Volume 50, Issue 1

The later Nietzsche developed the “magic of the extreme” as a special strategy in order to make his philosophical reorientations successful. He needed this strategy not only to be heard at all; also the problems he faced called for it. The article first gives an overview of the most important problems Nietzsche coped with and the extreme solutions he offered. Then, we show how, according to Nietzsche, even Socrates, who stands for the beginning of the European Enlightenment, used the “magic” of extreme irritation and fascination to get this Enlightenment on its way.

The first part of this article questions the authenticity of one of the most quoted and allegedly reliable sources in the Burckhardt-Nietzsche debate. After having pointed out who was interested in manipulating this source and why, it will go back to the original issue of Burckhardt’s “silence.” This time, though, the question is going to be tackled from a different angle: not what Burckhardt thought about Nietzsche; rather, what did Nietzsche think about Burckhardt’s silence. The claims I will raise in this respect are two: 1) Nietzsche is the first interpreter of Burckhardt’s silence; 2) Burckhardt’s silence, far from being a mere private issue, became an elaborate theme of Nietzsche’s mature philosophy.

The Schopenhauer-Schule was a group of original and diverse thinkers working in the wake of a common inspiration. This paper elucidates Nietzsche’s relationship with these thinkers specifically as concerns their intertwined theories of will. It shows that despite his efforts to suppress and ridicule them, Nietzsche was influenced by the Schopenhauer-Schule and adopted several of their alterations to Schopenhauer. But it will also show that Nietzsche was a heretical member of this school in the sense that his theory of will was not only different from theirs but also subversive. Whereas each member of the Schopenhauer-Schule posits a realist ontology of will, Nietzsche’s perspectivism undercuts the possibility of their ontological realism and puts in its place a semiotical system of expression. As a result of this contextualized framework, Nietzsche’s will to power is revealed, not as an intended reference to a real “thing” in the world, but as a symbol that expresses his perspective about an unknowable reality.

There is a long and successful scholarly tradition of commenting on Nietzsche’s deep affinity for the philosophy of Heraclitus. But scholars remain puzzled as to why he suggested at the end of his career, in Ecce Homo , that the doctrine he valued most, the eternal recurrence of the same, might also have been taught by Heraclitus. This essay aims to answer this question through a close examination of Nietzsche’s allusions to Heraclitus in his first published mention of eternal recurrence in The Joyful Science and in a related set of notes from the period when he was formulating and defending his doctrine of eternal recurrence while writing Thus Spoke Zarathustra . The key to answering this question, it is argued, is that Nietzsche came to believe that the doctrine of eternal recurrence, when properly understood as requiring identical repetition, has to presuppose a Heraclitean reality of eternal, absolute, and universal flux.

This article analyses the origin of TI 49–51 on the basis of several posthumous fragments from the autumn of 1887, which had been reworked in 1888. This analysis highlights significant connections that got lost along the way to the final version of these aphorisms, such as Nietzsche’s comparison between Goethe and Spinoza which, in 1887, was the beginning of his updated reflections on Goethe. The origin and context of these aphorisms allow for a better understanding of the long-established image of Goethe expressed in the aphorisms of Twilight of the Idols and their close connection to the new reflections on Goethe as they had already come to the fore in Human, All Too Human when Nietzsche distanced himself from Wagner’s ideas. This also presents the opportunity for a more careful consideration of Nietzsche’s conception of European culture and its intellectual heritage and his relation to Napoleon as well as his characterization of the eighteenth-century and the need for self-overcoming during the nineteenth-century. Nietzsche considered this self-overcoming to be an important aspect of his thinking, and Goethe was an important precursor for Nietzsche’s conception of self-overcoming.

Napoleon Bonaparte is a veritable “case” for Nietzsche: he does not reduce Napoleon to a single image, but he rather builds up an ambiguous image of Napoleon for years without trying to define a final result. This ongoing construction is due to Nietzsche’s deep admiration for Napoleon that, however great it may be, does not avoid a certain distancing. Defined as the synthesis of Unmensch and Übermensch , Nietzsche regards Napoleon as an extraordinary human being because of his immorality when he exercised power. It is precisely this extraordinary nature that makes Napoleon a model for understanding the concept of the Übermensch .

The subject of this article points beyond a purely literary or literary-historical approach. The question is, whether and how a human being is able to change the (social) conditions of their life by changing himself through transition into another form of existence. In order to overcome established (social) conditions and one’s self, it is necessary to begin with a vision, a utopian dream. Those who pursue the utopian dream of overcoming their current (social) conditions must acknowledge their own good and evil, that is, their position vis-à-vis equality and justice, law and morality. The person itself, and its personality, is revealed in the relation between the utopia of changing its current way of life and its social reality. The ultimate question is: what is the essence of humanity, the ecce homo ? Both the transition into a new form of being and the utopian dream differ decisively in Don Quixote and Zarathustra. It is not my concern to compare them as literary figures.

In an unpublished text from the early postwar period, Georges Canguilhem deals with Nietzsche’s maxim “Become who you are!” Is this “apparently contradictory formula of a philosopher full of contradictions” really only seemingly inconsistent? Canguilhem regards it as a norm whose supposed metaphysical or objective content dissolves upon further analysis. So he here discerns a new instance of the same potential confusion he had already addressed in his classical essay on The Normal and the Pathological (1943). According to him, the formula “become who you are!” must not be misunderstood in a naturalistic sense, a tendency from which not even Nietzsche himself, Canguilhem thinks, was entirely free. Besides the French philosophy of his time, his philosophical inquiry into “Become who you are!” critically engages two classic German Nietzsche scholars, Ernst Bertram and Karl Jaspers, as well as the French interpreters of the latter’s philosophy of Existenz , Mikel Dufrenne and Paul Ricœur. Finally, the paper highlights Nietzsche’s specific importance for Canguilhem and the ambivalence in his privileged relationship to the German thinker.

This paper offers a new interpretation of Nietzsche’s “sovereign individual,” which appears in the second treatise of his 1887 On the Genealogy of Morality . I argue that Nietzsche’s presentation of that figure’s sovereignty is much more ambiguous than has hitherto been recognized. In contrast to scholars who argue that he is either completely free from moral conscience or entirely subservient to it, I argue that he is neither completely autonomous nor heteronomous. He surpasses the need for the enforcement of custom only by internalizing it, i. e. by developing a conscience. This positions him as a crucial link in Nietzsche’s understanding of the human being’s dependence on morality. Attending to the sovereign individual’s ambiguities reveals Nietzsche’s skepticism about the possibility of autonomy within the political community.

Nietzsche is known for his penetrating critique of Mitleid (now commonly rendered as “compassion”). He seems to be critical of all compassion but at times also seems to praise a different form of compassion, which he refers to as “our compassion” and contrasts it with “your compassion” (BGE 225). Some commentators have interpreted this to mean that Nietzsche’s criticism is not as unconditional as it may seem – that he does not condemn compassion entirely. I disagree and contend that even though Nietzsche appears to speak favorably of some forms of compassion, he regards the nature of all compassion to be fundamentally bad. Furthermore, I suggest that Nietzsche’s discussion on different forms of compassion have significant implications for achieving greatness and meaning in life. More specifically, I argue that, for Nietzsche, “our compassion,” however regrettable qua compassion it is, may give occasion for a rare and peculiar insight into “co-suffering” with others, which in turn results in overcoming compassion entirely. I also argue that although Nietzsche objects to compassion, he approves of a form of what feminist theorists might now call “anticipatory empathy.” Even though a large body of literature has evolved over Nietzsche’s critical evaluation of compassion, his understanding of a non-compassionate response to suffering is, in my view, rather overlooked and should receive more attention.

The article traces Nietzsche’s references to insects in his published and unpublished writings against the backdrop of his study of the entomological research of his time (esp. through his reading of Alfred Espinas’s Die thierischen Gesellschaften ). The first part of the article explores how Nietzsche’s entomology allows us to add a posthumanist perspective to the more familiar poststructuralist readings of Nietzsche, as the entomological research he consulted offered him a model for understanding how rudimentary processes can lead to the formation of structures and higher organizations with emergent properties. The second part of the article revisits Nietzsche’s conceptions of the will and the will to power against the backdrop of his references to insect sociality and the influence of Wilhelm Wundt. It shows that Nietzsche’s deconstruction of the will as an umbrella concept and his will to power are attempts to model the emergence of complex edifices from simple operations under which physical, psychological, and social phenomena must be thought to arise. The article concludes with a reflection of the social and political relevance of what Nietzsche identifies as modernity’s “disgregation of the will.”

Hundreds of books and articles have been written on Nietzsche and anarchism, but the overwhelming number of them concern how later anarchists have viewed and have been inspired by, or have been critical of, Nietzsche. In the present contribution, I will instead emphasize how his views of anarchism changed, why he was so critical of anarchism and what were his main sources of knowledge of anarchism and the stimuli for his statements.

The review discusses four recent books and collections that approach in different ways the role of aesthetics in Nietzsche’s work, both as a question of poetic expression and as the shaping of sensibility. They testify to a deepening interest in the processes through which he forged his unique style. This involves micro-analyses of the composition of Nietzsche’s writings from the raw material of his notebooks. It also involves biographical and material contexts, as in Tobias Brücker’s monograph on the composition of The Wanderer and His Shadow . Instead of accepting the dichotomy between a Dichterphilosoph and a philosopher for whom style was merely an instrument for formulating truths, these books display in different ways how in the case of Nietzsche this dichotomy breaks down and gives way to a widened concept of philosophical writing that includes many different genres. Other works by Nietzsche discussed are Zarathustra and The Gay Science , and also Ecce Homo . Nietzsche seduced with his art, but he also saw through the art of seduction as practiced by the artist, opting for a position beyond the conventional split between poetics and philosophy.

As the relationship between music and philosophy in Nietzsche’s thought and life continues to fascinate, new approaches to the treatment of music in Nietzsche studies have emerged which take seriously the importance of music, not only in Nietzsche’s life, but for his philosophical project as a whole. While Nietzsche’s often-quoted claim that life without music would be a mistake was once treated as a quip, the quality and breadth of the works reviewed here demonstrate that this invaluable area of Nietzsche’s thought is finally receiving the rigorous treatment it deserves. The works below each offer new and valuable insights on this exciting and growing area of Nietzsche studies which aid us in understanding where to place Nietzsche’s most loved art form in the framework of his philosophy.

Nietzsche’s reflection on the constitution of human subjectivity is an essential moment of his philosophy. As historical and academic conditions change, distinct interpretations of this reflection often contradict each other. This review essay aims to offer an insight into this situation. The anthology edited by Dries, which focuses on the concepts of “consciousness” and the “embodied mind,” presents innovative readings from the perspective of the philosophy of mind. However, this collection is marred by an insufficient comparison with the embodiment debate. Second, Benne and Müller’s volume shows how the concepts of “person” and “personality” are used by Nietzsche to describe the complexity of human subjectivity after the dissolution of the metaphysical subject. Third, Papparo’s monograph denotes with clarity the positive and productive aspects of the concept of soul in Nietzsche, but it is unsatisfactory from a scientific point of view. Finally, Scandella’s book succeeds on the contrary in highlighting some significant themes that have been overlooked in previous contributions. From a theoretical point of view, this review points out some shortcomings of the naturalistic interpretations of Nietzsche, which seem inadequate not only to grasp the complexity of his conception of human subjectivity, but also to show its actuality.

Each of these books presents itself as rescuing Nietzsche from misinterpretation. Thus, Leiter wants to prevent Nietzsche from being “moralized” (i. e., read in a way that makes him sound like a contemporary moral philosopher); Stern wants to prevent Nietzsche from being iron-manned (i. e., read in a way that assumes his arguments must be invulnerable to critique); Alfano wants to correct what he sees as a tendency to misrepresent Nietzsche’s central concerns; and Ridley claims writers have been misled when thinking about Nietzsche on action. Alfano’s book is, to my mind, the most successful at achieving its stated aims; while I point out some potential oversights and some areas that could benefit from further development, Alfano’s book is both novel and important. Leiter’s book is clearly written and presents the arguments in an admirably forthright manner, but some of its conclusions are vitiated by lapses and mischaracterizations. Stern gets Nietzsche’s basic view right, but does not probe it very deeply and is too quick to present Nietzsche as confused; I see the confusions as emanating less from Nietzsche’s texts and more from Stern’s reading of them. Ridley’s book is original and provocative, but I find the central claim – that Nietzsche endorses an expressive account of action – ultimately unconvincing.

Against a widely supported view that Nietzsche was not a political thinker, there have been a number of edited collections and monographs devoted either to Nietzsche’s politics or, what is not quite the same thing, relationships between his thought and contemporary political philosophy. What is striking about this secondary literature is the degree of divergence among the positions taken. The books discussed in the present review provide further illustration of this diversity. This applies not only to the question whether he was or was not a political thinker, but also to the further question what kind of political thinker.

Jewish Nietzscheans have traditionally shied away from any detailed examination of Nietzsche’s comments on contemporary Jewry or the Jewish religion. Scholars who have examined Jewish Nietzscheans have therefore sought to connect Nietzsche with some dimension of Jewish thought through similarities in views between Nietzsche and the Jewish intellectuals who were purportedly influenced by him. The two books under consideration in this essay strain to find solid connections between Nietzsche’s philosophy and the writings of eminent Jewish writers. Daniel Rynhold and Michael Harris examine how selected Nietzschean concepts can also be found in the work of the noted Jewish thinker Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. David Ohana, by contrast, examines a variety of Jewish writers who at some point exhibited an enthusiasm for Nietzsche, ranging from Hebrew scholars and translators to German-Jewish intellectuals. Both books suffer from many of the shortcomings of general Nietzschean influence studies: there is often no sound philological evidence of influence, or the “connection” is so general that it is difficult to see Nietzsche as the source of influence, or the alleged influence was of short duration, and it is difficult to understand what remains Nietzschean in the individual influenced.