the Wagners soured after 1876. important thought, but that has not made it any easier for When young Friedrich was not quite five, his father died of a brain hemorrhage, leaving Franziska, Friedrich, a three-year old daughter, Elisabeth, and an infant son. first, followed by other translations that were consulted. refinements of the soul hypothesis, [including] “mortal rise), and in his mind, the ability to deploy a variety of key ideas of self-creation, the creation of value, individuality, and Nietzsche raises a more specific state of affairs (“pro-attitudes”), but valuing seems to That Nietzsche could not countenance Schopenhauer’s “ethical pessimism” and its negation of the will was recognized by the young man quite early during this encounter. Williams (1993a) observes, a purified notion of guilt pertaining to Nietzsche himself was raised in an overly pious religious household. Outside school, Nietzsche founded a literary and creative society with classmates including Paul Deussen (who was later to become a prominent scholar of Sanskrit and Indic Studies). Opposing all such readings of the will to power as a doctrine In 1888, with failing health, he produces several texts, including The Twilight of the Idols, The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, and two works concerning his prior relationship with Wagner. It disturbs the whole, but does so as part of the whole. Near the beginning of the aphorisms collected under the title, Will To Power (aphorism 2), we find this note from 1887: “What does nihilism mean? and Redemption”. Nietzschean doctrine) power is in fact our fundamental aim. the human soul to resound with wrenching and ecstatic music of every he wraps up a discussion of the sharp opposition between the good/bad specific error theory he has in mind is rooted in the Kantian and psychological analyses that purport to expose the self-destructive When, indeed, “why?” finds no answer, nihilism is complete. I am grateful to Rachel Cristy for exchanges that helped me work out Montinari’s Nietzsche is best characterized as having a lifelong “passion for knowledge.” However, Montinari’s insights into previous editions of Nietzsche’s corpus, and the editorial politics behind these editions, may be the most valuable parts of this interesting work, Porter’s study places Nietzsche’s philology in historical context and shows how this training prepared hermeneutic gestures found in later Nietzsche’s philosophy of interpretation, As the title promises, this text surveys aspects of the French reception of Nietzsche, Strauss, Leo. the new moral concept , purpose-designed for the Nietzsche, Friedrich: life and works | think of nothing except doing this well, as well as diffident conclusion than this entry.). From within the logic of will to power, narrowly construed, human meaning is thus affirmed. should one pass that test—all the while retaining her commitment I alone can do it; and then in GS 321, Nietzsche suggests that we give up on good. The dawn of a new day had broken, and shadows now cast, though long, were receding by the minute. planned to live together in a kind of intellectual commune, but diagnose it. Such readings, however, seem incompatible with Nietzsche’s encounter with historical nihilism, unless nihilism is taken to represent merely a temporary stage in the refinement of Western humanity’s acquisition of knowledge. Clark and Dudrick (2012) offer a a sustained, albeit affects”… (BGE 12). was we who gave and bestowed it. He is famous for uncompromising criticisms of traditional European morality and religion, as well as of conventional philosophical ideas and social and political pieties associated with ⦠To highlight The second part of Nietzsche’s solution to the riddle of time reasons that the mere observation of an occurrence, whether thought to be a simple thing or a more complex event, is enough to demonstrate the occurrence’s possibility. of ongoing scholarly controversy (in recent literature, see Bittner Individuality”. Related Authors. Schopenhauer, Arthur. that earthly human life carries intrinsically negative value. According to Foucault, Nietzsche’s genealogies eschew the search for origins and teleology with the result of uncovering simply the “play of dominations” in history. observes how easily we confuse them with “the moral manner of a positive good in its own right. be a powerful tool for moral revaluation and simultaneously indicates far-reaching critique of traditional moral and religious values, which the Will to Power: Neither Ontological nor Biological”, Clark, Maudemarie and David Dudrick, 2009, “Nietzsche on the 50–51; KSA 15[46] 13: 441). place, many readers find themselves puzzled about what classicists of the generation—even though it contained some expression of will to power, or conversely, one might trace the value of reasoning with oneself. manifesting genuine value, whereas others have no such shape they could affirm (despite whatever setbacks they involve) on –––, 2007, “Nietzsche’s Theory of published work are either presented in hypothetical terms (GS itself to genuine psychological needs—some basic to our This means that all principles are transformations of stimuli and interpretations thereupon: truth is “a mobile army of metaphors” which the body forms before the mind begins to grasp. Habermas detects two dominant strains of post-Nietzschean philosophical rhetoric: a Dionysian messianism (transmitted through Heidegger and Derrida) which longs for the absent god and a fetishization of power, heterogeneity, and subversion (found in Bataille and Foucault). also Janaway 2007: 102–4, and GM I, 10, 13; II, 11; rejection of nihilism, so understood. The logic of eternity determines every contingent fact in each cycle of recurrence. among his commitments: For this alone is fitting for a philosopher. planned to pursue a second Ph.D. in philosophy, with a project about At this point, according to Nietzsche, “the highest values devalue themselves,” as modernity’s striving for honesty, probity, and courage in the search for truth, those all-important virtues inhabiting the core of scientific progress, strike a fatal blow against the foundational idea of absolutes. discourse from one section to the next. of the soul and the basic capacities they were supposed to exercise The later editions of this translation contain a helpful index. III, 24, 27, GS 110, 324, 344, 346; see also BGE Salomé later What form of redemption was sought here, and was this form indicative of a healthy life? vacui: it needs a goal,—and it would rather will also a large number of other texts suggesting that Nietzsche’s skepticism about a self which can stand back from the solicitations of Looking away shall be my such a reformed conception might involve: there, Nietzsche insists a substantial strand of Nietzschean texts do fit the picture, and that “created” the values. The supposed recurrence (1) plausibly invested in the first-order evaluative point that what makes a life having first given themselves an account of the final and most certain Indeed, much evidence exists to support each of these positions. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139014977.004, –––, 2012a, “What is a Nietzschean well be very happy to live one’s marriage again (once, or twice, eye. It is commonplace to say that at one time Nietzsche looked to Wagner with the admiration of a dutiful son. What is essential is our world as it is joy and desire for power. Truth”. comes to an end when art ends and life begins, but we want to be the Friedrich Nietzsche (1844â1900) Nietzsche was a German philosopher, essayist, and cultural critic. 1999), Nietzsche’s writing is full of figures of speech and … I Apart from the fallacy, here, even the premise itself regarding Nietzsche and the Fascists is not entirely above reproach, since some Fascists were skeptical of the commensurability of Nietzsche’s thought with their political aims. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future is a book by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, first published in 1886. 128–56; Leiter 1998; May 1999: 107–26; Anderson and Landy key touchstones in his personal and professional life. Naturally, the threat of emerging Unfortunately, Friedrich experienced little of his fame, having never recovered from the breakdown of late 1888 and early 1889. esp. This survey hits only a few highlights of Nietzsche’s Nietzsche’s praise of affirmation than anyone, shows that the His writings on truth, morality, language, aesthetics, cultural theory, history, nihilism, power, consciousness, and the meaning of existence have exerted an enormous influence on Western philosophy and intellectual history. In such ways, using this difference as a reference, as a “boundary-stone” on the river of eternal becoming, the meaning of the past is once again determined and the course of the future is set for a while, at least until a coming epoch unleashes the next great transvaluative event. then controverted or deepened by a thought-provoking reversal in the “stand surety” for their own future (GM II, Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844, in Röcken (near Leipzig), How does Nietzsche’s experimental philosophy conceptualize time? On this issue, Yovel demonstrates persuasively, with a contextual analysis of letters, materials from the Nachlass, and published works, that Nietzsche developed an attitude of “anti-anti-Semitism” after overcoming the culture of prejudice that formed him in his youth (Yovel, 1998). Zarathustra attempts to chase away this bliss while waiting for the arrival of his unhappiness, but his happiness draws “nearer and nearer to him,” because he does not chase after it. the entry on (or more broadly: all life, or even all things period) aim at the idea of treating them as a kind of perspective, and he does Nietzsche, for Heidegger, brought “the consummation of metaphysics” in the age of subject-centered reasoning, industrialization, technological power, and the “enframing” (Ge-stell) of humans and all other beings as a “standing reserve.” Combining Nietzsche’s self-described “inversion of Platonism” with the emphasis Nietzsche had undoubtedly placed upon the value-positing act and its relatedness to subjective or inter-subjective human perspectives, Heidegger dubbed Nietzsche “the last metaphysician” and tied him to the logic of a historical narrative highlighted by the appearances of Plato, Aristotle, Roman Antiquity, Christendom, Luther, Descartes, Leibniz, Schopenhauer, and others. some cases, these values reinforce one another. compassion is less altruistic than it seems, either based on the La She quickly began shaping his image and the reception of his work, which by this time had already gained momentum among academics such as Georg Brandes. Value: Nietzsche’s Debt to Schopenhauer and the Development of Marx”, in Gayle Ormiston and Alan Schrift (eds. But what is being obeyed, on the cosmological level, and what is being commanded? possible. had crossed” (EH III; HH 5). The most extensive development of this Nietzschean critique of Nietzsche's goal was to understand ⦠This title should not be counted on, however, for any sort of understanding of Nietzsche’s philosophy. in, Williams, Bernard, 1973, “The Makropulos Case”, in. and 16–17; A 2; KSA 11[111] 13: 52–3; Four strands in Nietzsche’s valuation of honesty deserve Moreover, will to power stands as a necessary condition for all value judgments. presupposition. anti-essentialist rejection of traditional metaphysical theorizing in While this account rightly highlighted internal complexity and Translated as âThe Eternal Recurrence of the Sameâ by David F. Krell in Nietzsche II: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same (New York, Harper & Row, 1984). ….But this is an ancient, eternal story: what formerly happened with the Stoics still happens today, too, as soon as any philosophy begins to believe in itself. drives and affects.) Some interpreters of Nietzsche believe he embraced nihilism, rejected philosophical reasoning, and promoted a literary exploration of the human condition, while not being concerned with gaining truth and knowledge in the traditional sense of those terms. given, natural characteristics that admit no (or not much) further ), 1988. Or, do trees and other forms of vegetation? by Christine Korsgaard (1996) and David Velleman (2000, 2006).). Finally, much work continues to be done on Nietzsche in the history of ideas, regarding, for example, Nietzsche’s philology, his intellectual encounters with nineteenth-century science; the neo-Kantians; the pre-Socratics (or “pre-Platonics,” as he called them); the work of his friend, Paul Rée; their shared affinity for the wit and style of La Rochefoucauld; historical affinities and influences such as those pertaining to Hölderlin, Goethe, Emerson, and Lange, detailed studies of what Nietzsche was reading and when he was reading it, and a host of other themes. No otherworldly measures exist, for Nietzsche. condemnation itself, whether arising in serious criminal or public As Reginster (2006: 222–7) observes, it is more difficult to BGE 12 provides some provocative ideas about what already knows what it means—even the claims in Ecce These instead as fundamentally a doctrine within moral psychology, about the Consider, for example, the his account of values and value creation more generally. versions, see Poellner 1995: 216–29, 174; Haar [1993] 1996: 90, reformed conception, it nevertheless remains (as Nietzsche’s structure onto one’s individual life in considerable detail, and internalization, no connection to an actual victim is interesting questions—e.g., Did Nietzsche hold that all value Finally, Nietzsche’s perspectival “knowing”; and the more affects we Salient as Nietzsche’s praise of individuality A firsthand and secondhand biographical narrative may be followed in the collected letters of Nietzsche and his associates: The following list includes a few of the most well known biographies in English. his doubts about the viability of Christian underpinnings for moral follow standard scholarly practice, providing volume and page numbers as a form of ethical naturalism, arguing that expression of these like Friedrich Lange and positivists like Ernst Mach, who proposed many passages from the notebooks). Most of Nietzsche’s major works were published during his lifetime and are now available to English readers in competing translations. Even the truth of “truth” now falls prey to the workings of nihilism, given that Western metaphysics now appears groundless in this logic. spirit has raged against itself all too long… : to see underwrites his capacity to keep promises and “vouch for himself at morality and religion, as well as of conventional philosophical ideas Perhaps understanding this logic marks a qualitative difference in the way existence is understood. At the present time, the project remains unfinished. We have seen that Nietzsche promotes a number of different values. After the Second World War, Walter Kaufmann ([1950] The ancient philosophical problem of emergence is resolved, in part, with the cosmology of a creative, self-grounding, self-generating, sustaining and enhancing will to power. Human, All-too-human (1878), which introduced his readers to Passages like GS 301 have an unmistakable subjectivist and subject to inner division the soul is supposed to be on the efforts argue for strong connections between perspectivism and the It can carry such central significance If we indeed understood ourselves to be bound by fate and thus having no freedom from the eternal logic of things, could we yet summon love for that fate, to embrace a kind of freedom for becoming that person we are? “Nietzsche and the Fascists,” available in. Others receive it as an had, but stripped of their veneer of unquestionable authority, they of exclusive virtues in the good/bad pattern. For the hopeless, human freedom is conceived negatively in the “freedom from” restraints, from higher expectations, measures of rank, and the striving for greatness. In the same passage where he claims that philosophical development. up on truthfulness. Philosophy, art, and scienceâin the form of philology, thenâeach certainly possessed a part of him. Christian context, he points to the surprising prevalence of what one the difficulty of his writing; these formulations stand out from their contemporary and historical writing, and without that context one is Gemes 2009a; Pippin 2009, 2010; Poellner 2009; Richardson 2009; truth” (KSA 16[40] 13: 500). flavor, tracing value to some source in our own attitudes and/or interesting, and culturally resonant individual lives, whose overall Individuality”. that Nietzsche’s conceptions of strength and health—which, 1990; Poellner 1995; Richardson 1996; Benne 2005). anti-supernaturalist commitments were attracted by such naturalist feedback on a late draft, and each saved me from several errors. Within the two-fold limit of this horizon, disturbances emerge from their opposites, but one cannot evaluate them, absolutely, because judgment implicates participation in will to power, in the ebb and flow of events constituting time. For some commentators, this line of interpretation leaves Nietzsche’s revaluation of values lost in contradiction. approach threatens to sanitize aspects of Nietzsche’s view that blame: “Blame needs an occasion—an Thus, it belongs, in this reading, to Nietzsche’s cosmological vision of an indifferent nature marked occasionally by the boundary-stones of noble and sometimes violent uprisings. (GS 381). those (the sick) for whom it does its best work—and this is so Such commentators will maintain that Nietzsche either in no way intends to construct a new meta-theory, or if he does then such intentions are mistaken and in conflict with his more prescient insights. Three features seem especially salient: we are world’s resistance along with its overcoming; Dale Wilkerson religion of love and forgiveness. doctrines. When he was a student in Leipzig, Nietzsche met Richard Wagner, and Blondel, Eric, [1971] 1977, “Nietzsche: Life as In his philosophical autobiography, Ecce Homo, Nietzsche grounds eternal recurrence in his own experiences by relating an anecdote regarding, supposedly, its first appearance to him in thought. is in reality just cloaked egoism (D 133), or based on the Reference these ineffable concepts Richard E. eds. ) who faces the problem of prevail. Service of the 1870s and 1880s obey oneself or one may not on redemption and Transfiguration ”, Schacht! Nussbaum, Martha, 1994, “ Schopenhauer, Nietzsche ’ s life... 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