Friedrich Nietzsche (1844—1900)

Nietzsche was a German philosopher, essayist, and cultural critic. His writings
on truth, morality, language, aesthetics, cultural theory, history, nihilism, pow-
er, consciousness, and the meaning of existence have exerted an enormous in-
fluence on Western philosophy and intellectual history.

Nietzsche spoke of “the death of God,” and foresaw the dissolution of traditional
religion and metaphysics. 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. However, other interpreters
of Nietzsche say that in attempting to counteract the predicted rise of nihilism,
he was engaged in a positive program to reaffirm life, and so he called for a radi-
cal, naturalistic rethinking of the nature of human existence, knowledge, and
morality. On either interpretation, it is agreed that he suggested a plan for “be-
coming what one is” through the cultivation of instincts and various cognitive
faculties, a plan that requires constant struggle with one’s psychological and intellectual inheritances.

Nietzsche claimed the exemplary human being must craft his/her own identity through self-realization and do so without relying
on anything transcending that life—such as God or a soul. This way of living should be affirmed even were one to adopt, most
problematically, a radical vision of eternity, one suggesting the “eternal recurrence” of all events. According to some commenta-
tors, Nietzsche advanced a cosmological theory of “will to power.” But others interpret him as not being overly concerned with
working out a general cosmology. Questions regarding the coherence of Nietzsche’s views–questions such as whether these
views could all be taken together without contradiction, whether readers should discredit any particular view if proven incoher-
ent or incompatible with others, and the like–continue to draw the attention of contemporary intellectual historians and
philosophers.

Table of Contents
1. Life
2. Periodization of Writings
3. Problems of Interpretation
4. Nihilism and the Revaluation of Values
5. The Human Exemplar
6. Will to Power
7. Eternal Recurrence
8. Reception of Nietzsche’s Thought
9. References and Further Reading
 a. Nietzsche’s Collected Works in German
b. Nietzsche’s Major Works Available in English
c. Important Works Available in English from Nietzsche’s Nachlass
d. Biographies
e. Commentaries and Scholarly Researches
f. Academic Journals in Nietzsche Studies

1. Life
Because much of Nietzsche’s philosophical work has to do with the creation of self—or to put it in Nietzschean terms, “becoming
what one is”— some scholars exhibit uncommon interest in the biographical anecdotes of Nietzsche’s life. Taking this approach,
however, risks confusing aspects of the Nietzsche legend with what is important in his philosophical work, and many commenta-
tors are rightly skeptical of readings derived primarily from biographical anecdotes.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born October 15, 1844, the son of Karl Ludwig and Franziska Nietzsche. Karl Ludwig Nietzsche
was a Lutheran Minister in the small Prussian town of Röcken, near Leipzig. 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. Friedrich’s
brother died unexpectedly shortly thereafter (reportedly, the legend says, fulfilling Friedrich’s dream foretelling of the tragedy).
These events left young Friedrich the only male in a household that included his mother, sister, paternal grandmother and an
aunt, although Friedrich drew upon the paternal guidance of Franziska’s father. Young Friedrich also enjoyed the camaraderie of
a few male playmates.

Upon the loss of Karl Ludwig, the family took up residence in the relatively urban setting of Naumburg, Saxony. Friedrich gained
admittance to the prestigious Schulpforta, where he received Prussia’s finest preparatory education in the Humanities, Theolo-
gy, and Classical Languages. 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). In addition, Nietzsche played piano, com-
posed music, and read the works of Emerson and the poet Friedrich Hölderlin, who was relatively unknown at the time.

In 1864 Nietzsche entered the University of Bonn, spending the better part of that first year unproductively, joining a fraternity
and socializing with old and new acquaintances, most of whom would fall out of his life once he regained his intellectual focus.
By this time he had also given up Theology, dashing his mother’s hopes of a career in the ministry for him. Instead, he choose
the more humanistic study of classical languages and a career in Philology. In 1865 he followed his major professor, Friedrich
Ritschl, from Bonn to the University of Leipzig and dedicated himself to the studious life, establishing an extracurricular society
there devoted to the study of ancient texts. Nietzsche’s first contribution to this group was an essay on the Greek poet, Theognis,
and it drew the attention of Professor Ritschl, who was so impressed that he published the essay in his academic journal,
Rheinisches Museum. Other published writings by Nietzsche soon followed, and by 1868 (after a year of obligatory service in the
Prussian military), young Friedrich was being promoted as something of a “phenomenon” in classical scholarship by Ritschl,
whose esteem and praise landed Nietzsche a position as Professor of Greek Language and Literature at the University of Basel in
Switzerland, even though the candidate had not yet begun writing his doctoral dissertation. The year was 1869 and Friedrich Ni-
etzsche was 24 years old.

At this point in his life, however, Nietzsche was a far cry from the original thinker he would later become, since neither he nor
his work had matured. Swayed by public opinion and youthful exuberance, he briefly interrupted teaching in 1870 to join the
Prussian military, serving as a medical orderly at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. His service was cut short, however,
by severe bouts of dysentery and diphtheria. Back in Basel, his teaching responsibilities at the University and a nearby Gymnasi-
um consumed much of his intellectual and physical energy. He became acquainted with the prominent cultural historian, Jacob
Burkhardt, a well-established member of the university faculty. But, the person exerting the most influence on Nietzsche at this
point was the artist, Richard Wagner, whom Nietzsche had met while studying in Leipzig. During the first half of the decade,
Wagner and his companion, Cosima von Bülow, frequently entertained Nietzsche at Triebschen, their residence near Lake
Lucerne, and then later at Bayreuth.

It is commonplace to say that at one time Nietzsche looked to Wagner with the admiration of a dutiful son. This interpretation of
their relationship is supported by the fact that Wagner would have been the same age as Karl Ludwig, had the elder Nietzsche
been alive. It is also commonplace to note that Nietzsche was in awe of the artist’s excessive displays of a fiery temperament,
bravado, ambition, egoism, and loftiness— typical qualities demonstrating “genius” in the nineteenth century. In short, Niet-
zsche was overwhelmed by Wagner’s personality. A more mature Nietzsche would later look back on this relationship with some
regret, although he never denied the significance of Wagner’s influence on his emotional and intellectual path, Nietzsche’s esti-
mation of Wagner’s work would alter considerably over the course of his life. Nonetheless, in light of this relationship, one can
easily detect Wagner’s presence in much of Nietzsche’s early writings, particularly in the latter chapters of The Birth of Tragedy
and in the first and fourth essays of 1874’s Untimely Meditations. Also, Wagner’s supervision exerted considerable editorial con-
trol over Nietzsche’s intellectual projects, leading him to abandon, for example, 1873’s Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the
Greeks, which Wagner scorned because of its apparent irrelevance to his own work. Such pressures continued to bridle Niet-
zsche throughout the so-called early period. He broke free of Wagner’s dominance once and for all in 1877, after a series of emo-
tionally charged episodes. Nietzsche’s fallout with Wagner, who had moved to Bayreuth by this time, led to the publication of
1878’s Human, All-Too Human, one of Nietzsche’s most pragmatic and un-romantic texts—the original title page included a
dedication to Voltaire and a quote from Descartes. If Nietzsche intended to use this text as a way of alienating himself from the
Wagnerian circle, he surely succeeded. Upon its arrival in Bayreuth, the text ended this personal relationship with Wagner.

It would be an exaggeration to say that Nietzsche was not developing intellectually during the period, prior to 1877. In fact, fig-
ures other than Wagner drew Nietzsche’s interest and admiration. In addition to attending Burkhardt’s lectures at Basel, Niet-
zsche studied Greek thought from the Pre-Socratics to Plato, and he learned much about the history of philosophy from
Friedrich Albert Lange’s massive History of Materialism, which Nietzsche once called “a treasure trove” of historical and philo-
sophical names, dates, and currents of thought. In addition, Nietzsche was taken by the persona of the philosopher Arthur
Schopenhauer, which Nietzsche claimed to have culled from close readings of the two-volume magnum opus, The World as Will
and Representation.

Nietzsche discovered Schopenhauer while studying in Leipzig. Because his training at Schulpforta had elevated him far above
most of his classmates, he frequently skipped lectures at Leipzig in order to devote time to [CE1] Schopenhauer’s philosophy.
For Nietzsche, the most important aspect of this philosophy was the figure from which it emanated, representing for him the
heroic ideal of a man in the life of thought: a near-contemporary thinker participating in that great and noble “republic of ge-
nius,” spanning the centuries of free thinking sages and creative personalities. That Nietzsche could not countenance Schopen-
hauer’s “ethical pessimism” and its negation of the will was recognized by the young man quite early during this encounter. Yet,
even in Nietzsche’s attempts to construct a counter-posed “pessimism of strength” affirming the will, much of Schopenhauer’s
thought remained embedded in Nietzsche’s philosophy, particularly during the early period. Nietzsche’s philosophical reliance
on “genius”, his cultural-political visions of rank and order through merit, and his self-described (and later self-rebuked) “meta-
physics of art” all had Schopenhauerian underpinnings. Also, Birth of Tragedy’s well-known dualism between the cosmologi-
cal/aesthetic principles of Dionysus and Apollo, contesting and complimenting each other in the tragic play of chaos and order,
confusion and individuation, strikes a familiar chord to readers acquainted with Schopenhauer’s description of the world as
“will” and “representation.”

Despite these similarities, Nietzsche’s philosophical break with Schopenhauerian pessimism was as real as his break with Wagn-
er’s domineering presence was painful. Ultimately, however, such triumphs were necessary to the development and liberation of
Nietzsche as thinker, and they proved to be instructive as Nietzsche later thematized the importance of “self-overcoming” for the
project of cultivating a free spirit.
The middle and latter part of the 1870s was a time of great upheaval in Nietzsche’s personal life. In addition to the turmoil with
Wagner and related troubles with friends in the artist’s circle of admirers, Nietzsche suffered digestive problems, declining eye-
sight, migraines, and a variety of physical aliments, rendering him unable to fulfill responsibilities at Basel for months at a time.
After publication of Birth of Tragedy, and despite its perceived success in Wagnerian circles for trumpeting the master’s vision
for Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (“The Art Work of the Future”) Nietzsche’s academic reputation as a philologist was effectively
destroyed due in large part to the work’s apparent disregard for scholarly expectations characteristic of nineteenth-century
philology. Birth of Tragedy was mocked as Zukunfts-Philologie (“Future Philology”) by Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, an up-and-
coming peer destined for an illustrious career in Classicism, and even Ritschl characterized it as a work of “megalomania.” For
these reasons, Nietzsche had difficulty attracting students. Even before the publication of Birth of Tragedy, he had attempted to
re-position himself at Basel in the department of philosophy, but the University apparently never took such an endeavor serious-
ly. By 1878, his circumstances at Basel deteriorated to the point that neither the University nor Nietzsche was very much inter-
ested in seeing him continue as a professor there, so both agreed that he should retire with a modest pension [CE2] . He was 34
years old and now apparently liberated, not only from his teaching duties and the professional discipline he grew to despise, but
also from the emotional and intellectual ties that dominated him during his youth. His physical woes, however, would continue
to plague him for the remainder of his life.

After leaving Basel, Nietzsche enjoyed a period of great productivity. And, during this time, he was never to stay in one place for
long, moving with the seasons, in search of relief for his ailments, solitude for his work, and reasonable living conditions, given
his very modest budget. He often spent summers in the Swiss Alps in Sils Maria, near St. Moritz, and winters in Genoa, Nice, or
Rappollo on the Mediterranean coast. Occasionally, he would visit family and friends in Naumburg or Basel, and he spent a
great deal of time in social discourse, exchanging letters with friends and associates.

In the latter part of the 1880s, Nietzsche’s health worsened, and in the midst of an amazing flourish of intellectual activity which
produced On the Genealogy of Morality, Twilight of the Idols, The Anti-Christ, and several other works (including preparation
for what was intended to be his magnum opus, a work that editors later titled Will to Power) Nietzsche suffered a complete men-
tal and physical breakdown. The famed moment at which Nietzsche is said to have succumbed irrevocably to his ailments oc-
curred January 3, 1889 in Turin (Torino) Italy, reportedly outside Nietzsche’s apartment in the Piazza Carlos Alberto while em-
bracing a horse being flogged by its owner.

After spending time in psychiatric clinics in Basel and Jena, Nietzsche was first placed in the care of his mother, and then later
his sister (who had spent the latter half of the 1880’s attempting to establish a “racially pure” German colony in Paraguay with
her husband, the anti-Semitic political opportunist Bernhard Foerster). By the early 1890s, Elisabeth had seized control of Niet-
zsche’s literary remains, which included a vast amount of unpublished writings. She quickly began shaping his image and the re-
ception of his work, which by this time had already gained momentum among academics such as Georg Brandes. Soon the Niet-
zsche legend would grow in spectacular fashion among popular readers. From Villa Silberblick, the Nietzsche home in Weimar,
Elisabeth and her associates managed Friedrich’s estate, editing his works in accordance with her taste for a populist decorum
and occasionally with an ominous political intent that (later researchers agree) corrupted the original thought[CE3] . Unfortu-
nately, Friedrich experienced little of his fame, having never recovered from the breakdown of late 1888 and early 1889. His fi-
nal years were spent at Villa Silberblick in grim mental and physical deterioration, ending mercifully August 25, 1900. He was
buried in Röcken, near Leipzig. Elisabeth spent one last year in Paraguay in 1892-93 before returning to Germany, where she
continued to exert influence over the perception of Nietzsche’s work and reputation, particularly among general readers, until
her death in 1935. Villa Silberblick stands today as a monument, of sorts, to Friedrich and Elisabeth, while the bulk of Niet-
zsche’s literary remains is held in the Goethe-Schiller Archiv, also in Weimar.

2. Periodization of Writings
Nietzsche scholars commonly divide his work into periods, usually with the implication that discernable shifts in Nietzsche’s cir-
cumstances and intellectual development justify some form of periodization in the corpus. The following division is typical:

(i.) before 1869—the juvenilia

Cautious Nietzsche biographers work to separate the facts of Nietzsche’s life from myth, and while a major part of the Nietzsche
legend holds that Friedrich was a precocious child, writings from his youth bear witness to that part of the story. During this
time Nietzsche was admitted into the prestigious Gymnasium Schulpforta; he composed music, wrote poetry and plays, and in
1863 produced an autobiography (at the age of 19). He also produced more serious and accomplished works on themes related
to philology, literature, and philosophy. By 1866 he had begun contributing articles to a major philological journal, Rheinisches
Museum, edited by Nietzsche’s esteemed professor at Bonn and Leipzig, Friedrich Ritschl. With Ritschl’s recommendation, Ni-
etzsche was appointed professor of Greek Language and Literature at the University of Basel in January 1869.

(ii.) 1869-1876–the early period

Nietzsche’s writings during this time reflect interests in philology, cultural criticism, and aesthetics. His inaugural public lecture
at Basel in May 1869, “Homer and Classical Philology” brought out aesthetic and scientific aspects of his discipline, portending
Nietzsche’s attitudes towards science, art, philology and philosophy. He was influenced intellectually by the philosopher Arthur
Schopenhauer and emotionally by the artist Richard Wagner. Nietzsche’s first published book, The Birth of Tragedy, appropri-
ated Schopenhaurian categories of individuation and chaos in an elucidation of primordial aesthetic drives represented by the
Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus. This text also included a Wagnerian precept for cultural flourishing: society must cultivate and
promote its most elevated and creative types—the artistic genius. In the Preface to a later edition of this work, Nietzsche express-
es regret for having attempted to elaborate a “metaphysics of art.” In addition to these themes, Nietzsche’s interest during this
period extended to Greek philosophy, intellectual history, and the natural sciences, all of which were significant to the develop-
ment of his mature thought. Nietzsche’s second book-length project, The Untimely Meditations, contains four essays written
from 1873-1876. It is a work of acerbic cultural criticism, encomia to Schopenhauer and Wagner, and an unexpectedly idio-
syncratic analysis of the newly developing historical consciousness. A fifth meditation on the discipline of philology is prepared
but left unpublished. Plagued by poor health, Nietzsche is released from teaching duties in February 1876 (his affiliation with the
university officially ends in 1878 and he is granted a small pension).

(iii.) 1877-1882—the middle period

During this time Nietzsche liberated himself from the emotional grip of Wagner and the artist’s circle of admirers, as well as
from those ideas which (as he claims in Ecce Homo) “did not belong” to him in his “nature” (“Human All Too Human: With Two
Supplements” 1). Reworking earlier themes such as tragedy in philosophy, art and truth, and the human exemplar, Nietzsche’s
thinking now comes into sharper focus, and he sets out on a philosophical path to be followed the remainder of his productive
life. In this period’s three published works Human, All-Too Human (1878-79), Dawn (1881), and The Gay Science (1882), Niet-
zsche takes up writing in an aphoristic style, which permits exploration of a variety of themes. Most importantly, Nietzsche lays
out a plan for “becoming what one is” through the cultivation of instincts and various cognitive faculties, a plan that requires
constant struggle with one’s psychological and intellectual inheritances. Nietzsche discovers that “one thing is needful” for the
exemplary human being: to craft an identity from otherwise dissociated events bringing forth the horizons of one’s existence.
Self-realization, as it is conceived in these texts, demands the radicalization of critical inquiry with a historical consciousness
and then a “retrograde step” back (Human aphorism 20) from what is revealed in such examinations, insofar as these revela-
tions threaten to dissolve all metaphysical realities and leave nothing but the abysmal comedy of existence. A peculiar kind of
meaningfulness is thus gained by the retrograde step: it yields a purpose for existence, but in an ironic form, perhaps esoterically
and without ground; it is transparently nihilistic to the man with insight, but suitable for most; susceptible to all sorts of suspi-
cion, it is nonetheless necessary and for that reason enforced by institutional powers. Nietzsche calls the one who teaches the
purpose of existence a “tragic hero” (GS 1), and the one who understands the logic of the retrograde step a “free spirit.” Niet-
zsche’s account of this struggle for self-realization and meaning leads him to consider problems related to metaphysics, religion,
knowledge, aesthetics, and morality.

(iv.) Post-1882—the later period

Nietzsche transitions into a new period with the conclusion of The Gay Science (Book IV) and his next published work, the novel
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, produced in four parts between 1883 and 1885. Also in 1885 he returns to philosophical writing with
Beyond Good and Evil. In 1886 he attempts to consolidate his inquiries through self-criticism in Prefaces written for the earlier
published works, and he writes a fifth book for The Gay Science. In 1887 he writes On the Genealogy of Morality. In 1888, with
failing health, he produces several texts, including The Twilight of the Idols, The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, and two works con-
cerning his prior relationship with Wagner. During this period, as with the earlier ones, Nietzsche produces an abundance of
materials not published during his lifetime. These works constitute what is referred to as Nietzsche’s Nachlass. (For years this
material has been published piecemeal in Germany and translated to English in various collections.) Philosophically, during this
period, Nietzsche continues his explorations on morality, truth, aesthetics, history, power, language and identity. For some read-
ers, he appears to be broadening the scope of his ideas to work out a cosmology involving the all encompassing “will to power”
and the curiously related and enigmatic “eternal recurrence of the same.” Prior claims regarding the retrograde step are re-
thought, apparently in favor of seeking some sort of breakthrough into the “abyss of light” (Zarathustra’s “Before Sunrise”) or in
an encounter with “decadence” (“Expeditions of a Untimely Man” 43, in Twilight of the Idols). The intent here seems to be an
overcoming or dissolution of metaphysics. These developments are matters of contention, however, as some commentators
maintain that statements regarding Nietzsche’s “cosmological vision” are exaggerated. And, some will even deny that he
achieves (nor even attempts) the overcoming described above. Despite such complaints, interpreters of Nietzsche continue to
reference these ineffable concepts.

3. Problems of Interpretation
Nietzsche’s work in the beginning was heavily influenced, either positively or negatively, by the events of his young life. His early
and on-going interest in the Greeks, for example, can be attributed in part to his Classical education at Schulpforta, for which he
was well-prepared as a result of his family’s attempts to steer him into the ministry. Nietzsche’s intense association with Wagner
no doubt enhanced his orientation towards the philosophy of Schopenhauer, and it probably promoted his work in aesthetics
and cultural criticism. These biographical elements came to bear on Nietzsche’s first major works, while the middle period
amounts to a confrontation with many of these influences. In Nietzsche’s later writings we find the development of concepts
that seem less tangibly related to the biographical events of his life.

Let’s outline four of these concepts, but not before adding a word of caution regarding how this outline should be received. Niet-
zsche asserts in the opening section of Twilight of the Idols that he “mistrusts systematizers” (“Maxims and Arrows” 26), which
is taken by some readers to be a declaration of his fundamental stance towards philosophical systems, with the additional infer-
ence that nothing resembling such a system must be permitted to stand in interpretations of his thought. Although it would not
be illogical to say that Nietzsche mistrusted philosophical systems, while nevertheless building one of his own, some commenta-
tors point out two important qualifications. First, the meaning of Nietzsche’s stated “mistrust” in this brief aphorism can and
should be treated with caution. In Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche claims that philosophers today, after millennia of dogmatiz-
ing about absolutes, now have a “duty to mistrust” philosophy’s dogmatizing tendencies (BGE 34). Yet, earlier in that same text,
Nietzsche claimed that all philosophical interpretations of nature are acts of will power (BGE 9) and that his interpretations are
subject to the same critique (BGE 22). In Thus Spoke Zarathustra’s “Of Involuntary Bliss” we find Zarathustra speaking of his
own “mistrust,” when he describes the happiness that has come to him in the “blissful hour” of the third part of that book.
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. In the next scene we find Zarathustra dwelling in the “light abyss” of the
pure open sky, “before sunrise.” What then is the meaning of this “mistrust”? At the very least, we can say that Nietzsche does
not intend it to establish a strong and unmovable absolute, a negative-system, from which dogma may be drawn. Nor, possibly,
is Nietzsche’s mistrust of systematizers absolutely clear. Perhaps it is a discredit to Nietzsche as a philosopher that he did not
elaborate his position more carefully within this tension; or, perhaps such uncertainty has its own ground. Commentators such
as Mueller-Lauter have noticed ambivalence in Nietzsche’s work on this very issue, and it seems plausible that Nietzsche mis-
trusted systems while nevertheless constructing something like a system countenancing this mistrust. He says something akin to
this, after all, in Beyond Good and Evil, where it is claimed that even science’s truths are matters of interpretation, while admit-
ting that this bold claim is also an interpretation and “so much the better” (aphorism 22). For a second cautionary note, many
commentators will argue along with Richard Schacht that, instead of building a system, Nietzsche is concerned only with the ex-
ploration of problems, and that his kind of philosophy is limited to the interpretation and evaluation of cultural inheritances
(1995). Other commentators will attempt to complement this sort of interpretation and, like Löwith, presume that the ground
for Nietzsche’s explorations may also be examined. Löwith and others argue that this ground concerns Nietzsche’s encounter
with historical nihilism. The following outline should be received, then, with the understanding that Nietzsche’s own iconoclastic
nature, his perspectivism, and his life-long projects of genealogical critique and the revaluation of values, lend credence to those
anti-foundational readings which seek to emphasize only those exploratory aspects of Nietzsche’s work while refuting even im-
plicit submissions to an orthodox interpretation of “the one Nietzsche” and his “one system of thought.” With this caution, the
following outline is offered as one way of grounding Nietzsche’s various explorations.

The four major concepts presented in this outline are:

(i) Nihilism and the Revaluation of Values, which is embodied by a historical event, “the death of God,” and which en-
tails, somewhat problematically, the project of transvaluation;
(ii) The Human Exemplar, which takes many forms in Nietzsche’s thought, including the “tragic artist”, the “sage”, the
“free spirit”, the “philosopher of the future”, the Übermensch (variously translated in English as “Superman,” “Over-
man,” “Overhuman,” and the like), and perhaps others (the case could be made, for example, that in Nietzsche’s notori-
ously self-indulgent and self-congratulatory Ecce Homo, the role of the human exemplar is played by “Mr. Nietzsche”
himself);
(iii) Will to Power (Wille zur Macht), from a naturalized history of morals and truth developing through subjective
feelings of power to a cosmology;
(iv) Eternal Recurrence or Eternal Return (variously in Nietzsche’s work, “die ewige Wiederkunft” or “die ewige
Wiederkehr”) of the Same (des Gleich), a solution to the riddle of temporality without purpose.

4. Nihilism and the Revaluation of Values

Although Michael Gillespie makes a strong case that Nietzsche misunderstood nihilism, and in any event Nietzsche’s Dionysian-
ism would be a better place to look for an anti-metaphysical breakthrough in Nietzsche’s corpus (1995, 178), commentators as
varied in philosophical orientation as Heidegger and Danto have argued that nihilism is a central theme in Nietzsche’s philoso-
phy. Why is this so? The constellation of Nietzsche’s fundamental concepts moves within his general understanding of moderni-
ty’s historical situation in the late nineteenth century. In this respect, Nietzsche’s thought carries out the Kantian project of “cri-
tique” by applying the nineteenth century’s developing historical awareness to problems concerning the possibilities of knowl-
edge, truth, and human consciousness. Unlike Kant’s critiques, Nietzsche’s examinations find no transcendental ego, given that
even the categories of experience are historically situated and likewise determined. Unlike Hegel’s notion of historical conscious-
ness, however, history for Nietzsche has no inherent teleology. All beginnings and ends, for Nietzsche, are thus lost in a flood of
indeterminacy. As early as 1873, Nietzsche was arguing that human reason is only one of many peculiar developments in the ebb
and flow of time, and when there are no more rational animals nothing of absolute value will have transpired (“On truth and lies
in a non-moral sense”). Some commentators would prefer to consider these sorts of remarks as belonging to Nietzsche’s “juve-
nilia.” Nevertheless, as late as 1888’s “Reason in Philosophy” from Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche derides philosophers who
would make a “fetish” out of reason and retreat into the illusion of a “de-historicized” world. Such a philosopher is “decadent,”
symptomatic of a “declining life”. Opposed to this type, Nietzsche valorizes the “Dionysian” artist whose sense of history affirms
“all that is questionable and terrible in existence.”

Nietzsche’s philosophy contemplates the meaning of values and their significance to human existence. Given that no absolute
values exist, in Nietzsche’s worldview, the evolution of values on earth must be measured by some other means. How then shall
they be understood? The existence of a value presupposes a value-positing perspective, and values are created by human beings
(and perhaps other value-positing agents) as aids for survival and growth. Because values are important for the well being of the
human animal, because belief in them is essential to our existence, we oftentimes prefer to forget that values are our own cre-
ations and to live through them as if they were absolute. For these reasons, social institutions enforcing adherence to inherited
values are permitted to create self-serving economies of power, so long as individuals living through them are thereby made
more secure and their possibilities for life enhanced. Nevertheless, from time to time the values we inherit are deemed no longer
suitable and the continued enforcement of them no longer stands in the service of life. To maintain allegiance to such values,
even when they no longer seem practicable, turns what once served the advantage to individuals to a disadvantage, and what
was once the prudent deployment of values into a life denying abuse of power. When this happens the human being must reacti-
vate its creative, value-positing capacities and construct new values.

Commentators will differ on the question of whether nihilism for Nietzsche refers specifically to a state of affairs characterizing
specific historical moments, in which inherited values have been exposed as superstition and have thus become outdated, or
whether Nietzsche means something more than this. It is, at the very least, accurate to say that for Nietzsche nihilism has be-
come a problem by the nineteenth century. The scientific, technological, and political revolutions of the previous two hundred
years put an enormous amount of pressure on the old world order. In this environment, old value systems were being disman-
tled under the weight of newly discovered grounds for doubt. The possibility arises, then, that nihilism for Nietzsche is merely a
temporary stage in the refinement of true belief. This view has the advantage of making Nietzsche’s remarks on truth and moral-
ity seem coherent from a pragmatic standpoint, in that with this view the problem of nihilism is met when false beliefs have been
identified and corrected. Reason is not a value, in this reading, but rather the means by which human beings examine their
metaphysical presuppositions and explore new avenues to truth.

Yet, another view will have it that by nihilism Nietzsche is pointing out something even more unruly at work, systemically, in the
Western world’s axiomatic orientation. Heidegger, for example, claims that with the problem of nihilism Nietzsche is showing us
the essence of Western metaphysics and its system of values (“The Word of Nietzsche: ‘God is dead’”). According to this view,
Nietzsche’s philosophy of value, with its emphasis on the value-positing gesture, implies that even the concept of truth in the
Western worldview leads to arbitrary determinations of value and political order and that this worldview is disintegrating under
the weight of its own internal logic (or perhaps “illogic”). In this reading, the history of truth in the occidental world is the “his-
tory of an error” (Twilight of the Idols), harboring profoundly disruptive antinomies which lead, ultimately, to the undoing of
the Western philosophical framework. This kind of systemic flaw is exposed by the historical consciousness of the nineteenth
century, which makes the problem of nihilism seem all the more acutely related to Nietzsche’s historical situation. But to rele-
gate nihilism to that situation, according to Heidegger, leaves our thinking of it incomplete.

Heidegger makes this stronger claim with the aid of Nietzsche’s Nachlass. 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? That the highest values devalue
themselves. The aim is lacking; ‘Why?’ finds no answer.” Here, Nietzsche’s answer regarding the meaning of nihilism has three
parts.

(i) The first part makes a claim about the logic of values: ultimately, given the immense breadth of time, even “the highest values
devalue themselves.” What does this mean? According to Nietzsche, the conceptual framework known as Western metaphysics
was first articulated by Plato, who had pieced together remnants of a declining worldview, borrowing elements from predeces-
sors such as Anaximander, Parmenides, and especially Socrates, in order to overturn a cosmology that had been in play from the
days of Homer and which found its fullest and last expression in the thought of Heraclitus. Plato’s framework was popularized
by Christianity, which added egalitarian elements along with the virtue of pity. The maturation of Western metaphysics occurs
during modernity’s scientific and political revolutions, wherein the effects of its inconsistencies, malfunctions, and mal-develop-
ment become acute. 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. Values most responsible for the scientific revolution, however, are also
crucial to the metaphysical system that modern science is destroying. Such values are threatening, then, to bring about the de-
struction of their own foundations. Thus, the highest values are devaluing themselves at the core. Most importantly, the values
of honesty, probity, and courage in the search for truth no longer seem compatible with the guarantee, the bestowal, and the be-
stowing agent of an absolute value. Even the truth of “truth” now falls prey to the workings of nihilism, given that Western meta-
physics now appears groundless in this logic.

For some commentators, this line of interpretation leaves Nietzsche’s revaluation of values lost in contradiction. What philo-
sophical ground, after all, could support revaluation if this interpretation were accurate? For this reason, readers such as Clark
work to establish a coherent theory of truth in Nietzsche’s philosophy, which can apparently be done by emphasizing various
parts of the corpus to the exclusion of others. If, indeed, a workable epistemology may be derived from reading specific passages,
and good reasons can be given for prioritizing those passages, then consistent grounds may exist for Nietzsche having leveled a
critique of morality. Such readings, however, seem incompatible with Nietzsche’s encounter with historical nihilism, unless ni-
hilism is taken to represent merely a temporary stage in the refinement of Western humanity’s acquisition of knowledge.

With the stronger claim, however, Nietzsche’s critique of the modern situation implies that the “highest values [necessarily] de-
value themselves.” Western metaphysics brings about its own disintegration, in working out the implications of its inner logic.
Nietzsche’s name for this great and terrible event, capturing popular imagination with horror and disgust, is the “death of God.”
Nietzsche acknowledges that a widespread understanding of this event, the “great noon” at which all “shadows of God” will be
washed out, is still to come. In Nietzsche’s day, the God of the old metaphysics is still worshiped, of course, and would be wor-
shiped, he predicted, for years to come. But, Nietzsche insisted, in an intellectual climate that demands honesty in the search for
truth and proof as a condition for belief, the absence of foundations has already been laid bare. The dawn of a new day had bro-
ken, and shadows now cast, though long, were receding by the minute.

(ii) The second part of the answer to the question concerning nihilism states that “the aim is lacking.” What does this mean? In
Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche claims that the logic of an existence lacking inherent meaning demands, from an organization-
al standpoint, a value-creating response, however weak this response might initially be in comparison to how its values are then
taken when enforced by social institutions (aphorisms 20-23). Surveys of various cultures show that humanity’s most indis-
pensable creation, the affirmation of meaning and purpose, lies at the heart of all fundamental values. Nihilism stands not only
for that apparently inevitable process by which the highest values devalue themselves. It also stands for that moment of recogni-
tion in which human existence appears, ultimately, to be in vain. Nietzsche’s surveys of cultures and their values, his cultural an-
thropologies, are typically reductive in the extreme, attempting to reach the most important sociopolitical questions as neatly
and quickly as possible. Thus, when examining so-called Jewish, Oriental, Roman, or Medieval European cultures Nietzsche
asks, “how was meaning and purpose proffered and secured here? How, and for how long, did the values here serve the living?
What form of redemption was sought here, and was this form indicative of a healthy life? What may one learn about the creation
of values by surveying such cultures?” This version of nihilism then means that absolute aims are lacking and that cultures natu-
rally attempt to compensate for this absence with the creation of goals.

(iii) The third part of the answer to the question concerning nihilism states that “‘why?’ finds no answer.” Who is posing the
question here? Emphasis is laid on the one who faces the problem of nihilism. The problem of value-positing concerns the one
who posits values, and this one must be examined, along with a corresponding evaluation of relative strengths and weaknesses.
When, indeed, “why?” finds no answer, nihilism is complete. The danger here is that the value-positing agent might become par-
alyzed, leaving the call of life’s most dreadful question unanswered. In regards to this danger, Nietzsche’s most important cultur-
al anthropologies examined the Greeks from Homer to the age of tragedy and the “pre-Platonic” philosophers. Here was evi-
dence, Nietzsche believed, that humanity could face the dreadful truth of existence without becoming paralyzed. At every turn,
the moment in which the Greek world’s highest values devalued themselves, when an absolute aim was shown to be lacking, the
question “why?” nevertheless called forth an answer. The strength of Greek culture is evident in the gods, the tragic art, and the
philosophical concepts and personalities created by the Greeks themselves. Comparing the creativity of the Greeks to the intel-
lectual work of modernity, the tragic, affirmative thought of Heraclitus to the pessimism of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche highlights a
number of qualitative differences. Both types are marked by the appearance of nihilism, having been drawn into the inevitable
logic of value-positing and what it would seem to indicate. The Greek type nevertheless demonstrates the characteristics of
strength by activating and re-intensifying the capacity to create, by overcoming paralysis, by willing a new truth, and by affirm-
ing the will. The other type displays a pessimism of weakness, passivity, and weariness—traits typified by Schopenhauer’s life-
denying ethics of the will turning against itself. In Nietzsche’s 1888 retrospection on the Birth of Tragedy in Ecce Homo, we
read that “Hellenism and Pessimism” would have made a more precise title for the first work, because Nietzsche claims to have
attempted to demonstrate how

the Greeks got rid of pessimism—with what they overcame it….Precisely tragedy is the proof that the Greeks were no pes-
simists: Schopenhauer blundered in this as he blundered in everything (“The Birth of Tragedy” in Ecce Homo section 1).

From Twilight of the Idols, also penned during that sublime year of 1888, Nietzsche writes that tragedy “has to be considered
the decisive repudiation” of pessimism as Schopenhauer understood it:

affirmation of life, even in its strangest and sternest problems, the will to life rejoicing in its own inexhaustibility through
the sacrifice of its highest types—that is what I called Dionysian….beyond [Aristotelian] pity and terror, to realize in oneself
the eternal joy of becoming—that joy which also encompasses joy in destruction (“What I Owe the Ancients” 5).

Nietzsche concludes the above passage by claiming to be the “last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus” (which by this time in
Nietzsche’s thought came to encompass the whole of that movement which formerly distinguished between Apollo and Diony-
sus). Simultaneously, Nietzsche declares himself, with great emphasis, to be the “teacher of the eternal recurrence.”

The work to overcome pessimism is tragic in a two-fold sense: it maintains a feeling for the absence of ground, while responding
to this absence with the creation of something meaningful. This work is also unmodern, according to Nietzsche, since modernity
either has yet to ask the question “why?,” in any profound sense or, in those cases where the question has been posed, it has yet
to come up with a response. Hence, a pessimism of weakness and an incomplete form of nihilism prevail in the modern epoch.
Redemption in this life is denied, while an uncompleted form of nihilism remains the fundamental condition of humanity. Al-
though the logic of nihilism seems inevitable, given the absence of absolute purpose and meaning, “actively” confronting ni-
hilism and completing our historical encounter with it will be a sign of good health and the “increased power of the spirit” (Will
to Power aphorism 22). Thus far, however, modernity’s attempts to “escape nihilism” (in turning away) have only served to
“make the problem more acute” (aphorism 28). Why, then, this failure? What does modernity lack?

5. The Human Exemplar

How and why do nihilism and the pessimism of weakness prevail in modernity? Again, from the notebook of 1887 (Will to Pow-
er, aphorism 27), we find two conditions for this situation:

1. the higher species is lacking, i.e., those whose inexhaustible fertility and power keep up the faith in man….[and] 2. the
lower species (‘herd,’ ‘mass,’ ‘society,’) unlearns modesty and blows up its needs into cosmic and metaphysical values. In
this way the whole of existence is vulgarized: insofar as the mass is dominant it bullies the exceptions, so they lose their
 faith in themselves and become nihilists.

With the fulfillment of “European nihilism” (which is no doubt, for Nietzsche, endemic throughout the Western world and any-
place touched by “modernity”), and the death of otherworldly hopes for redemption, Nietzsche imagines two possible respons-
es: the easy response, the way of the “herd” and “the last man,” or the difficult response, the way of the “exception,” and the
Übermensch.

Ancillary to any discussion of the exception, per se, the compatibility of the Übermensch concept with other movements in Niet-
zsche’s thought, and even the significance that Nietzsche himself placed upon it, has been the subject of intense debate among
Nietzsche scholars. The term’s appearance in Nietzsche’s corpus is limited primarily to Thus Spoke Zarathustra and works di-
rectly related to this text. Even here, moreover, the Übermensch is only briefly and very early announced in the narrative, albeit
with a tremendous amount of fanfare, before fading from explicit consideration. In addition to these problems, there are debates
concerning the basic nature of the Übermensch itself, whether “Über-” refers to a transitional movement or a transmogrified
state of being, and whether Nietzsche envisioned the possibility of a community of Übermenschen, as opposed to a solitary fig-
ure among lesser types. So, what should be made of Nietzsche’s so-called “overman” (or even “superman”) called upon to arrive
after the “death of God”?

Whatever else may be said about the Übermensch, Nietzsche clearly had in mind an exemplary figure and an exception among
humans, one “whose inexhaustible fertility and power keep up the faith in man.” For some commentators, Nietzsche’s distinc-
tion between overman and the last man has political ramifications. The hope for an overman figure to appear would seem to be
permissible for one individual, many, or even a social ideal, depending on the culture within which it appears. Modernity, in Ni-
etzsche’s view, is in such a state of decadence that it would be fortunate, indeed, to see the emergence of even one such type, giv-
en that modern sociopolitical arrangements are more conducive to creating the egalitarian “last man” who “blinks” at expecta-
tions for rank, self-overcoming, and striving for greatness. The last men are “ the most harmful to the species because they pre-
serve their existence as much at the expense of the truth as at the expense of the future” (“Why I am a Destiny” in Ecce Homo 1).
Although Nietzsche never lays out a precise political program from these ideas, it is at least clear that theoretical justifications
for complacency or passivity are antithetical to his philosophy. What, then, may be said about Nietzsche as political thinker?
Nietzsche’s political sympathies are definitely not democratic in any ordinary way of thinking about that sort of arrangement.
Nor are they socialist or Marxist.

Nietzsche’s political sympathies have been called “aristocratic,” which is accurate enough only if one does not confuse the term
with European royalty, landed gentry, old money or the like and if one keeps in mind the original Greek meaning of the term,
“aristos,” which meant “the good man, the man with power.” A certain ambiguity exists, for Nietzsche, in the term “good man.”
On the one hand, the modern, egalitarian “good man,” the “last man,” expresses hostility for those types willing to impose mea-
sures of rank and who would dare to want greatness and to strive for it. Such hostilities are born out of ressentiment and inherit-
ed from Judeo-Christian moral value systems. (Beyond Good and Evil 257-260 and On the Genealogy of Morals essay 1).
“Good” in this sense is opposed to “evil,” and the “good man” is the one whose values support the “herd” and whose condemna-
tions are directed at those whose thoughts and actions might disrupt the complacent normalcy of modern life. On the other
hand, the kind of “good man” who might overcome the weak pessimism of “herd morality,” the man of strength, a man to con-
front nihilism, and thus a true benefactor to humanity, would be decidedly “unmodern” and “out of season.” Only such a figure
would “keep up the faith in man.” For these reasons, some commentators have found in Nietzsche an existentialist program for
the heroic individual dissociated in varying degrees from political considerations. Such readings however ignore or discount Ni-
etzsche’s interest in historical processes and the unavoidable inference that although Nietzsche’s anti-egalitarianism might lead
to questionably “unmodern” political conclusions, hierarchy nevertheless implies association.

The distinction between the good man of active power and the other type also points to ambiguity in the concept of freedom. For
the hopeless, human freedom is conceived negatively in the “freedom from” restraints, from higher expectations, measures of
rank, and the striving for greatness. While the higher type, on the other hand, understands freedom positively in the “freedom
for” achievement, for revaluations of values, overcoming nihilism, and self-mastery.

Nietzsche frequently points to such exceptions as they have appeared throughout history—Napoleon is one of his favorite exam-
ples. In modernity, the emergence of such figures seems possible only as an isolated event, as a flash of lightening from the dark
cloud of humanity. Was there ever a culture, in contrast to modernity, which saw these sorts of higher types emerge in congress
as a matter of expectation and design? Nietzsche’s early philological studies on the Greeks, such as Philosophy in the Tragic Age
of the Greeks, The Pre-Platonic Philosophers, “Homer on Competition,” and “The Greek State,” concur that, indeed, the ancient
world before Plato produced many exemplary human beings, coming forth independently of each other but “hewn from the
same stone,” made possible by the fertile cultural milieu, the social expectation of greatness, and opportunities to prove individ-
ual merit in various competitive arenas. Indeed, Greek athletic contests, festivals of music and tragedy, and political life reflect-
ed, in Nietzsche’s view, a general appreciation for competition, rank, ingenuity, and the dynamic variation of formal structures
of all sorts. Such institutions thereby promoted the elevation of human exemplars. Again, the point must be stressed here that
the historical accuracy of Nietzsche’s interpretation of the Greeks is no more relevant to his philosophical schemata than, for ex-
ample, the actual signing of a material document is to a contractarian political theory. What is important for Nietzsche, through-
out his career, is the quick evaluation of social order and heirarchies, made possible for the first time in the nineteenth century
by the newly developed “historical sense” (BGE 224) through which Nietzsche draws sweeping conclusions regarding, for exam-
ple, the characteristics of various moral and religious epochs (BGE 32 and 55), which are themselves pre-conditioned by the ma-
terial origins of consciousness, from which a pre-human animal acquires the capacity (even the “right”) to make promises and
develops into the “sovereign individual” who then bears responsibility for his or her actions and thoughts (GM II.2).

Like these rather ambitious conclusions, Nietzsche’s valorization of the Greeks is partly derived from empirical evidence and
partly confected in myth, a methodological concoction that Nietzsche draws from his philological training. If the Greeks, as a dif-
ferent interpretation would have them, bear little resemblance to Nietzsche’s reading, such a difference would have little rele-
vance to Nietzsche’s fundamental thoughts. Later Nietzsche is also clear that his descriptions of the Greeks should not be taken
programmatically as a political vision for the future (see for example GS 340).

The “Greeks” are one of Nietzsche’s best exemplars of hope against a meaningless existence, hence his emphasis on the Greek
world’s response to the “wisdom of Silenus” in Birth of Tragedy. (ch. 5). If the sovereign individual represents history’s “ripest
fruit”, the most recent millennia have created, through rituals of revenge and punishment, a “bad conscience.” The human ani-
mal thereby internalizes material forces into feelings of guilt and duty, while externalizing a spirit thus created with hostility to-
wards existence itself (GM II.21). Compared to this typically Christian manner of forming human experiences, the Greeks deified
“the animal in man” and thereby kept “bad conscience at bay” (GM II.23).

In addition to exemplifying the Greeks in the early works, Nietzsche lionizes the “artist-genius” and the “sage;” during the mid-
dle period he writes confidently, at first, and then longingly about the “scientist,” the “philosopher of the future,” and the “free
spirit;” Zarathustra’s decidedly sententious oratory heralds the coming of the Übermensch; the periods in which “revaluation”
comes to the fore finds value in the destructive influences of the “madman,” the “immoralist,” the “buffoon,” and even the “crim-
inal.” Finally, Nietzsche’s last works reflect upon his own image, as the “breaker of human history into two,” upon “Mr. Niet-
zsche,” the “anti-Christian,” the self-anointed clever writer of great books, the creator of Zarathustra, the embodiment of human
destiny and humanity’s greatest benefactor: “only after me,” Nietzsche claims in Ecce Homo, “is it possible to hope again” (“Why
I am a Destiny” 1). It should be cautioned that important differences exist in the way Nietzsche conceives of each of these various
figures, differences that reflect the development of Nietzsche’s philosophical work throughout the periods of his life. For this
reason, none of these exemplars should be confused for the others. The bombastic “Mr. Nietzsche” of Ecce Homo is no more the
“Übermensch” of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, for example, than the “Zarathustra” character is a “pre-Platonic philosopher” or the
alienated, cool, sober, and contemptuous “scientist” is a “tragic artist,” although these figures will frequently share characteris-
tics. Yet, a survey of these exceptions shows that Nietzsche’s philosophy, in his own estimation, needs the apotheosis of a human
exemplar, perhaps to keep the search for meaning and redemption from abdicating the earth in metaphysical retreat, perhaps to
avert the exhaustion of human creativity, to reawaken the instincts, to inspire the striving for greatness, to remind us that “this
has happened once and is therefore a possibility,” or perhaps simply to bestow the “honey offering” of a very useful piece of folly.
This need explains the meaning of the parodic fourth book of Zarathustra, which opens with the title character reflecting on the
whole of his teachings: “I am he…who once bade himself, and not in vain: ‘Become what you are!’” The subtitle of Nietzsche’s au-
tobiographical Ecce Homo, “How One Becomes What One Is,” strikes a similar chord.

6. Will to Power
The exemplar expresses hope not granted from metaphysical illusions. After sharpening the critique of art and genius during the
positivistic period, Nietzsche seems more cautious about heaping praise upon specific historical figures and types, but even
when he could no longer find an ideal exception, he nevertheless deemed it requisite to fabricate one in myth. Whereas excep-
tional humans of the past belong to an exalted “republic of genius,” those of the future, those belonging to human destiny, em-
body humanity’s highest hopes. As a result of this development, some commentators will emphasize the “philosophy of the fu-
ture” as one of Nietzsche’s most important ideas. Work pursued in service of the future constitutes for Nietzsche an earthly form
of redemption. Yet, exemplars of type, whether in the form of isolated individuals like Napoleon, or of whole cultures like the
Greeks, are not caught up in petty historical politics or similar mundane endeavors. According to Nietzsche in Twilight of the
Idols, their regenerative powers are necessary for the work of interpreting the meaning and sequence of historical facts.

My Conception of the genius—Great men, like great epochs, are explosive material in whom tremendous energy has been
accumulated; their prerequisite has always been, historically and psychologically, that a protracted assembling, accumulat-
ing, economizing and preserving has preceded them—that there has been no explosion for a long time. If the tension in the
mass has grown too great the merest accidental stimulus suffices to call the “genius,” the “deed,” the great destiny, into the
world. Of what account then are circumstances, the epoch, the Zeitgeist, public opinion!…Great human beings are neces-
sary, the epoch in which they appear is accidental… (“Expeditions of an Untimely Man,” 44).

It is with this understanding of the “great man” that Nietzsche, in Ecce Homo, proclaims even himself a great man, “dynamite,”
“breaking the history of humanity in two” (“Why I am a Destiny” 1 and 8). A human exemplar, interpreted affirmatively in ser-
vice of a hopeful future, is a “great event” denoting qualitative differences amidst the play of historical determinations. 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.

To what extent is Nietzsche entitled to such a vision? Unlike nihilism, pessimism, and the death of God, which are historically,
scientifically, and sometimes logically derived, Nietzsche’s “yes-saying” concepts seem to be derived from intuition, although Ni-
etzsche will frequently support even these great hopes with bits of inductive reasoning. Nietzsche attempts to describe the logical
structure of great events, as if a critical understanding of them pertains to their recurrence in modernity: great men have a “his-
torical and psychological prerequisite.” Historically, there must be a time of waiting and gathering energy, as we find, for exam-
ple, in the opening scene of Zarathustra. The great man and the great deed belong to a human destiny, one that emerges in situ-
ations of crisis and severe want. Psychologically, they are the effects of human energy stored and kept dormant for long periods
of time in dark clouds of indifference. Primal energy gathers to a point before a cataclysmic event, like a chemical reaction with
an electrical charge, unleashes some decisive, episodic force on all humanity. From here, the logic unfolds categorically: all great
events, having occurred, are possibilities. All possibilities become necessities, given an infinite amount of time. Perhaps under-
standing this logic marks a qualitative difference in the way existence is understood. Perhaps this qualitative difference will
spark the revaluation of values. When a momentous event takes place, the exception bolts from the cloud of normalcy as a point
of extreme difference. 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 un-
leashes the next great transvaluative event. Conditions for the occurrence of such events, and for the event of grasping this logic
itself, are conceptualized, cosmologically in this reading, under the appellation “will to power.”
Before developing this reading further, it should be noted some commentators argue that the cosmological interpretation of will
to power makes too strong a claim and that the extent of will to power’s domain ought to be limited to what the idea might ex-
plain as a theory of moral psychology, as the principle of an anthropology regarding the natural history of morals, or as a re-
sponse to evolutionary theories placed in the service of utility. 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. Indeed, much evidence exists to support each of these positions. As an enthusiastic reader of the French Moralists of
the eighteenth century, Nietzsche held the view that all human actions are motivated by the desire “to increase the feeling of
power” (GS 13). This view seems to make Nietzsche’s insights regarding moral psychology akin to psychological egoism and
would thus make doubtful the popular notion that Nietzsche advocated something like an egoistic ethic. Nevertheless, with this
bit of moral psychology, a debate exists among commentators concerning whether Nietzsche intends to make dubious morality
per se or whether he merely endeavors to expose those life-denying ways of moralizing inherited from the beginning of Western
thought. Nietzsche, at the very least, is not concerned with divining origins. He is interested, rather, in measuring the value of
what is taken as true, if such a thing can be measured. For Nietzsche, a long, murky, and thereby misunderstood history has con-
ditioned the human animal in response to physical, psychological, and social necessities (GM II) and in ways that have created
additional needs, including primarily the need to believe in a purpose for its very existence (GS 1). This ultimate need may be
uncritically engaged, as happens with the incomplete nihilism of those who wish to remain in the shadow of metaphysics and
with the laisser aller of the last man who overcomes dogmatism by making humanity impotent (BGE 188). On the other hand, a
critical engagement with history is attempted in Nietzsche’s genealogies, which may enlighten the historical consciousness with
a sort of transparency regarding the drive for truth and its consequences for determining the human condition. In the more criti-
cal engagement, Nietzsche attempts to transform the need for truth and reconstitute the truth drive in ways that are already in-
credulous towards the dogmatizing tendency of philosophy and thus able to withstand the new suspicions (BGE 22 and 34).
Thus, the philosophical exemplar of the future stands in contrast, once again, to the uncritical man of the nineteenth century
whose hidden metaphysical principles of utility and comfort fail to complete the overcoming of nihilism (Ecce Homo, “Why I am
a Destiny” 4). The question of whether Nietzsche’s transformation of physical and psychological need with a doctrine of the will
to power, in making an affirmative principle out of one that has dissolved the highest principles hitherto, simply replaces one
metaphysical doctrine with another, or even expresses completely all that has been implicit in metaphysics per se since its incep-
tion continues to draw the interest of Nietzsche commentators today. Perhaps the radicalization of will to power in this way
amounts to no more than an account of this world to the exclusion of any other. At any rate, the exemplary type, the philosophy
of the future, and will to power comprise aspects of Nietzsche’s affirmative thinking. When the egoist’s “I will” becomes trans-
parent to itself a new beginning is thereby made possible. Nietzsche thus attempts to bring forward precisely that kind of affir-
mation which exists in and through its own essence, insofar as will to power as a principle of affirmation is made possible by its
own destructive modalities which pulls back the curtain on metaphysical illusions and dogma founded on them.

The historical situation that conditions Nietzsche’s will to power involves not only the death of God and the reappearance of pes-
simism, but also the nineteenth century’s increased historical awareness, and with it the return of the ancient philosophical
problem of emergence. How does the exceptional, for example, begin to take shape in the ordinary, or truth in untruth, reason in
un-reason, social order and law in violence, a being in becoming? The variation and formal emergence of each of these states
must, according to Nietzsche, be understood as a possibility only within a presumed sphere of associated events. One could thus
also speak of the “emergence,” as part of this sphere, of a given form’s disintegration. Indeed, the new cosmology must account
for such a fate. Most importantly, the new cosmology must grant meaning to this eternal recurrence of emergence and disinte-
gration without, however, taking vengeance upon it. This is to say that in the teaching of such a worldview, the “innocence of be-
coming” must be restored. The problem of emergence attracted Nietzsche’s interest in the earliest writings, but he apparently
began to conceptualize it in published texts during the middle period, when his work freed itself from the early period’s “meta-
physics of aesthetics.” The opening passage from 1878’s Human, All Too Human gives some indication of how Nietzsche’s think-
ing on this ancient problem begins to take shape:

Chemistry of concepts and feelings. In almost all respects, philosophical problems today are again formulated as they were
two thousand years ago: how can something arise from its opposite….? Until now, metaphysical philosophy has overcome
this difficulty by denying the origin of the one from the other, and by assuming for the more highly valued things some
 miraculous origin…. Historical philosophy, on the other hand, the very youngest of all philosophical methods, which can no
longer be even conceived of as separate from the natural sciences, has determined in isolated cases (and will probably con-
clude in all of them) that they are not opposites, only exaggerated to be so by the metaphysical view….As historical philoso-
phy explains it, there exists, strictly considered, neither a selfless act nor a completely disinterested observation: both are
merely sublimations. In them the basic element appears to be virtually dispersed and proves to be present only to the most
careful observer. (Human, All Too Human, 1)

It is telling that Human begins by alluding to the problem of “emergence” as it is brought to light again by the “historical philo-
sophical method.” A decidedly un-scientific “metaphysical view,” by comparison, looks rather for miraculous origins in support
of the highest values. Next, in an unexpected move, Nietzsche relates the general problem of emergence to two specific issues,
one concerning morals (“selfless acts”) and the other, knowledge—which is taken to include judgment (“disinterested observa-
tions”): “in them the basic element appears to be virtually dispersed” and discernable “only to the most careful observer.”

The logical structure of emergence, here, appears to have been borrowed from Hegel and, to be sure, one could point to many
Hegelian traces in Nietzsche’s thought. But previously in 1874’s “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” from Un-
timely Meditations, Nietzsche had steadfastly refuted the dialectical logic of a “world historical process,” the Absolute Idea, and
cunning reason. What, then, is “the basic element”, dispersed in morals and knowledge? How is it dispersed so that only the
careful observer can detect it? The most decisive moment in Nietzsche’s development of a cosmology seems to have occurred
when Nietzsche plumbed the surface of his early studies on the pathos and social construction of truth to discover a more preva-
lent feeling, one animating all socially relevant acts. In Book One of the The Gay Science (certainly one of the greatest works in
whole corpus) Nietzsche, in the role of “careful observer,” identifies, with a bit of moral psychology, the one motive spurring all
such acts:

On the doctrine of the feeling of power. Benefiting and hurting others are ways of exercising one’s power upon others: that
is all one desires in such cases…. Whether benefiting or hurting others involves sacrifices for us does not affect the ultimate
value of our actions. Even if we offer our lives, as martyrs do for their church, this is a sacrifice that is offered for our desire
for power or for the purpose of preserving our feeling of power. Those who feel “I possess Truth”—how many possessions
would they not abandon in order to save this feeling!…Certainly the state in which we hurt others is rarely as agreeable, in
an unadulterated way, as that in which we benefit others; it is a sign that we are still lacking power, or it shows a sense of
frustration in the face of this poverty….(aphorism 13).

The “ultimate value” of our actions, even concerning those intended to pursue or preserve “truth,” are not measured by the
goodness we bring others, notwithstanding the fact that intentionally harmful acts will be indicative of a desperate want of pow-
er. Nietzsche, here, asserts the significance of enhancing the feeling of power, and with this aphorism from 1882 we are on the
way to seeing how “the feeling of power” will replace, for Nietzsche, otherworldly measures of value, as we read in finalized form
in the second aphorism of 1888’s The Anti-Christ:

What is good?—All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man. What is bad?—All that pro-
ceeds from weakness. What is happiness?—The feeling that power increases—that a resistance is overcome.

No otherworldly measures exist, for Nietzsche. Yet, one should not conclude from this absence of a transcendental measure that
all expressions of power are qualitatively the same. Certainly, the possession of a Machiavellian virtù will find many natural ad-
vantages in this world, but Nietzsche locates the most important aspect of “overcoming resistance” in self-mastery and self-com-
manding. In Zarathustra’s chapter, “Of Self-Overcoming,” all living creatures are said to be obeying something, while “he who
cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures.” It is important to note the disjunction: one may
obey oneself or one may not. Either way, one will be commanded, but the difference is qualitative. Moreover, “commanding is
more difficult than obeying” (BGE 188 repeats this theme). Hence, one will take the easier path, if unable to command, choosing
instead to obey the directions of another. The exception, however, will command and obey the healthy and self-mastering de-
mands of a willing self. But why, we might ask, are all living things beholden to such commanding and obeying? Where is the
proof of necessity here? Zarathustra answers:

Listen to my teaching, you wisest men! Test in earnest whether I have crept into the heart of life itself and down to the roots
of its heart! Where I found a living creature, there I found will to power; and even in the will of the servant, I found the will
to be master (Z “Of the Self-Overcoming”).

Here, apparently, Nietzsche’s doctrine of the feeling of power has become more than an observation on the natural history and
psychology of morals. The “teaching” reaches into the heart of life, and it says something absolute about obeying and command-
ing. But what is being obeyed, on the cosmological level, and what is being commanded? At this point, Zarathustra passes on a
secret told to him by life itself: “behold [life says], I am that which must overcome itself again and again…And you too, enlight-
ened man, are only a path and a footstep of my will: truly, my will to power walks with the feet of your will to truth.” We see here
that a principle, will to power, is embodied by the human being’s will to truth, and we may imagine it taking other forms as well.
Reflecting on this insight, for example, Zarathustra claims to have solved “the riddle of the hearts” of the creator of values: “you
exert power with your values and doctrines of good and evil, you assessors of values….but a mightier power and a new overcom-
ing grow from out of your values…” That mightier power growing in and through the embodiment and expression of human val-
ues is will to power.

It is important not to disassociate will to power, as a cosmology, from the human being’s drive to create values. To be sure, Niet-
zsche is still saying that the creation of values expresses a desire for power, and the first essay of 1887’s On the Genealogy of
Morality returns to this simple formula. Here, Nietzsche appropriates a well-known element of Hegel’s Phenomenology, the
structural movement of thought between basic types called “masters and slaves.” This appropriation has the affect of emphasiz-
ing the difference between Nietzsche’s own historical “genealogies” and that of Hegel’s “dialectic” (as is worked out in Deleuze’s
study of Nietzsche). Master and slave moralities, the truths of which are confirmed independently by feelings that power has
been increased, are expressions of the human being’s will to power in qualitatively different states of health. The former is a con-
sequence of strength, cheerful optimism and naiveté, while the latter stems from impotency, pessimism, cunning and, most fa-
mously, ressentiment, the creative reaction of a “bad conscience” coming to form as it turns against itself in hatred. The venom
of slave morality is thus directed outwardly in ressentiment and inwardly in bad conscience. Differing concepts of “good,” more-
over, belong to master and slave value systems. Master morality complements its good with the designation, “bad,” understood
to be associated with the one who is inferior, weak, and cowardly. For slave morality, on the other hand, the designation, “good”
is itself the complement of “evil,” the primary understanding of value in this scheme, associated with the one possessing superior
strength. Thus, the “good man” in the unalloyed form of “master morality” will be the “evil man,” the man against whom ressen-
timent is directed, in the purest form of “slave morality.” Nietzsche is careful to add, at least in Beyond Good and Evil, that all
modern value systems are constituted by compounding, in varying degrees, these two basic elements. Only a “genealogical”
study of how these modern systems came to form will uncover the qualitative strengths and weaknesses of any normative
judgment.

The language and method of The Genealogy hearken back to The Gay Science’s “doctrine of the feeling of power.” But, as we
have seen, in the period between 1882 and 1887, and from out of the psychological-historical description of morality, truth, and
the feeling of power, Nietzsche has given agency to the willing as such that lives in and through the embrace of power, and he
generalizes the willing agent in order to include “life” and “the world” and the principle therein by which entities emerge embod-
ied. 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. Such willing, most importantly, commands, which at the same time is an
obeying: difference emerges from out of indifference and overcomes it, at least for a while. Life, in this view, is essentially self-
overcoming, a self-empowering power accomplishing more power to no other end. In a notebook entry from 1885, Will to Pow-
er’s aphorism 1067, Nietzsche’s cosmological intuitions take flight:

And do you know what “the world” is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without
beginning, without end…as force throughout, as a play of forces and waves of forces…a sea of forces flowing and rushing to-
 gether, eternally changing and eternally flooding back with tremendous years of recurrence…out of the play of contradic-
tions back to the joy of concord, still blessing itself as that which must return eternally, as a becoming that knows no satiety,
no disgust, no weariness; this my Dionysian world of the eternally self-creating, the eternally self-destroying, this mystery
world of the two-fold voluptuous delight, my “beyond good and evil,” without goal, unless the joy of the circle is itself a
goal….This world is the will to power—and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power—and nothing
besides!

Nietzsche discovers, here, the words to articulate one of his most ambitious concepts. The will to power is now described in
terms of eternal and world-encompassing creativity and destructiveness, thought over the expanse of “tremendous years” and in
terms of “recurrence,” what Foucault has described as the “play of domination” (1971). In some respects Nietzsche has indeed
rediscovered the temporal structure of Heraclitus’ child at play, arranging toys in fanciful constructions of what merely seems
like everything great and noble, before tearing down this structure and building again on the precipice of a new mishap. To live
in this manner, according to Nietzsche in The Gay Science, to affirm this kind of cosmology and its form of eternity, is to “live
dangerously” and to “love fate” (amor fati).

In spite of the positivistic methodology of The Genealogy, beneath the surface of this natural history of morals, will to power
pumps life into the heart of both master and slave conceptual frameworks. Moreover, will to power stands as a necessary condi-
tion for all value judgments. How, one might ask, are these cosmological intuitions derived? How is knowledge of both will to
power and its eternally recurring play of creation and destruction grounded? If they are to be understood poetically, then the
question “why?” is misplaced (Zarathustra, “Of Poets”). Logically, with respect to knowledge, Nietzsche insists that principles of
perception and judgment evolve co-dependently with consciousness, in response to physical necessities. The self is organized
and brought to stand within the body and by the stimuli received there. 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. Let us beware, Nietzsche cautions, of saying that the world possesses any sort of order or coherence without these inter-
pretations (GS 109), even to the extent that Nietzsche himself conceives will to power as the way of all things. If all principles are
interpretive gestures, by the logic of Nietzsche’s new cosmology, the will to power must also be interpretive (BGE 22). One as-
pect of the absence of absolute order is that interpretive gestures are necessarily called-forth for the establishment of meaning. A
critical requirement of this interpretive gesture becoming transparent is that the new interpretation must knowingly affirm that
all principles are grounded in interpretation. According to Nietzsche, such reflexivity does not discredit his cosmology: “so much
the better,” since will to power, through Nietzsche’s articulation, emerges as the thought that now dances playfully and lingers
for a while in the midst of what Vattimo might call a “weakened” (and weakening) “ontology” of indifference. The human being
is thereby “an experimental animal” (GM II). Its truths have the seductive power of the feminine (BGE 1); while Nietzsche’s
grandest visions are oriented by the “experimental” or “tempter” god, the one later Nietzsche comes to identify with the name
Dionysus (BGE 295).

The philosopher of the future will posses a level of critical awareness hitherto unimagined, given that his interpretive gestures
will be recognized as such. Yet, a flourishing life will still demand, one might imagine, being able to suspend, hide, or forget—at
the right moments—the creation of values, especially the highest values. Perhaps the cartoonish, bombastic language of The Ge-
nealogy’s master and slave morality, to point to an example, which was much more soberly discussed in the previous year’s Be-
yond Good and Evil, is employed esoterically by Nietzsche for the rhetorical effect of producing a grand and spectacular diver-
sion, hiding the all-important creative gesture that brought forth the new cosmology as a supreme value: “This world is the will
to power and nothing besides!—And you yourselves are also this will to power–and nothing besides!” With this teaching, Niet-
zsche leaves underdeveloped many obvious themes, such as how the world’s non-animate matter may (or may not) be involved
with will to power or whether non-human life-forms take part fully and equally in the world’s movement of forces. To have a
perspective, for Nietzsche, seems sufficient for participating in will to power, but does this mean that non-human animals, which
certainly seem to have perspectives, and without question participate in the living of life, have the human being’s capacity (or
any capacity for that matter) to command themselves? Or, do trees and other forms of vegetation? Apparently, they do not. Such
problems involve, again, the question of freedom, which interests Nietzsche primarily in the positive form. Of more importance
to Nietzsche is that which pertains solely to the human being’s marshalling of forces but, even here (or perhaps especially here),
a hierarchy of differences may be discerned. Some human forms of participation in will to power are noble, others ignoble. But,
concerning these sorts of activities, Nietzsche stresses in Beyond Good and Evil (aphorism 9) the difference between his own
cosmology, which at times seems to re-establish the place of nobility in nature, and the “stoic” view, which asserts the oneness of
humanity with divine nature:

“According to nature” you want to live? Oh you noble Stoics, what deceptive words these are! Imagine a being like nature,
wasteful beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without purposes and consideration, without mercy and justice, fer-
tile and desolate and uncertain at the same time; imagine indifference itself as a power—how could you live according to
this indifference? Living—is that not precisely wanting to be other than this nature? Is not living—estimating, preferring,
being unjust, being limited, wanting to be different? ….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. It always creates the world in its own
image; it cannot do otherwise. Philosophy is this tyrannical drive itself; the most spiritual will to power, to the “creation of
the world,” to the causa prima.

Strauss claims that here Nietzsche is replacing “divine nature” and its egalitarian coherence with “noble nature” and its expres-
sion of hierarchies, the condition for which is difference, per se, emerging in nature from indifference (1983). Other commenta-
tors have suggested that Nietzsche, here, betrays all of philosophy, lacking any sense of decency with this daring expose—that
what is left after the expression of such a forbidden truth is no recourse to meaning.

The most generalized form of the philosophical problem of emergence and disintegration, of the living, valuing, wanting to be
different, willing power, is described here in terms of the difference-creating gesture embodied by the human being’s essential
work, its “creation of the world” and first causes. Within nature, one might say, energy disperses and accumulates in various
force-points: nature’s power to create these force-points is radically indifferent, and this indifference towards what has been cre-
ated also characterizes its power. Periodically, something exceptional is thrust out from its opposite, given that radical indiffer-
ence is indifferent even towards itself (if one could speak of ontological conditions in such a representative tone, which Niet-
zsche certainly does from time to time). Nature is disturbed, and the human being, having thus become aware of its own identity
and of others, works towards preserving itself by tying things down with definitions; enhancing itself, occasionally, by loosening
the fetters of old, worn-out forms; creating and destroying in such patterns, so as to make humanity and even nature appear to
conform to some bit of tyranny. From within the logic of will to power, narrowly construed, human meaning is thus affirmed.
“But to what end?” one might ask. To no end, Nietzsche would answer. Here, the more circumspect view could be taken, as is
found in Twilight of the Idol’s “The Four Great Errors”: “One is a piece of fate, one belongs to the whole, one is in the whole,
there exist nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare,
condemn the whole….But nothing exists apart from the whole!” Nietzsche conceptualizes human fate, then, in his most extreme
vision of will to power, as being fitted to a whole, “the world,” which is itself “nothing besides” a “monster of energy, without be-
ginning, without end…eternally changing and eternally flooding back with tremendous years of recurrence.” In such manner,
will to power expresses itself not only through the embodiment of humanity, its exemplars, and the constant revaluation of val-
ues, but also in time. Dasein, for Nietzsche, is suspended on the cross between these ontological movements—between an in/dif-
ferent playing of destruction/creation—and time. But, what temporal model yields the possibility for these expressions? How
does Nietzsche’s experimental philosophy conceptualize time?

7. Eternal Recurrence
The world’s eternally self-creating, self-destroying play is conditioned by time. Yet, Nietzsche’s skepticism concerning what can
be known of telos, indeed his refutation of an absolute telos independent of human fabrication, demands a view of time that dif-
fers from those that place willing, purposiveness, and efficient causes in the service of goals, sufficient reason, and causa prima.
Another formulation of this problem might ask, “what is the history of willing, if not the demonstration of progress and/or
decay?”
Nietzsche’s solution to the riddle of time, nevertheless, radicalizes the Christian concept of eternity, combining a bit of simple
observation and sure reasoning with an intuition that produces curious, but innovative results. The solution takes shape as Niet-
zsche fills the temporal horizons of past and future with events whose denotations have no permanent tether. Will to power, the
Heraclitean cosmic-child, plays-on without preference to outcomes. 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. The objective perspective is not possible, since the whole consumes all
possibilities, giving form to and destroying all that has come to fulfillment. Whatever stands in this flux, does so in the midst of
the whole, but only for a while. It disturbs the whole, but does so as part of the whole. As such, whatever stands is measured, on
the one hand, by the context its emergence creates. On the other hand, whatever stands is immeasurable, by virtue of the whole,
the logic of which would determine this moment to have occurred in the never-ending flux of creation and destruction. Even to
say that particular events seem better or worse suited to the functionality of the whole, or to its stability, or its health, or that an
event may be measured absolutely by its fitted-ness in some other way, presupposes a standpoint that Nietzsche’s cosmology
will not allow. One is left only to describe material occurrences and to intuit the passing of time.

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. If “something” has
happened, then its happening, naturally, must have been possible. Each simple thing or complex event is linked, inextricably, to
a near infinite number of others, also demonstrating the possibilities of their happenings. If all of these possibilities could be
presented in such a way as to account for their relationships and probabilities, as for example on a marvelously complex set of
dice, then it could be shown that each of these possibilities will necessarily occur, and re-occur, given that the game of dice con-
tinues a sufficient length of time.

Next, Nietzsche considers the nature of temporal limits and duration. He proposes that no beginning or end of time can be de-
termined, absolutely, in thought. No matter what sort of temporal limits are set by the imagination, questions concerning what
lies beyond these limits never demonstrably cease. The question, “what precedes or follows the imagined limits of past and fu-
ture?” never contradicts our understanding of time, which is thus shown to be more culturally and historically determined than
otherwise admitted.

Finally, rather than to imagine a past and future extended infinitely on a plane of sequential moments, or to imagine a time in
which nothing happens or will happen, Nietzsche envisions connecting what lies beyond the imagination’s two temporal hori-
zons, so that time is represented in the image of a circle, through which a colossal, but definitive number of possibilities are ex-
pressed. Time is infinite with this model, but filled by a finite number of material possibilities, recurring eternally in the never-
ending play of the great cosmic game of chance.

What intuition led Nietzsche to interpret the cosmos as having no inherent meaning, as if it were playing itself out and repeating
itself in eternally recurring cycles, in the endless creation and destruction of force-points without purpose? How does this curi-
ous temporal model relate to the living of life? In his philosophical autobiography, Ecce Homo, Nietzsche grounds eternal recur-
rence in his own experiences by relating an anecdote regarding, supposedly, its first appearance to him in thought. One day, Ni-
etzsche writes, while hiking around Lake Silvaplana near Sils Maria, he came upon a giant boulder, took out a piece of paper and
scribbled, “6000 Fuss jenseits von Mensch und Zeit.” From here, Nietzsche goes on to articulate “the eternal recurrence of the
same,” which he then characterizes as “a doctrine” or “a teaching” of the “highest form of affirmation that can possibly be
attained.”

It is important to note that at the time of this discovery, Nietzsche was bringing his work on The Gay Science to a close and be-
ginning to sketch out a plan for Zarathustra. The conceptualization of eternal recurrence emerges at the threshold of Nietzsche’s
most acute positivistic inquiry and his most poetic creation. The transition between the two texts is made explicit when Niet-
zsche repeats the final aphorism of The Gay Science’s Book IV in the opening scene of Zarathustra’s prelude. The repetition of
this scene will prove to be no coincidence, given the importance Nietzsche places upon the theme of recurrence in Zarathustra’s
climactic chapters. Moreover, in the penultimate aphorism of The Gay Science, as a sort of introduction to that text’s Zarathus-
tra scene (which itself would seem quite odd apart from the later work), Nietzsche first lays out Zarathustra’s central teaching,
the idea of eternal recurrence.

The greatest weight.—What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to
you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there
will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great
in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between
the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again,
and you with it, speck of dust!” (GS 341).

“What if,” wonders Nietzsche, the thought took hold of us? Here, the conceptualization of eternal recurrence, thus, coincides
with questions regarding its impact: “how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more
fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?”

How would the logic of this new temporal model alter our experiences of factual life? Would such a thought diminish the willful-
ness of those who grasp it? Would it diminish our willingness to make normative decisions? Would willing cease under the pes-
simistic suspicion that the course for everything has already been determined, that all intentions are “in vain”? What would we
lose by accepting the doctrine of this teaching? What would we gain? It seems strange that Nietzsche would place so much dra-
matic emphasis on this temporal form of determinism. If all of our worldly strivings and cravings were revealed, in the logic of
eternal recurrence, to be no more than illusions, if every contingent fact of creation and destruction were understood to have
merely repeated itself without end, if everything that happens, as it happens, both re-inscribes and anticipates its own eternal
recurrence, what would be the affect on our dispositions, on our capacities to strive and create? Would we be crushed by this
eternal comedy? Or, could we somehow find it liberating?

Even though Nietzsche has envisioned a temporal model of existence seemingly depriving us of the freedom to act in unique
ways, we should not fail to catch sight of the qualitative differences the doctrine nevertheless leaves open for the living. The logic
of eternity determines every contingent fact in each cycle of recurrence. That is, each recurrence is quantitatively the same. The
quality of that recurrence, however, seems to remain an open question. What if the thought took hold of us? If we indeed under-
stood 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? This is the strange confluence of possibility and neces-
sity that Nietzsche announces in the beginning of Gay Science’s Book IV, with the concept of Amor fati: “I want to learn more
and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let
that be my love henceforth!”

Responses to this “doctrine” have been varied. Even some of the most enthusiastic Nietzsche commentators have, like Kauf-
mann, deemed it unworthy of serious reflection. Nietzsche, however, appears to stress its significance in Twilight of the Idols
and Ecce Homo by emphasizing Zarathustra’s importance in the “history of humanity” and by dramatically staging in Thus
Spoke Zarathustra the idea of eternal recurrence as the fundamental teaching of the main character. The presentation of this
idea, however, leaves room for much doubt concerning the literal meaning of these claims, as does the paucity of direct refer-
ences to the doctrine in other works intended for publication. In Nietzsche’s Nachlass, we discover attempts to work out rational
proofs supporting the theory, but they seem to present no serious challenge to a linear conception of time. Among commentators
taking the doctrine seriously, Löwith takes it as a supplement to Nietzsche’s historical nihilism, as a way of placing emphasis on
the problem of meaning in history after the shadows of God have been dissolved. For Löwith’s Nietzsche, nihilism is more than
an historical moment giving rise to a crisis of confidence or faith. Rather, nihilism is the essence of Nietzsche’s thought, and it
poses the sorts of problems that lead Nietzsche into formulating eternal return as a way of restoring meaning in history. For
Löwith, then, eternal return is inextricably linked to historical nihilism and offers both cosmological and anthropological
grounds for accepting imperatives of self-overcoming. Yet, this grand attempt fails to restore meaning after the death of God, ac-
cording to Löwith, because of eternal return’s logical contradictions.

8. Reception of Nietzsche’s Thought

The reception of Nietzsche’s work, on all levels of engagement, has been complicated by historical contingencies that are related
only by accident to the thought itself. The first of these complications pertains to the editorial control gained by Elizabeth in the
aftermath of her brother’s mental and physical collapse. Elisabeth’s overall impact on her brother’s reputation is generally
thought to be very problematic. Her husband, Bernhard Förster, whom Friedrich detested, was a leader of the late nineteenth-
century German anti-Semitic political movement, which Friedrich often ridiculed and unambiguously condemned, both in his
published works and in private correspondences. 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). In the mid-1880s, Förster and wife led a small
group of colonists to Paraguay in hopes of establishing an idyllic, racially pure, German settlement. The colony foundered, Bern-
hard committed suicide, and Elisabeth returned home, just in time to find her brother’s health failing and his literary career
ready to soar.

Upon her return, Elisabeth devised a way to keep alive the memory of both husband and brother, legally changing her last name
to “Förster-Nietzsche,” a gesture indicative of designs to associate the philosopher with a political ideology he loathed. The stain
of Elisabeth’s editorial imprint can be seen on the many ill-informed and haphazard interpretations of Nietzsche produced in the
early part of the twentieth century, the unfortunate traces of which remain in some readings today. During the 1930s, in the
midst of intense activity by National Socialist academic propagandists such as Alfred Bäumler, even typically insightful thinkers
such as Emmanuel Levinas confused the public image of Nietzsche for the philosopher’s stated beliefs. Counter-efforts in the
1930s to refute such propaganda, and the popular misconceptions it was fomenting at the time, can be found both inside and
outside Germany, in seminars, for example, led by Karl Jaspers and Karl Löwith, and in Georges Bataille’s essay “Nietzsche and
the Fascists.” Of course, the ad hominem argument that “Nietzsche must be a Fascist philosopher because the Fascists venerated
him as one of their own,” may be ignored. (No one should find Kant’s moral philosophy reprehensible, by comparison, simply on
the grounds that Eichmann attempted to exploit it in a Jerusalem court). Apart from the fallacy, here, even the premise itself re-
garding 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. The stronger claim that Nietzsche’s thought leads to National Socialism is even
more problematic. Nevertheless, intellectual histories pursuing the question of how Nietzsche has been placed into the service of
all sorts of political interests are an important part of Nietzsche scholarship.

Since the middle part of the last century, Nietzsche scholars have come to grips with the role played by Elisabeth and her as-
sociates in obscuring Nietzsche’s anti-Nationalistic, anti-Socialist, anti-German views, his pan-European advocacy of race mix-
ing, as well as his hatred for anti-Semitism and its place in the late-nineteenth-century politics of exploitation. The work Elisa-
beth performed as her brother’s publicist, however, undoubtedly fulfilled all of her own fantasies: in the early 1930’s, decades
after Friedrich’s death, the Nietzsche-Archiv was visited, ceremoniously, by Adolf Hitler, who was greeted and entertained by
Elisabeth (in perhaps the most symbolic gesture of her association with the Nietzsche image) with a public reading of the work
of her late husband, Bernhard, the anti-Semite. Hitler later attended Elisabeth’s funeral as Chancellor of Germany.

In a matter related to Elizabeth’s impact on the reception of her brother’s thought, the relevance of Nietzsche’s biography to his
philosophical work has long been a point of contention among Nietzsche commentators. While an exhaustive survey of the way
this key issue has been addressed in the scholarship would be difficult in this context, a few influential readings may be briefly
mentioned. Among notable German readers, Heidegger and Fink dismiss the idea that Nietzsche’s thought can be elucidated
with the details of his life, while Jaspers affirms the “exceptional” nature of Nietzsche’s life and identifies the exception as a key
aspect of his philosophy. French readers such as Bataille, Deleuze, Klossowski, Foucault, and Derrida assert the relevance of var-
ious biographical details to specific movements within Nietzsche’s writings. In the United States, the influential reading of Wal-
ter Kaufman follows Heidegger, for the most part, in denying relevance, while his student, Alexander Nehamas, tends the other
way, linking Nietzsche’s various literary styles to his “perspectivism” and ultimately to living, per se, as an self-interpretive ges-
ture. However difficult it might be to see the philosophical relevance of various biographical curiosities, such as Nietzsche’s psy-
chological development as a child without a living father, his fascination and then fallout with Wagner, his professional os-
tracism, his thwarted love life, the excruciating physical ailments that tormented him, and so on, it would also seem capricious
and otherwise inconsistent with Nietzsche’s work to radically severe his thought from these and other biographical details, and
persuasive interpretations have argued that such experiences, and Nietzsche’s well-considered views of them, are inseparable
from the multiple trajectories of his intellectual work.

Attempts to isolate Nietzsche’s philosophy from the twists and turns of a frequently problematic life may be explained, in part,
as a reaction to several early, and rather detrimental, popular-psychological studies attempting to explain the work in a reduc-
tive and decidedly un-philosophical manner. Such was the reading proffered, for example, by Lou Salomè, a woman with whom
Nietzsche briefly had an unconventional and famously complex romantic relationship, and who later befriended Sigmund Freud
among other leaders of European culture at the fin-de-siècle. Salomè’s Friedrich Nietzsche in His Works (1894) helped cast the
image of Nietzsche as a lonely, miserable, self-immolating, recluse whose “external intellectual work…and inner life coalesce
completely.” In some commentaries, this image prevails yet today, but its accuracy is also a matter of debate. Nietzsche had
many casual associates and a few close friends while in school and as a professor in Basel. Even during the period of his most in-
tense intellectual activity, after withdrawing from the professional world of the academy and, like Marx and others before him in
the nineteenth century, taking up the wandering life of a “good European,” the many written correspondences between Niet-
zsche and life-long friends, along with what is known about the minor details of his daily habits, his days spent in the company
of fellow lodgers and travelers, taking meals regularly (in spite of a very closely regulated diet), and similar anecdotes, all put
forward a different image. No doubt the affair with Salomè and their mutual friend, the philosopher Paul Rée, left Nietzsche em-
bittered towards the two of them, and it seems likely that this bitterness clouded Salomè’s interpretation of Nietzsche and his
works. Elisabeth, who had always loathed Salomè for her immoderation and perceived influence over Friedrich, attempted to
correct her rival’s account by writing her own biography of Friedrich, which was effusive in its praise but did little to advance the
understanding of Nietzsche’s thought. Perhaps these kinds of problems, then, provide the best argument for resisting the lure to
reduce interpretations of Nietzsche’s thought to gossipy biographical anecdotes and clumsy, amateurish speculation, even if the
other extreme has also been excessive at times.

Another key issue in the reception of Nietzsche’s work involves determining its relationship to the thoughts of other philoso-
phers and, indeed, to the philosophical tradition itself. On both levels of this complex issue, the work of Martin Heidegger looms
paramount. Heidegger began working closely with Nietzsche’s thought in the 1930s, a time rife with political opportunism in
Germany, even among scholars and intellectuals. In the midst of a struggle over the official Nazi interpretation of Nietzsche,
Heidegger’s views began to coalesce, and after a series of lectures on Nietzsche’s thought in the late 1930’s and 1940, Heidegger
produces in 1943 the seminal essay, “Nietzsche’s Word: “God is Dead””. 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 hu-
man perspectives, Heidegger dubbed Nietzsche “the last metaphysician” and tied him to the logic of a historical narrative high-
lighted by the appearances of Plato, Aristotle, Roman Antiquity, Christendom, Luther, Descartes, Leibniz, Schopenhauer, and
others. The “one thought” common to each of these movements and thinkers, according to Heidegger, and the path Nietzsche
thus thinks through to its “consummation,” is the “metaphysical” determination of being (Sein) as no more than something stat-
ic and constantly present. Although Nietzsche appears to reject the concept of being as an “empty fiction” (claiming, in Twilight
of the Idols, to concur with Heraclitus in this regard), Heidegger nevertheless reads in Nietzsche’s Platonic inversion the most
insidious form of the metaphysics of presence, in which the destruction and re-establishment of value is taken to be the only
possible occasion for philosophical labor whereby the very question of being is completely obliterated. Within this diminution of
thought, the Nietzschean “Superman” emerges supremely powerful and triumphant, taking dominion over the earth and all of
its beings, measured only by the mundane search for advantages in the ubiquitous struggle for preservation and enhancement.

As is typically the case with Heidegger’s interpretations of the history of philosophy, many aspects of this reading are truly re-
markable—Heidegger’s scholarship, for example, his feel for what is important to Nietzsche, and his elaboration of Nietzsche’s
work in a way that seems compatible with a narrative of the concealing and revealing destiny of being. However, the plausibility
of this reading has come into question almost from the moment the full extent of it was made known in the 1950s and 60s. In
Germany, for example, Eugen Fink concludes his 1960 study of Nietzsche by casting doubt upon Heidegger’s claim that Niet-
zsche’s thought can be reduced to a metaphysics:

Heidegger’s Nietzsche interpretation is essentially based upon Heidegger’s summary and insight into the history of being
and in particular on his interpretation of the metaphysics of modernity. Nevertheless, the question remains open whether
Nietzsche does not already leave the metaphysical dimensions of any problems essentially and intentionally behind in his
conception of the cosmos. There is a non-metaphysical originality in his cosmological philosophy of “play.” Even the early
writings indicate the mysterious dimension of play….

Fink’s reluctance to take a stronger position against the reading of his renowned teacher seems rather coy, given that Fink’s
study, throughout, has stressed the meaning and importance of “cosmological play” in Nietzsche’s work. Other commentators
have much more explicitly challenged Heidegger’s grand narrative and specifically its place for Nietzsche in the Western tradi-
tion, concurring with Fink that Nietzsche’s conceptualization of play frees his thought from the tradition of metaphysics, or that
Nietzsche, purposively or not, offered conflicting views of himself, eluding the kind of summary treatment presented by Heideg-
ger and much less-gifted readers (who consider Nietzsche to be no more than a late-Romantic, a social-Darwinist, or the like). In
this sort of commentary, Nietzsche’s work itself is at play in deconstructing the all-too-rigid kinds of explanations.

While such a reading has proven to be popular, partly because it seems to make room for various points of entry into Nietzsche’s
thought, it has understandably stirred a backlash of sorts among less charitable commentators who find pragmatic or neo-Kant-
ian strains in Nietzsche’s critique of metaphysics and who wish to separate Nietzsche’s level-headed philosophy from his poorly-
developed musings. Notable works by Schacht, Clark, Conway, and Leiter fall into this category. In a loosely related movement,
many commentators bring Nietzsche into dialogue with the tradition by concentrating on aspects of his work relevant to particu-
lar philosophical issues, such as the problem of truth, the development of a natural history of morals, a philosophical considera-
tion of moral psychology, problems concerning subjectivity and logo-centrism, theories of language, and many others. Finally,
much work continues to be done on Nietzsche in the history of ideas, regarding, for example, Nietzsche’s philology, his intellec-
tual 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. Works by Habermas, Porter, Gillespie, Brobjer, Ansell-Pearson, Conway, and Strong
are notable for historicizing Nietzsche in a variety of contexts.

The Anglo-American reception of Nietzsche is typically suspicious of Heidegger’s influence and strongly disapproves of gestures
linking the “New Nietzsche” found in late twentieth-century discussions of postmodernism and literary criticism to a supposed
end of philosophy, although some American scholars will admit, with Gillespie, that “the core of this postmodern reading cannot
simply be dismissed,” despite this reading’s excesses (1995, 177). Due to these suspicions, moreover, common Nietzschean
themes such as historical nihilism, Dionysianism, tragedy, and play, as well as cosmological readings of will to power, and eter-
nal recurrence are downplayed in Anglo-American treatments, in favor of bringing out more traditional sorts of philosophical
problems such as truth and knowledge, values and morality, and human consciousness. Nietzsche reception in the United States
has been determined by a unique set of circumstances, as portrayed by Schacht (1995) and others. A very early stage of that re-
ception is stained by the Nazi-misappropriation of Nietzsche, which popular American audiences were prepared to accept un-
critically due on the one hand to their initial impression of Nietzsche as an enemy of Christianity who ultimately went insane
and on the other hand to their lack of familiarity with Nietzsche’s work. The next stage of Nietzsche reception in the U.S. benefit-
ed greatly from Walter Kaufmann’s landmark treatment in the 1950’s. Kaufmann’s Nietzsche was certainly no fascist. Rather, he
was a secular humanist and a forerunner of the existentialist movement enjoying a measure of popularity (and acceptability) on
college campuses in the United States during the 1950’s and 1960’s. Whereas European commentators such as Jaspers, Löwith,
Bataille, and even Heidegger had been busy in the 1930’s “marshalling” Nietzsche (as Jaspers described it) against the National
Socialists, in the U.S. it was left to Kaufmann and others in the 1950’s to successfully refute the image of Nietzsche as a Nazi-pro-
totype. So successful was Kaufmann in this regard, that Anglo-American readers had difficulty seeing Nietzsche in any other
light, and philosophers who found existentialism shallow regarded Nietzsche with the same disdain. This image of Nietzsche was
corrected, somewhat, by Danto’s Nietzsche as Philosopher, which attempted to cast Nietzsche as a forerunner to analytic philos-
ophy, although doubts about Nietzsche’s suitability for this role surely remain even today. To the extent that Danto succeeded in
the 1970’s in reshaping philosophical discussions regarding Nietzsche, a new difficulty emerged, related generally to a tension in
the world of Anglo-American philosophy between Analytic and Continental approaches to the discipline. In such a light, Schacht
sees his work on Nietzsche as an attempt to bridge this institutional divide, as do other Anglo-American readers. The work of
Rorty may certainly be characterized in this manner. Despite these attempts, tensions remain between Anglo-American readers
who cultivate a neo-pragmatic version of Nietzsche and those who, by comparison, seem too comfortable accepting uncritically
the problematic aspects of the Continental interpretation.

In most cases, interpretations of Nietzsche’s thought, and what is taken to be most significant about it, when not directed solely
by external considerations, will be determined by the texts in Nietzsche’s corpus given priority and by a decision regarding Niet-
zsche’s overall coherence, as concerns any given issue, throughout the trajectory of his intellectual development.

9. References and Further Reading

a. Nietzsche’s Collected Works in German

Samtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 15 vols (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1980).
This “critical student edition” of collected works, commonly referenced as the KSA, contains Nietzsche’s major writings and most of the well-known essays and
aphorisms found in his journals. Specialists and readers seeking Nietzsche’s letters, his lectures at Basel, and other writings from his vast Nachlass, will need to
supplement the KSA with two additional sources.

Kritische Gesamtausgabe: Briefwechsel, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 24 vols. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1975-84).
This edition offers a comprehensive collection of Nietzsche’s correspondences.

Kritische Gesamtausgabe: Werke, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967-).
The project of publishing a “complete edition” of Nietzsche’s writings was started in 1967 by Colli and Montinari and has since enlisted the services of a number
of other editors. At the present time, the project remains unfinished. The most important contribution of the KGW, as this edition is commonly referenced, is
perhaps its publication of Nietzsche’s lectures from the University of Basel on topics such as pre-Platonic philosophy, the Platonic dialogues, and ancient
rhetoric.

b. Nietzsche’s Major Works Available in English

Most of Nietzsche’s major works were published during his lifetime and are now available to English readers in competing trans-
lations. The following list is by no means exhaustive.

The Birth of Tragedy (Die Geburt der Tragödie,1872); published in English with The Case of Wagner (Der Fall Wagner, 1888), trans.
Walter Kaufmann, (New York: Vintage, 1966).
These two texts are available separately in other editions

Untimely Meditations (Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, 1873-1876), trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1983).
The four essays of this work are available separately in other editions

Human, All Too Human (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches [vol. 1], 1878 and [vol. 2], 1879-1880), trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986).
Volume one of this work and the two distinct parts of volume two, “Assorted Maxims and Aphorisms” and “The Wanderer and His Shadow,” are available sepa-
 rately in other editions.

Daybreak (Morgenröte, 1881), trans. R, J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
The later editions of this translation contain a helpful index.

The Gay Science (Die fröliche Wissenschaft, 1882; with important supplements to the second edition, 1887), trans. Walter Kaufman (New
York: Vintage, 1974).
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Also Sprach Zarathustra, bks I-II, 1883; bk III, 1884; bk IV [printed and distributed privately], 1885), trans. R.
J. Hollingdale, (New York: Penguin, 1973).
Beyond Good and Evil (Jenseits von Gut und Böse, 1886), trans. Walter Kaufman (New York: Vintage, 1966).
On the Genealogy of Morality (Zur Genealogie der Moral, 1887), edited with important supplements from the Nachlass and other works
by Keith Ansell-Pearson; trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
The Case of Wagner (Der Fall Wagner, 1888); published in English with The Birth of Tragedy (Die Geburt der Tragödie,1872), trans.
Walter Kaufmann, (New York: Vintage, 1966)
Ecce Homo (Ecce Homo, 1888, first published 1908), trans. R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Penguin, 1992).
Nietzsche contra Wagner (Nietzsche contra Wagner, 1888, first published 1895), trans. Walter Kaufmann, in The Portable Nietzsche, ed.
Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking, 1954).
Twilight of the Idols (Götzen-Dämmerung, 1889); published in English with The Anti-Christ (Der Antichrist, 1888), trans. R. J. Holling-
dale (New York: Penguin, 1968).

c. Important Works Available in English from Nietzsche’s Nachlass

Nietzsche’s Nachlass contains several developed essays and an overwhelming number of fragments, sketches of outlines, and
aphorisms, some in thematically related successions. A number of these writings are available to English readers, and a few are
accessible in a variety of editions, either as supplements to the major works or as part of assorted critical editions. The following
list offers a sample of these writings.

“Homer on Competition” (“Homers Wettkampf,” 1872) and “The Greek State” (Der griechische Staat, 1872), included in On the Genealogy
of Morality (Zur Genealogie der Moral, 1887), ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson; trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995).
“On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” (“Über Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne,” 1873), collected in various editions,
including Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the early 1870’s, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale (New Jer-
sey: Humanities Press, 1979) and Friedrich Nietzsche on Rhetoric and Language, ed. and trans. Sander L. Gilman, Carole Blair, and
David J. Parent (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen, 1873), trans. Marianne Cowan (Wash-
ington, D. C.: Gateway Editions, 1962).
The Pre-Platonic Philosophers (Die vorplatonischen Philosophen, lectures during various semesters at Basel from 1869 to 1876; ed. by
Fritz Bornmann and Mario Carpitella for the KGW, vol. II, part 4), ed. and trans. with an interpretive essay and appendix by Greg Whit-
lock (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001).
Unpublished Writings from the Period of Unfashionable Observations (vol. 11 of The Completed Works of Friedrich Nietzsche), based on
the KGW, adapted by Ernst Behler; ed. Bernd Magnus; trans. Richard T. Gray (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999).
The Will to Power (Der Wille zur Macht, writings from the Nachlass ed. and arranged by Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche and Peter Gast and
published in various forms after Nietzsche’s death), trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage, 1967).
Writings from the Late Notebooks (writings from the Nachlass), ed. Rüdigger Bittner; trans. Kate Sturge (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2003).

d. Biographies
A firsthand and secondhand biographical narrative may be followed in the collected letters of Nietzsche and his associates:

Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. Christopher Middleton (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996)
 Conversations with Nietzsche: A Life in the Words of His Contemporaries, ed. Sander L. Gilman, trans. David J. Parent (New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1987).

The following list includes a few of the most well known biographies in English.

Diethe, Carol. Nietzsche’s Sister and the Will to Power: A Biography of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
2003).
Hayman, Ronald. Nietzsche: A Critical Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).
Hollingdale, R. J. Nietzsche, the Man and His Philosophy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965).
Pletsch, Carl. Young Nietzsche: Becoming a Genius (New York: The Free Press, 1991).
Safranski, Rüdiger. Nietzsche: Biographie Seines Denkens (Muenchen: Carl Hanser, 2000).
Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography, trans. Shelley Frisch (New York: Norton, 2002).
Salomé, Lou. Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Siegfried Mandel (Redding Ridge, CT: Black Swan, 1988).

e. Commentaries and Scholarly Researches

Hollingdale once wrote that Nietzsche anticipated what would soon become “part of the consciousness of every thinking person”
living in the twentieth century and, no doubt, beyond. During the last forty years, Nietzsche scholarship has generated a consid-
erable amount of commentary and research, and some of the most important of these texts were produced by the twentieth cen-
tury’s most significant thinkers. Even so, the work of elucidating Nietzsche’s thought seems unfinished. The following list is by
no means comprehensive, nor does it purport to represent all of the major themes prevalent in Nietzsche scholarship today. It is
designed for the reader seeking to learn more about the intellectual history of Nietzsche reception in the twentieth century.

Allison, David B. ed., The New Nietzsche: Contemporary Styles of Interpretation, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985).
Allison, David B. Reading the New Nietzsche (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001).
Ansell-Pearson, Keith. An Introduction to Nietzsche as Political Thinker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
Aschheim, Steven E. The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany: 1890-1990 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
Bambach, Charles R. Heidegger’s Roots: Nietzsche, National Socialism, and the Greeks (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003).
This text delivers a scholarly, critical account of Heidegger’s intellectual encounter with Nietzsche against the politically charged backdrop of Germany in the
1930s.

Bataille, Georges. Sur Nietzsche (Paris, Gallimard, 1945), available in English under the title, On Nietzsche, trans. Bruce Boon (New York:
Paragon House, 1992).
Bataille, Georges. “Nietzsche and the Fascists,” available in Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939 (which includes other essays
devoted to Nietzsche), ed. Allan Stoekl, trans. Stoekl, et. al (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985).
Brobjer, Thomas. Nietzsche’s Philosophical Context: An Intellectual Biography (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008).
Brobjer delivers invaluable resource for collating Nietzsche’s writings with the texts that he was himself reading.

Clark, Maudemarie. Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
This study is representative of the trend in American scholarship emphasizing those parts of Nietzsche’s thought apparently commensurate with pragmatic and
neo-Kantian concerns. It is, perhaps, the best point of entry for readers hoping to gain such insight. For Clark, many of Nietzsche’s remarks on truth are simply
confused, although he is redeemed as a philosopher by conclusions drawn in 1887 and thereafter.

Conway, Daniel W. Nietzsche’s Dangerous Game: Philosophy in the Twilight of the Idols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Conway, Daniel W. Nietzsche and the Political (London: Routledge, 1997).
Danto, Authur C. Nietzsche as Philosopher (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965).
According to Danto, a surprisingly rigorous analytic system of thought is embedded in Nietzsche’s writings, which for Danto are rather poorly executed from a
philosophical perspective. In this reading, Nietzsche’s architectonic shortcomings are redeemed, even unconsciously, by the consistency of his polemics.

Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche et la philosophie, (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962), available in English under the title, Nietzsche
and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Thomlinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).
Deleuze’s seminal work delivers the classic statement on Nietzsche as a thinker of processes and relations of active and reactive forces. For Deleuze, Nietzsche
is a post-Kantian thinker of historical consciousness and a genealogist refuting the dialectic rationalism of Hegel

Derrida, Jacques. Spurs: Nietzsche’s Styles (Èperons: Les Styles de Nietzsche), published with French and English facing pages, trans. Bar-
bara Harlow (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979).
Derrida, Jacques . “Interpreting Signatures (Nietzsche/Heidegger): Two Questions,” trans. Diane P. Michelfelder and Richard E. Palmer in
Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989).
Fink, Eugen. Nietzsches Philosophie (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1960); available in English under the title, Nietzsche’s Philosophy, trans.
Goetz Richter (London: Continuum, 2003).
Foucault, Michel. “Nietzsche, la généalogie, l’historiè,” in Hommage à Jean Hyppolite (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971),
available in English under the title, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon in The Foucault
Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 76-100.
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.

Gillespie, Michael Allen. Nihilism Before Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
Gillespie, Michael Allen and Strong, Tracy B. ed. Nietzsche’s New Seas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).
Golomb, Jacob and Robert S. Wistrich ed. Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism? On the Uses and Abuse of a Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2002).
Habermas, Jürgen. Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985), available in English under the title, The Philo-
sophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987).
These lectures offer a historical reading of Nietzsche’s decisive role in interrupting “the discourse of Modernity” and abandoning its emancipatory content.
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).

Heidegger, Martin. “Nietzsches Wort‘Gott is tot,’” in Holzwege (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1952 [written in 1943]). The essay is
available to English readers as “Nietzsche’s Word: God is dead” in The Question Concerning Technology and other essays, trans.
William Lovitt; co-edited J. Glenn Gray and Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper, 1977).
This essay is Heidegger’s first published and most concise treatment of Nietzsche.
Heidegger’s preparation for this essay includes several lecture courses devoted entirely to Nietzsche’s philosophy, taught at the University of Freiburg from
1936 to 1940.
The published form of these lectures first appeared during 1961 in two volumes.

Heidegger, Martin. Nietzsche I-II (Pfulligen: Neske, 1961).

Beginning in 1979, Heidegger’s Nietzsche lectures at Freiberg became available to English readers in piecemeal fashion, along with other materials in a some-
what confusing manner, in a two edition, four-volume, set.

Heidegger, Martin . Nietzsche, vol. I-IV, trans. David Farrell Krell, (San Francisco: Harper, 1979ff).
The philosophy of Nietzsche plays a prominent role in several other works by Heidegger.

Heidegger, Martin. “Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit,”(written in 1930, revised in 1940), published in Wegmarken (Frankfurt am Main:
Klostermann, 1967); available in English under the title, “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth,” in Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Heidegger, Martin. “Was Heisst Denken?” (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1954); available in English under the title, “What is Called Thinking?,”
trans. J. Glenn Gray and Fred Wieck (San Francisco: Harper, 1968).
Heidegger, Martin. “Wer ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?” in Vorträge und Aufsätze (Stuttgart: Neske, 1954); available in English under the ti-
tle, “Who is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?” in Nietzsche vol. II trans. David Farrell Krell, (San Francisco: Harper, 1979), 209-233.
Jaspers, Karl. Nietzsche. Einführung in das Verständnis seines Philosophierens (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1936); available in English under the
title, Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity, trans. Charles F. Wallraff and Frederick J. Schmitz
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997)
Kaufmann, Walter. Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 4th edition: (Princeton: PUP, 1974). Kaufmann’s study was a water-
shed text in the history of Nietzsche reception in the United States
Klossowski, Pierre. Nietzsche et le cercle vicieux (Paris: Mercure de France, 1969), available in English under the title, Nietzsche and the
Vicious Circle, trans. Daniel W. Smith (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press and Athlone Press, 1997)
Lambert, Laurence. Leo Strauss and Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996)
Lambert, Laurence. Nietzsche’s Teaching: An Interpretation of ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra,’ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986)
Leiter, Brian. Nietzsche on Morality (London: Routledge, 2002).
Leiter plays down the ineffable aspects of Nietzsche’s thought in order to elaborate formally and concisely Nietzsche’s writings on morality, especially from the
Genealogy. This approach lends credit to the claim that Nietzsche was foremost a moral philosopher with pragmatic, even analytic consistency

Löwith, Karl. Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Eternal Return of the Same, trans. J. Harvey Lomax (Berkley: University of California Press,
1997).
Löwith’s study was originally produced in the mid 1930’s, during a wave of interest that included treatments by Heidegger and Jaspers. Like these works,
Löwith attempted to correct Alfred Bäumler’s political misappropriation. While National Socialist renditions glorify subjectivity and power in will to power and to
the exclusion of eternal return and other ineffable concepts, Löwith places eternal return at the forefront of Nietzsche’s thought, arguing that such thought is
thereby flawed with internal contradictions

MacIntyre, Ben. Forgotten Fatherland: The Search for Elisabeth Nietzsche (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux 1992).
This study offers a somewhat informative, if rather sensationalistic, account of Elizabeth and Bernhard Förster’s sordid misadventure in Paraguay. This title
should not be counted on, however, for any sort of understanding of Nietzsche’s philosophy
 Michelfelder, Diane P. and Palmer, Richard E. eds. Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter (Albany: SUNY Press,
1989).
This text chronicles an interesting confrontation on Nietzsche reception between two landmark philosophers of the late twentieth century. The encounter re-
gards Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche and what it implies for post-Heideggerian thought

Montinari, Mazzino. Reading Nietzsche trans. Greg Whitlock (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003).
With Giorgio Colli, Montinari was coeditor of the KSA and the first volumes of the KGW. This translation of his collection of lectures and essays originally pub-
lished in 1982 portrays Nietzsche being primarily interested in science, albeit taken off course for a time by Wagner and their shared interest in Schopenhauer.
Montinari’s Nietzsche is best characterized as having a lifelong “passion for knowledge.” However, Montinari’s insights into previous editions of Nietzsche’s cor-
pus, and the editorial politics behind these editions, may be the most valuable parts of this interesting work

Mueller-Lauter,Wolfgang. Nietzsche: His Philosophy of Contradictions and the Contradictions of His Philosophy, trans. David J. Parent
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999)
Nehamas, Alexander. Nietzsche: Life as Literature, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1985).
Porter, James I. Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000).
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

Porter, James I. The Invention of Dionysus: An Essay on the Birth of Tragedy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000)
Schacht, Richard. Nietzsche: The Great Philosophers (London: Routledge, 1983)
Schacht, Richard. Making Sense of Nietzsche: Reflections Timely and Untimely (Champagne/Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press,
1995)
Schrift, Alan D. Nietzsche’s French Legacy: A Genealogy of Poststructuralism (New York: Routledge, 1995).
As the title promises, this text surveys aspects of the French reception of Nietzsche

Schutte, Ofelia. Beyond Nihilism: Nietzsche Without Masks (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984)
Strauss, Leo. “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1983).
Strauss’ take on Nietzsche, here and elsewhere, has generated quite a bit of scholarship on its own

Strong, Tracy B. Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration: Expanded Edition, (Berkley: University of California Press,
1988).
Strong’s reading is somewhat esoteric, but it nevertheless brings out important political tensions seemingly implied in Nietzsche’s encounter with Socrates,
Aeschylus, and other Greeks

Vattimo, Gianni. The End of Modernity trans. Jon R. Snyder (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1988)
Vattimo, Gianni. Nihilism and Emancipation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).
With these titles and several others, Vattimo takes up Heidegger’s transmission of Nietzsche and works out the issue of “completed nihilism” with impressive
results. Vattimo’s Nietzsche emerges as one of the best philosophical resources for grounding emancipatory discourse in the twentieth first century

Waite, Geoff. Nietzsche’s Corps/e, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996).
Waite offers a richly thematized, innovative Kulturkampf using Nietzsche-reception itself as a wedge for breaking open a variety of late-twentieth century
issues

Yovel, Yirmiyahu. Dark Riddle: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Jews (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1998)
Zimmerman, Michael. Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity: Technology, Politics, Art (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1990).
Zimmerman delivers a useful text for understanding this key conduit of Nietzsche reception.

f. Academic Journals in Nietzsche Studies

In addition to a typically large number full-length manuscripts on Nietzsche published every year, scholarly works in English
may be found in general, academic periodicals focused on Continental philosophy, ethical theory, critical theory, the history of
ideas and similar themes. In addition, some major journals are devoted entirely to Nietzsche and aligned topics. Related both to
the issue of orthodoxy and to the backlash against multiplicity in Nietzsche interpretation, the value of having so many outlets
available for Nietzsche commentators has even been questioned. The following journals are devoted specifically to Nietzsche
studies.

Nietzsche-Studien (Berlin: de Gruyter).

The Journal of Nietzsche Studies (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press).
New Nietzsche Studies: The Journal of the Nietzsche Society (New York: Nietzsche Society).
Author Information
Dale Wilkerson
Email: dale.wilkerson@utrgv.edu
University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
U. S. A.