with everything" (12, emphasis in the original). To Brobjer, however, "this claim seems both psychologically improbable and, in regard to Nietzsche's intention to write a Hauptwerk, simply wrong" (12). Yet despite Brobjer having demonstrated in a number of articles published over the past decades that the evidence is not only too thin and ambiguous to sustain Montinari's hypothesis, but that it contradicts his timeline (92–94), scholars continue to treat Montinari's conclusions as established fact, and moreover treat all "discussions and considerations of a magnum opus … as hypothetical and old-fashioned" (12). But if so, why should the present study, wherein Brobjer advances this same thesis, not also fall on deaf ears? The answer is surprising: Ecce Homo.The Druckmanuskript shows that both the final chapter headings and the majority of the final text of Ecce Homo were established prior to mid-November, and, while Nietzsche continued to make additions and alterations to Ecce Homo up until a day before his collapse, his revisions to the completed portions of the text were only "minor" (21). Since, even according to Montinari's timeline, the vast majority of Ecce Homo was thus written at a time when Nietzsche still incontrovertibly intended that The Antichrist would constitute only the first volume of The Revaluation of All Values (47), nothing can possibly speak against examining whether Ecce Homo might retain at least traces of Nietzsche's original plans for his Hauptwerk. To the contrary, a great deal speaks for it. After all, the conventional interpretation of Ecce Homo as a "backward-looking autobiography" (5) has hardly borne fruit; read as a summary of Nietzsche's life and writings, Ecce Homo is so "elliptic, paradoxical, absurd" (48), and so contorted by excessive self-praise and praise for Thus Spoke Zarathustra, that the text is incoherent and unusable for its supposed purpose. Yet Nietzsche explicitly told his publisher that his intention was merely to tell of his life and works "in snatches" (3), and that Ecce Homo was being composed with the "intention to give this work the same form and appearance which that magnum opus [Hauptwerk] will have, to... (shrink)

More than sixty years after its first publication in Germany in 1935 by its then emigré author, and more than thirty-five years after its republication in Germany by an author who had returned via Italy, Japan, and the United States, Löwith’s classic study has finally been translated into English. His work thus joins that of Karl Jaspers and of his teacher, Martin Heidegger, all central interpretations of Nietzsche’s work written by his compatriots during the decade that witnessed the collapse (...) which his works so insistently and uncannily prophesied, if not encouraged. It is thus not merely an important interpretation, but itself part of our fast-closing century’s intellectual history. Löwith’s view of Nietzsche as the philosopher who undertakes “the anti-Christian repetition of antiquity on the peak of modernity” or who attempts to overcome nihilism by affirming an “eternally recurring existence amidst the naturelike world of all that is”, has in fact been accessible to readers before the translation of the present book. It figures prominently in From Hegel to Nietzsche, and in Meaning in History whose final section is entitled “Nietzsche’s Revival of the Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence.” Although the main lines of Löwith’s interpretation have not changed, there is no denying the value of having his detailed interpretation finally available to English readers. The work’s lengthy third chapter, “The Unifying Fundamental Idea in Nietzsche’s Philosophy,” is its indispensable core, detailing the eternal recurrence as the fundamental idea of Nietzsche’s philosophy through an analysis of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and outlining two conflicting interpretations of this idea, the “anthropological”, with its focus on “willing the idea,” and the “cosmological”, where the idea reintegrates humanity into an ever-recurring world indifferent to its projects. The two chapters preceding it characterize Nietzsche’s philosophical discourse as a paradoxical “system in aphorisms” ; and present the familiar tripartite periodicization of Nietzsche’s philosophy, with Zarathustra as the apogee. The chapters that follow it do not have quite the unity or philosophical penetration of the first three. Chapter 4 concerns itself with the relation of Nietzsche’s rejection of Christianity to his affirmation of a Greek and specifically Heraclitean nature. Chapter 5 discusses the way in which the problems of history and fate and freedom and necessity are dealt with in some of Nietzsche’s early writings, laying the groundwork for the problem of “willing necessity” that seems present in the eternal recurrence. In the following chapter we are presented with a history of modern philosophy from Descartes to Marx as a history of the “loss of the world” by a humanity lost in the “desert of its freedom”. We are then offered, in the seventh chapter, a detailed analysis of Kierkegaard’s conception of “repetition” and Otto Weininger’s ethical conception of “recollection” as alternatives to Nietzsche’s conception of eternal recurrence. It is not at all clear that this last maintains its interest sixty years later, and the same doubt arises regarding several, though certainly not all of the books reviewed in his Appendix, “On the History of the Interpretation of Nietzsche ”. The work’s final chapter, “The Critical Yardstick for Nietzsche’s Experiments,” summarizes the significance of Nietzsche’s project as a “return to nature,” to the “physis of the world,” once the metaphysical God is gone as a support for any teaching about man. Löwith concedes that Nietzsche failed fully to separate himself from the Christianity that haunted him as a negation, but implies that his program, determined by the fact that “he decided against God and for the world”, is of enduring significance. (shrink)

This paper is an overview of the anglophone Nietzsche scholarship of the last 20 years. There are two types of debates raging in Nietzsche scholarship: interpretive disputes over conceptual and philosophical issues arising out of Nietzsche's work, and metainterpretive wrangling over how the philosophical issues should be approached and how Nietzsche's unpublished writings ought to be considered. In the former category, four prominent Nietzschean themes are examined: perspectivism; systematicity, rationality and logic; the revaluation of (...) values; and the self. In the latter category I discuss the role of the Nachlass, feminist interpretations, and the analytic/continental divide. (shrink)

The author notes that "it might strike some readers as mildly incredible that Nietzsche incorporated in his writings anything as staid and proper as an ontology or epistemology". At the same time he vigorously denies that there is anything staid about these aspects of Nietzsche’s thought. They do not qualify but underline its thoroughgoing "radicality." Nietzsche’s "theory of knowledge" stands up to scrutiny precisely because Nietzsche is not, as Heidegger and implicitly others would have it, (...) the "last metaphysician.". (shrink)

"Without music, life would be an error."—Friedrich Nietzsche In his youth, Friedrich Nietzsche yearned to become a great composer and wrote many pieces of music. He later claimed to be "the most musical of all philosophers." Yet most books on Nietzsche fail to explore the importance of music for his thought. _Nietzsche and Music_ provides the first in-depth examination of the fundamental significance of music for Nietzsche's life and work. Nietzsche's views on music are essential (...) for understanding his philosophy as a whole. Part biography and part critical examination, Georges Liébert brilliantly demonstrates that despite failed attempts at a professional career as composer, Nietzsche never fully removed himself from the world of music, but instead, became a composer of philosophy, utilizing the musical form as a template for his own writings and creative thought. Liébert's study surveys Nietzsche's opinions about particular composers and compositions, as well as his more theoretical writings on music and its relation to the other arts. He also explores Nietzsche's listening habits, his playing and style of composition, and his many contacts in the musical world, including his controversial and contentious relationship with Richard Wagner. For Nietzsche, music gave access to a realm of wisdom that transcended thought. Music was Nietzsche's great solace; in his last years, it was his refuge from madness. A virtuoso exploration of this little-known but crucial aspect of Nietzsche's life and work, this volume will be of enormous value to scholars of philosophy, music, aesthetics, and literature. (shrink)

This is the third volume to appear in an edition that will be the first complete, critical, and annotated English translation of all of Nietzsche's work. Volume 2: _Unfashionable Observations_, translated by Richard T. Gray, was published in 1995; Volume 3: _Human, All Too Human _, translated by Gary Handwerk, was published in 1997. The edition is a new English translation, by various hands, of the celebrated Colli-Montinari edition, which has been acclaimed as one of the most important works (...) of scholarship in the humanities in the last half century. The present volume provides for the first time English translations of all of Nietzsche's unpublished notebooks from the summer of 1872 to the end of 1874. The major works published in this period were the first three _Unfashionable Observations_: "David Strauss the Confessor and the Writer," "On the Utility and Liability of History for Life," and "Schopenhauer as Educator." Translations of the preliminary notes for these pieces are coordinated with the translations of the published texts printed in Volume 2: _Unfashionable Observations_. The content of these notebooks goes far beyond the notes and plans for published and unpublished _Unfashionable Observations_, encompassing numerous sketches related to Nietzsche's major philological project from this period, a book on the pre-Platonic Greek philosophers. The ideas that emerged from Nietzsche's deliberations on these early Greek thinkers are absolutely central to his thought from this period and contribute in significant ways to the development of several of his major themes: the role of the philosopher vis-à-vis his age and the surrounding culture; the relationships among philosophy, art, and culture; the metaphorical nature of language and its relationship to knowledge; the unmasking of the modern drive for absolute "truth" as a palliative against the horror of existence; and Nietzsche's "unfashionable" attack on modern science and modern culture, especially on the Germany of the Bismarck Reich. These notebooks represent important transitional documents in Nietzsche's intellectual development, marking, among other things, the shift away from philological studies toward unabashed cultural criticism. (shrink)

The great French Marxist philosopher weighs up the contributions of the three major critics of modernity With the translation of Lefebvre's philosophical writings, his stature in the English-speaking world continues to grow. Though certainly within the Marxist tradition, he consistently saw Marx as an 'unavoidable, necessary, but insufficient starting point'. Unsurprisingly, Lefebvre always insisted on the importance of Hegel to understanding Marx. But the imposing Metaphilosophy also suggested the significance he ascribed to Nietzsche, in the 'realm of shadows' (...) through which philosophy seeks to think the world. Lefebvre proposes here that the modern world is at the same time Hegelian in terms of the state; Marxist in terms of the social and society; and Nietzschean in terms of civilization and its values. As early as 1939, Lefebvre pioneered a French reading of Nietzsche that rejected the philosopher's appropriation by fascism, bringing out the tragic implications of Nietzsche's proclamation that 'God is dead' long before this approach was followed by such later writers as Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze. Forty years later, in the last of his philosophical writings, Lefebvre juxtaposes the contributions of the three great thinkers, in a text whose themes remain surprisingly relevant today. (shrink)

Tracing the notion of 'the gift' in Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra Emilio Corriero provides a new interpretation of this essential text, alongside 'the gift's' evolution as a key concept in the history of western philosophy and Christianity. The last phase of Nietzsche's thought, including his writings on the death of God, The Will to Power, the Overman, and eternal recurrence are analysed anew in Corriero's reading of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. From Nietzsche's Prologue, in which Zarathustra (...) presents the idea of the Overman as a gift of love and wisdom, up to the fourth and final book, in which the theme of hospitality and sacrifice are inextricably linked to the concept of donation, highlighting the novelty and exceptionality of Zarathustra's gift. Building on these ideas, this book reveals how the gift of Zarathustra put forward by Nietzsche rethinks the relationships between individuals based on Christian doctrine, enabling new forms of coexistence and sociality to thrive. Using key 20th century writings on 'the gift' from Derrida, Benveniste, and Esposito, Corriero traverses themes of sacrifice and hospitality, the idea of friend and foe, compassionate love and affirmative love, to present Zarathustra as Nietzsche's ultimate gift, as well as cementing the centrality of 'the gift' to the history of sociality and philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that, for Nietzsche, the will to power is a kind of élan vital, i.e., vital impulse, force or drive. In living creatures, it is a drive to express their natures. In human beings, it is complex and must be developed in stages. The initial stages include becoming independent and striving for freedom of spirit and expression. Of the few that achieve the last stage, some will become the Übermensch or superior persons who will (...) achieve great creative acts and in so doing enhance the capabilities of all humans. Nietzsche spoke as if he were one of the free spirits, but implicit in his writings is the idea that he is an exemplar of the Übermensch. (shrink)

This chapter describes the story of Ayn Rand's changing attitude toward Friedrich Nietzsche. One thing that can make the relationship between them difficult to understand is the fact that Rand's relation to Nietzsche changes considerably over the years. The history of this relationship can be divided roughly into three different periods. The first begins during her years as a student in Russia and ends with the completion of The Fountainhead (approximately 1921–1942). The second period follows upon the completion (...) of The Fountainhead and ends with the completion of Atlas Shrugged (1942–1957). The third and last period (1957–1982) follows the writing of Atlas and ends with her death. When people associate Nietzsche with Rand, as they often do, they are not thinking of the metaphysical and epistemological issues as determinism and the validity of reason. They are probably thinking mainly of ethical issues. (shrink)

RESUMO Em “Ecce Homo”, Nietzsche apresenta-se ao mesmo tempo como terapeuta e enfermo. Se nos seus escritos ele concebe o filósofo como médico da cultura, nesse livro é também como paciente que comparece. Compreender as razões que o levaram a proceder dessa maneira em “Ecce Homo”, é o problema que presidirá este trabalho. Tomando como ponto de partida a análise dos primeiros capítulos do livro, contamos de início esclarecer a dupla condição de seu autor: a de terapeuta e enfermo, (...) explorando em particular sua ideia de se tomar em mãos. Examinando o último capítulo à luz dessas análises, estaremos então em condições de nos perguntar sobre o que permite a Nietzsche passar da condição de médico de si mesmo à de médico da cultura. Esperamos elucidar desse modo a relação intrínseca que ele afirma existir entre suas concepções de filosofia e vida. ABSTRACT In “Ecce Homo”, Nietzsche presents himself, at the same time, both as a doctor and a sufferer. If in his writings he conceives the philosopher as the physician of the culture, in this book he also appears as a patient. The present paper aims at questioning about the reasons which led Nietzsche to adopt this way of doing in “Ecce Homo”. Taking the analysis of the first chapters of this book as a start point, we intend to clarify, first of all, its authors’ dual condition as both a doctor and a sufferer, particularly exploring his idea of taking himself in hand. Then examining the last chapter of the book in the light of these analyses, we attempt to find out what allows Nietzsche to make the transition from his condition of being his own doctor to the condition of physician of the culture. Thereby, we aim at elucidating the fundamental relationship between Nietzsche’s conceptions of philosophy and of life. (shrink)

The title of the present article describes its main problematic. The text begins with Nietzsche's various uses of culture. From his first serious texts, such as the Birth of Tragedy, to the mystical fragmentations of the last days before insanity, and even to the last unpublished writings of The Will to Power, Nietzsche has always been involved with "culture." This conflict, however, is not a conflict with a concept alongside other concepts, but something beyond it, (...) a confrontation with the density of all forces under a single common name. In this regard, we first look at the positive and negative aspects of culture in Nietzsche's view. Then, through a radical interpretation and internalization of both sides, we will penetrate into the layers of Nietzsche's critical encounter with culture. Finally, we utilize these discussions in order to briefly point to what Nietzsche predicted for today's world: the inevitable Nihilism of our age. (shrink)

“One of the most dangerous of ideas for a philosopher is, oddly enough, that we think with our heads, or in our heads.” Wittgenstein… aber wir sprechen das Allgemeine aus;” Hegel“Hegel is the last philosopher of the book and the first thinker of writing.” Derrida“Linguistic turn”, “pragmatic paradigm”, “Destruktion”, “deconstruction”, “condition postmoderne”, “pensiero debole” are not only philosophical labels. They are not only indices of intellectual positions which have inscribed themselves, as consequences as well as preconditions, in the end (...) of traditional metaphysics. “Nothing is true, everything is permitted”, Nietzsche'sGenealogy of Moralsannounces, describing the empty space which the metaphysical concepts have left; and in doing so opening up a seemingly boundless dimension for new developments of thoughts. The dilemma of these developments of modernity is that the vacuum they left, caused by their ruthless critique, cannot be refilled. So the outlook of modernity remains necessarily heterogeneous and unstable, meandering towards the colourful and fashionable-macabre extremes of postmodemity which gain from the tragic certainty of rien ne va plus the happy imperative of anything goes. But these are also ciphers of a particular philosophical-historical constellation, a work situation, in which the potencies of reason, being verhimmelt for a long time, now are going to be situated into their real contexts. Only, as Habermas puts it, “under the premises of an unexcited postmetaphysical thinking”, the once heroic concept of theory, which was meant to explain the world of human beings and their history as well as Nature out of onto-theleological principles of rationality, falls to pieces. (shrink)

This review essay brings together five books on various aspects of Nietzsche’s thinking and writing from the last four years, from different cultural and political contexts, but also spanning a wide methodological range. The general question of how to orient ourselves in Nietzsche-scholarship is inspired by the title of Werner Stegmaier’s book which invites the reader to compare Nietzsche and Niklas Luhmann. It also invites us to contemplate the more general question of how to bring (...) class='Hi'>Nietzsche’s thinking into a dialogue with the human and social sciences. A central question concerns the temporality of Nietzsche’s thinking: is Nietzsche’s thinking a thing of the past that primarily necessitates a historical interpretation, or can it still open up ways toward the future. As this review highlights, many contemporary readers of Nietzsche continue to see themselves as working to “save” his texts from fateful misinterpretations. The last part of the review focuses on the new textual, or “poesiological” approach and the importance of seeing Nietzsche not primarily as someone professing a doctrine, but as the creator of uniquely multilayered texts. (shrink)

Long recognized as an important and abiding influence in the European artistic and intellectual circles of the last century, the work of Pierre Klossowski is slowly gaining recognition in the Anglo-American scholarly community. The older brother of the painter Balthus, a friend of Rilke and Gide among others, and a celebrated artist in his own right, Klossowski is a difficult if not impossible thinker to categorize. From quite early in his career, Nietzsche was an important influence on Klossowski’s (...) work. In addition to translating two volumes for Nietzsche’s Oeuvres Complètes (1967, 1976), as well as Heidegger’s four-volume work on Nietzsche (1976), Klossowski also wrote a number of essays on Nietzsche as well as a book, Nietzsche et le Cercle Vicieux (1969). In a note to Différence et Répétition, Gilles Deleuze, citing “Nietzsche, Polytheism, and Parody” as well as “Forgetting and Anamnesis in the Lived Experience of the Eternal Return of the Same,” writes that Klossowski’s work has “renewed the interpretation of Nietzsche.” “Nietzsche, Polytheism, and Parody” appeared as the final essay of Klossowski’s book, Un si funeste désir (Such a Deathly Desire), first published in 1963. It is one of two essays in the book that are devoted explicitly to Nietzsche; the second, “On Some Fundamental Themes of Nietzsche’s Gaya Scienza,” is the opening essay of the volume and had previously appeared as an introduction to Klossowski’s translation of The Gay Science. “Nietzsche, Polytheism, and Parody” had not previously appeared in print, although Klossowski had presented it as a lecture at the Collège de Philosophie in Paris in 1957. Together, the two essays bound a series of reflections on Gide, Blanchot, Bataille, and others, all of which appeared previously – sometimes in a different form – and that taken together explicate Klossowski’s conception of “the demon.” The conception of the demon, drawn from The Gay Science, is for Klossowski a figuration of the double life of the existing human being: both conscious, rational, goal-directed, and vital, passionate, a victim of intensities. (shrink)

To the extent they have adopted a cafeteria-style approach to Nietzsche's trademark conceptions, kneading and molding his words into chimerical constructs, postmodernist philosophers inevitably remind us of Zarathustra's description of 'scholars': 'They work like mills and like stamps: throw down your seed-corn to them and they will know how to grind it small and reduce it to white dust' ( TSZ , II, 16). If so, how much significance might we attribute to any postmodernist's 'findings' of any textual nuances (...) in Nietzsche's relativism and stylistic multiplicity - nuances which at one moment appear intimately to apply and at the next to be hopelessly impertinent to whatever point that postmodernist is straining to make? The answer ought to be clear: By maintaining that there exist no intrinsically privileged vantage platforms vis-à-vis any text whatever, postmodernists in effect subvert their own analyses, and thus leave every work they consider unaffected. In that sense, we should be on target to advance that postmodernists are, au fond , engaged in writing for the sake of writing; indeed, what delivers them from sheer irrelevance is nothing but their clamorous advocacy of universal egalitarianism. This, however, necessarily reaffirms the nature and hankerings of the 'race' of the last man, and thus perverts the teleological direction of Nietzsche's aesthetics. Those who regard postmodernism as a regressive movement must therefore attempt to set the record straight by arguing that Nietzsche's relativism is, in fact, only a means to the eventual (phenomenal) realization of his Übermensch idea. (shrink)

RESUMO A ética é um tema constante na obra de Gilles Deleuze, ainda que aparentemente não figure como assunto principal de nenhum de seus livros. Isso se explica, pois, para ele, a filosofia prática, formada pela ética e pela política, é coextensiva a toda a filosofia. Por um lado, não há um aspecto puramente teórico ou especulativo da filosofia; por outro lado, a ética não é uma dentre outras disciplinas filosóficas, mas a sua dimensão prática e sempre presente, não havendo (...) qualquer motivo para que seja tratada em separado. Sendo assim, abordar a ética em Deleuze exige percorrer todos os seus escritos e escolher uma chave de leitura. Aqui, pretende-se explorar como Deleuze lança as bases para a sua própria concepção de ética a partir da grande identidade Spinoza-Nietzsche produzida por ele. Propõe-se uma fórmula para a ética em Deleuze: um corpo que experimenta e avalia. Dessa fórmula, destaca-se o primeiro eixo a ser trabalhado: a ética deleuziana como ética do corpo. O segundo eixo é a importante oposição entre ética e moral. O terceiro, a relação entre ética e ontologia. E o quarto e último eixo, a formação ética como aprendizado contínuo. ABSTRACT Ethics is a constant theme in Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy, even though it does not seem to figure as the main subject in his books. This happens because, according to him, practical philosophy - formed both by ethics and politics - is coextensive to philosophy as a whole. On the one hand, there is no purely theoretical or speculative philosophy; on the other hand, ethics is not one amongst other philosophical disciplines, but its practical and always present dimension, there being no reason to be treated separately. Thus, to approach ethics in Deleuze’s thought means to go through all his writings to choose one key. The aim of this paper is to explore how Deleuze launches what he calls a great Spinoza-Nietzsche identity as the key, the basis for his conception of ethics. A formula is proposed for ethics in Deleuze’s philosophy: a body that experiments and evaluates. From this formula, a first axis to be worked is highlighted: Deleuzean ethics as a body ethics. The second axis lies on the important opposition between ethics and morals. A third axis is the relation between ethics and ontology. Finally, a fourth and last axis is ethical formation understood as continuous apprenticeship. (shrink)

A beautiful, profound series of reflections on the body by one of the most prominent and consequential philosophers of continental Europe This landmark collection brings into English Jean-Luc Nancy's last completed work and concludes his remarkable philosophical reflections on the body, a project and journey he began almost thirty years ago. Nancy's essays--which take the body as an intersection of pulsing life and destructive cruelty on a global scale--become more vivid, more physical, than ever, even as they venture into (...) language that is as lyrical as it is profound. This vividness is manifest in blood: as it flows, in all its pulsing and forceful circulation, and as it spills, in the cruelty of existences confronted daily by countless destructions. This can be described as sanguis and cruor, the two Latin words for blood's intermingled but distinct aspects. This distinction allows Nancy to highlight an almost mystical sense of the body (yet one that remains soberly on this side of its manifest insistence), alongside the cruelty that pervades our world. The very existence of the world itself is threatened by its reduction to mere objects. The exceptional writings brought together in Corpus III comprise a masterful work of philosophy that marries rigorous erudition--on Freud, Nietzsche, and others--with rich poetic language and an actual poem. Nancy's thought opens the body onto its own unaccountable origins, its plural singularities, its enmeshed instantiations, and its excessive irreducibles, which are also the elusive excesses of language. Whereas in earlier texts Nancy has referred to this excess as poetry, here he performs it in the form of a poem, in the extraordinary hymn entitled Stoma. While the publication of a poem by Nancy is a notable event, equally noteworthy is a remarkable essay entitled "Scandalous Death," in which Nancy meditated on a subject that was to come to him too soon after. Above all, the book is crucial for bringing into English Cruor, the very last work Nancy completed before his death, an evocative meditation offered by a great thinker on the complex conditions of his own--and our--singular survival. (shrink)