Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung

The downfall of the systematic philosophies has raised the question of how to reconcile the radical critique of traditional forms of representation with a new need for form. This book compares the thinking of Nietzsche and Adorno along the axes of music, style, and language critique in order to reconstruct an "aesthetics of form" common to both, which proves to be an alternative to conventional twentieth-century philosophies of language.

This book explores the concepts of sickness and health in Nietzsche’s late philosophy, showing that Nietzsche viewed these concepts not as dialectical opposites but as events that each assert themselves and merge into each other in a constant circular motion. Nietzsche thereby brought together philosophy, psychophysiology, and aesthetics: the "Dionysian artist" thus became the ideal of a healthy life.

Safronov’s Nietzsche’s Political Economy is a pioneering appraisal of Nietzsche’s critique of industrial culture and its unfolding crisis. The author contends that Nietzsche remains unique in conceptualizing the upheavals of modern political economy in terms of the crisis of its governing values. Nietzsche scrutinises the norms which, not only preside over the unfathomable build-up in debt, the proliferation of meaningless, impersonal slavery and the rise of increasingly repressive social control systems, but inevitably set these precarious tendencies of modern political economy on a collision course liable to culminate in an unprecedented human and environmental catastrophe. Safronov explores the core themes of Nietzsche’s political economy—debt, slavery, and the division of labour—with reference to the influential views of Adam Smith and Karl Marx, as well as against the backdrop of the Long Depression (1873–1896), the first truly international crisis of industrial capitalism, during which most of Nietzsche’s work was completed.

In Nietzsche’s assessment, modern political economy is predicated on the valuations that diminish humankind’s prospects and harm the planet’s future by consistently enfeebling the present, as long as there is profit to be made from it. Nietzsche’s critical insight, which challenges the most fundamental tenet of modern economics and finance, is that in order to build a stronger and intrinsically more valuable future in lieu of simply speculating on it, as though the liberal Promised Land could descend upon us like the manna from heaven at the wave of an invisible hand [of the market], it is necessary to walk from the future we dare to envisage resolutely back to the present we inhabit to determine what demands achieving such a vision would impose upon us, instead of embellishing the ‘here and now’ by cynically discounting the future to the [net] value of the present while disparaging, disowning and rewriting the past to unburden ourselves of its troubling legacy, as we continue to frivolously squander its capital to the alluring tunes of the ‘sirens who in the marketplace sing to us of the future’. The enabling mechanism for changing our valuing perspectives, Nietzsche tells us, lies dormant in us and it must be unlocked before it is too late.

It is precisely because insisting on hierarchies seems so strange in today's society that it is worthwhile taking a new look at them with Nietzsche, who referred to them as his problem. Alberts closes the research gap by examining how Nietzsche's concept of hierarchies shaped his understanding of nature, religion, morality, science, and interindividuality, as well as how he thought on the whole.

Whereas "Kynismus" denotes the ancient school of cynicism and "Zynismus" a modern form of political indifference in German, Nietzsche wrote of "Cynismus" alone. In his study on Nietzsche’s reception of "Kynismus" and "Zynismus," and the proximity of the concept of the revaluation of values to Diogenes, the author of this volume shows that Nietzsche's cynicism went beyond both "Kynismus" and "Zynismus."

This volume reconstructs the full development of Nietzsche’s Homer interpretations, from his early philological writings and lectures to his last works as well as fragments from his estate. It also examines the philosophical dimension of the philological contexts, thereby filling in an essential gap in the research. This book paves the way for further interpretations of how Nietzsche’s saw Archaic Greece.

The question of the meaning of life is truly the fundamental problem of Nietzsche’s philosophy and cuts across his thinking from the early works to his program to "revaluate all values". The author’s multifaceted analysis of "meaning" and "purpose" reveals the existential and philosophical resonance of Nietzsche’s philosophy while clarifying numerous key concepts.

Nietzsche’s strengths as a critic are widely acknowledged, but his peculiar style of critique is usually ignored as rhetoric, or dismissed as violent or simply incoherent. In this book, Nietzsche’s concept of the agon or Wettkampf, a measured and productive form of conflict inspired by ancient Greek culture, is advanced as the dynamic and organising principle of his philosophical practice, enabling us to make sense of his critical confrontations and the much disputed concept of transvaluation or Umwertung. Agonal perspectives are cast on number of key problems in his thought across a broad range of texts. Topics and problems treated include: critical history and the need for a limit in the negation of the past; Nietzsche contra Socrates and the problem of closure; Nietzsche contra humanism and the problem of humanity; Nietzsche contra Kant on genius and legislation; the problem of self-legislation in relation to life and temporality; Nietzsche’s sense of community in its articulation with law, and the normativity of taste; ressentiment and the question of therapy in Nietzsche and Freud; and the problem of total affirmation in relation to critique.

These studies have a broad appeal, from MA level to advanced Nietzsche research.

Nietzsche’s reception of Spinoza is of critical importance for the will to power. With regard to its critical direction, philosophical problematics, and historical originality, the will to power can only be understood in the context of Nietzsche’s reading of Spinoza. This study investigates the relationship between their receptions to cast new light on Nietzsche’s philosophy of power.

During his late period, Nietzsche is particularly concerned with the value that mankind attributes to truth. In dealing with that topic, Nietzsche is not primarly interested in the metaphysical disputes on truth, but rather in the effects that the "will to truth" has on the human being. In fact, he argues that the "faith in a value as such of truth" influenced Western culture and started the anthropological degeneration of the human type that characterizes European morality. To call into question the value of truth is therefore necessary, if one wants to help mankind to find her way in the labyrinth of nihilism.

In this new addition to Nietzsche scholarship, Gori explores the origin and aim of the philosopher's　late perspectival thought by merging the theoretical with the historical approach, with a special focus on the epistemological debate that influenced Nietzsche. As a result, the book provides a contextual reading of the issue that supports the idea that Nietzsche’s attitude in addressing the problem of truth is, in a broad sense, pragmatic.

How does Nietzsche, as psychologist, envision the future of religion and

atheism? While there has been no lack of “psychological” studies that

have sought to illuminate Nietzsche's philosophy of religion by

interpreting his biography, this monograph is the first comprehensive

study to approach the topic through the philosopher's own psychological

thinking. The author shows how Nietzsche's critical writings on religion,

and especially on religious decline and future possibilities, are informed

by his psychological thinking about moods. The author furthermore

argues that the clarification of this aspect of the philosopher’s work is

essential to interpreting some of the most ambiguous words found in his

writings; the words that God is dead. Instead of merely denying the

existence of God in a way that leaves a melancholic need for religion or a

futile search for replacements intact, Nietzsche arguably envisions the

possibility of a radical atheism, which is characterized by a mood of joyful

doubt. The examination of this vision should be of great interest to

scholars of Nietzsche and of the history of philosophy, but also of

relevance to all those who take an interest in the interdisciplinary

discourse on secularization.

Nietzsche’s thought has been of renewed interest to philosophers in both the Anglo- American and the phenomenological and hermeneutic traditions.　Nietzsche on Consciousness and the Embodied Mind　presents 16 essays from analytic and continental perspectives. Appealing to both international communities of scholars, the volume seeks to deepen the appreciation of Nietzsche’s contribution to our understanding of consciousness and the mind.　Over the past decades, a variety of disciplines have engaged with Nietzsche’s thought, including anthropology, biology, history, linguistics, neuroscience, and psychology, to name just a few. His rich and perspicacious treatment of consciousness, mind, and body cannot be reduced to any single discipline, and has the potential to speak to many.　And, as several contributors make clear, Nietzsche’s investigations into consciousness and the embodied mind are integral to his wider ethical concerns.

This volume contains contributions by international experts such as Christa Davis Acampora (Emory University), Keith Ansell-Pearson (Warwick University), João Constâncio (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), Frank Chouraqui (Leiden University), Manuel Dries (The Open University; Oxford University), Christian J. Emden (Rice University), Maria Cristina Fornari (University of Salento), Anthony K. Jensen (Providence College), Helmut Heit (Tongji University), Charlie Huenemann (Utah State University), Vanessa Lemm (Flinders University), Lawrence J. Hatab (Old Dominion University), Mattia Riccardi (University of Porto), Friedrich Ulfers and Mark Daniel Cohen (New York University and EGS), and Benedetta Zavatta (CNRS).

Johannes Heinrich searches for forms of autonomous individuality that do not retreat behind the postmodern “dissolution of the subject.” To this end, he discusses Nietzsche’s account of the sovereign individual and compares this concept with Foucault’s “care of the self.” The results are used to analyze the contemporary philosophy of the subject with regard to its understanding of autonomous individuality.

The notion of nihilism assumes a prominent place in Nietzsche’s thinking during the 1880s. Yet he had already condemned nihilistic Western culture in The Birth of Tragedy; in order to overcome nihilism, life must be aesthetically vindicated. The author analyzes the cultural and anthropological foundations of Nietzsche’s concept of nihilism. The book concludes with a discussion of the contemporary crisis of meaning.

This monograph examines the meaning and function of textuality and the aesthetic form of presentation in philosophy based on a close reading of selected passages from Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols. Drawing on philosophical and textual criticist theories, the study demonstrates the philosophical-cognitive valence of aesthetic forms of representation as well as the key role of self-referentiality in Nietzsche's philosophy.

Vinod Acharya presents a new existential interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy. He contends that Nietzsche's peculiar form of existentialism can be understood only by undertaking a thorough analysis of his characterization and critique of metaphysics. This reading remedies the shortcomings of previous existential interpretations of Nietzsche, which typically view existentialism as concerned primarily with the meaning of individual existence, and therefore necessarily at odds with the abstraction and objectivity of metaphysical thought. Acharya argues that the approach of Nietzsche's philosophy, especially in his mature works, is to make the typical existential position foundational, and then to develop to the fullest the implications of this position. This meta-existential approach necessarily yields an ambiguous and open-ended critique of metaphysics. Taking issue with the Heideggerian, the poststructuralist, and the naturalistic interpretations, this book contends that Nietzsche neither simply overcomes metaphysics nor remains trapped within its confines. Acharya argues that an ever-renewed encounter with and critique of metaphysics is an essential aspect of Nietzsche's meta-existentialism.

The “aphoristic form causes difficulty,” Nietzsche argued in 1887, for “today this form is not taken seriously enough.” Nietzsche’s Aphoristic Challenge addresses this continued neglect by examining the role of the aphorism in Nietzsche’s writings, the generic traditions in which he writes, the motivations behind his turn to the aphorism, and the reasons for his sustained interest in the form. This literary-philosophical study argues that while the aphorism is the paradigmatic form for Nietzsche’s writing, its function shifts as his thought evolves. His turn to the aphorism in Human, All Too Human arises not out of necessity, but from the new freedoms of expression enabled by his critiques of language and his emerging interest in natural science. Yet the model interpretation of an aphorism Nietzsche offers years later in On the Genealogy of Morals tells a different story, revealing more about how the mature Nietzsche wants his earlier works read than how they were actually written. This study argues nevertheless that consistencies emerge in Nietzsche’s understanding of the aphorism, and these, perhaps counter-intuitively, are best understood in terms of excess. Recognizing the changes and consistencies in Nietzsche’s aphoristic mode helps establish a context that enables the reader to navigate the aphorism books and better answer the challenges they pose.

This volume brings the unspoken philosophical premises (plausibilities) of four outstanding German and Russian thinkers into mutual dialogue. The focus is on Nietzsche, who regarded Russian thought as an alternative to the basic assumptions of European moral philosophy. The study culminates in an analysis of Nietzsche’s work, The Antichrist, in which all four philosophical perspectives collide with each other.

Nietzsche was a harsh critic of German culture and yet, at the same time, realized he was quite inseparable from it. His disagreement with the Germans began as an involvement with Richard Wagner and then, after renouncing him, increasingly turned into an internal dispute with himself. This subject is important for a philosophical understanding of his thought as a whole.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) supported the unification of Europe and reflected on this like few other philosophers before or after him. Many of his works are concerned with the present state and future of European culture and humanity. Resisting the “nationalist nonsense” and “politics of dissolution” of his day, he advocated the birth of “good Europeans,” i.e. “supra-national” individuals and the “amalgamation of nations.”
Nietzsche, Wagner, Europe analyzes the development of Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideal of European culture based on his musical aesthetics. It does so against the background of contemporary searches for a wider, cultural meaning beyond Europe’s economic-political union. The book claims that Nietzsche always propagated the “aestheticization” of Europe, but that his view on how to achieve this changed as a result of his dramatically altering philosophy of music. The main focus is on Nietzsche’s passion for and later aversion to Wagner’s music, and, in direct connection with this, his surprising embrace of Italian operas as new forms of “Dionysian” music and of Goethe as a model of “Good Europeanism.”

The works of Friedrich Nietzsche that were released during his life time were reviewed in numerous periodicals. This volume gathers all reviews (approx. 150) along with the reactions they incited among Friedrich Nietzsche and his contemporaries. It is thus an essential reference work for 19th century cultural history and reception research.

Nietzsche’s philosophical analysis of our culture has had more consequences than most others. In these writings Nietzsche focused his attention particularly on the validity and effect of scientific endeavour. Science in its classical sense – encompassing natural and social sciences, philosophy and the arts – is seen as a cultural discipline central to modern human life, but one that is problematic and has far-reaching consequences. This volume is the first to bring together Nietzsche scholars and philosophers of science from all over the world to focus upon the problem of science.

A classical option in philosophical thought is to view the human as a naturally cultural being. This can easily run the risk of turning into reductionism. Its epistemic boundary and its practical interest still need to be carefully considered, even today. Herder and Nietzsche do so in different, but nevertheless related, ways. This book brings their ideas together for the first time. They are considered in relation to each other and compared systematically with regard to their specific interweaving of anthropology and linguistic and historical philosophy.

Peter Bornedal provides an interpretation of Nietzsche’s philosophy as a whole in the context of 19th century philosophy of mind and cognition. The study explains Nietzsche’s notion of truth; his epistemology; his notions of the split and fragmented subject, of master, slave, and priest; furthermore, it offers a new interpretation of the enigmatic “eternal recurrence”. It also suggests how important aspects of Nietzsche’s thinking can be read as a sophisticated critique of ideology.

From studies in Nietzsche’s work as a whole, not least in his so-called Nachgelassene Fragmente, the book reconstructs aspects of Nietzsche’s thinking that have largely been under-described in especially the Anglo-Saxon Nietzsche-reception. The study makes the case that Nietzsche in his epistemology, his psychology, and his cognitive theory is responding to several scientific discoveries occuring during the 19th century. Read within the context of contemporary cognitive-psychological-evolutionary debates, Nietzsche’s philosophy is seen as far more scientistic, and far less poetical-metaphysical, than it has in recent reception-history been received.

This book contrasts Nietzsche's and Levinas' deconstructions of Greco-European thought and their critiques of morality. Through examining their approaches to deconstruction, the author reveals the motivations of their critiques and shows their unique position in philosophical discourse. Nietzsche's and Levinas' alternatives to the prevailing moral values of their time are then compared and contrasted. Both alternatives point towards every individual's unbounded responsibility, illustrated by examples from Dostoevsky texts.

In his early studies and writings, Nietzsche understands rhythm as human beings’ aesthetic ability to give their finitude the structure of durability. He analyses cultural phenomena from both antiquity and the modern world with a view to their differing rhythmic-aesthetic abilities to assert themselves in and against the flow of time. The present philological study examines the aesthetic anthropology of rhythm in relation to the tension between Nietzsche’s interpretation of antiquity and his criticisms of modernity.

Taking issue with biographical interpretations of Nietzsche, Hödl shows that Nietzsche's critique of religion cannot be understood solely from the negative experiences of his religious socialisation. The author presents a survey of the theoretical bases of Nietzsche's critique of religion and develops the direction of his religious philosophy from these. It is based on a more comprehensive aesthetical-cultural philosophy and, after destroying the 'essence' shaped by religions, is directed towards opening a space for a new human determination after the end of the 'old ideal'. Nietzsche's self-references are not primarily to be interpreted 'biographically', but within the context of this systematic design.

Nietzsche’s philosophy is a philosophy of lightness, a lightness which doesn’t consist in breaking with gravity but in controlling it: being light is being able to take charge of life, ie bearing and loving it, wanting it.
This book is first devoted to Greek lightness for Nietzsche finds in Ancient Greece the pattern for an alleviation which enables to unload one’s drives without denying oneself. The study of Greek culture is thus the starting point of a close analysis of the “human, all-too-human” things, ie an inquiry whose orientation is definitely antimetaphysical, ie antiplatonic, antischopenhauerian and antiwagnerian:

• Nietzsche first shows that alleviation in religion has a “double face”: on the one hand, religion makes man’s heart heavy with sinfulness; on the other hand it lightens it with the fiction of a merciful God. True alleviation thus consists in freeing oneself from religious lightening, and proclaiming the radical innocence of everything.
• Nietzsche also criticizes alleviation in art, ie a romantic alleviation. He shows that – like alleviation in religion – it requires a previous heaviness. Therefore he praises a classical art and an aesthetic of lightness.
• Nietzsche eventually focuses on a philosophical alleviation of life, defined as a freeing of spirit. Such a definition leads him to develop the “doctrine of the closest things”, which consist of the organization of a dietary alleviation of life.

Dans les années 1875-1879, Nietzsche se tourne vers la philosophie de la " libre pensée ", élaborant alors une éthique originale. Notre objectif ici est double: analyser la formation de cette nouvelle éthique et montrer que celle-ci peut être définie comme une éthique de l'affirmation de soi et de la légèreté de la vie - une légèreté qui ne consiste pas en une rupture avec la gravité mais plutôt en un contrôle et un jeu avec celle-ci. La naissance de cette philosophie de la légèreté va de paire avec la profonde transformation des idées de Nietzsche sur la religion, l'art et la connaissance, ainsi qu'avec l'évolution de son interprétation de Schopenhauer et du pessimisme grec.

While Nietzsche’s influence on philosophy, literature and art is beyond dispute, his influence on sociology is often called into question. A close textual analysis of Nietzsche’s works and those of important sociologists – Max and Alfred Weber, Ferdinand Tönnies, Rosa Mayreder – provides the first comprehensive account of their study and use of Nietzsche’s writings. Above all, Nietzsche’s critique of modernity, morality and culture are shown to have had a decisive influence on the development of sociology and the work of its leading thinkers at the end of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th.

This new volume contains addenda and corrigenda to the first three volumes, together with an overall index of names. It concludes the four-volume bibliography of works on Nietzsche’s influence on art and culture in the German-speaking world.

Enrico Müller presents here the first overall philosophical account of the significance of the Greeks for Nietzsche’s thought. He demonstrates how Nietzsche’s own philosophy developed in his occupation with Attic tragedy, Greek culture and the Pre-Socratics and expounds the problems Nietzsche had in delineating his philosophy from the logos-based philosophy of Classical Greece.

In his interpretation of the tense relationship between Nietzsche and Socrates and Plato, Müller concludes that in the final analysis Nietzsche’s philosophy remains bound to the models of Socratic-Platonic dialectics. Working from contemporary scholarship in Greek Studies and Ancient History, the astonishing modernity of Nietzsche’s approaches becomes apparent.

“It is not for nothing that one has been a philologist, perhaps one is a philologist still!” – Throughout his work, Nietzsche has paid numerous tributes to philological scholarship. On the basis of a wide variety of sources, this study undertakes to demonstrate the deep impact of the historical-critical philology in which he had been trained. Nietzsche did not abandon philology in favour of philosophy but openly acknowledged his debt to its methods, especially in his later writings. This insight contributes to a reassessment of central concepts like text, genealogy, interpretation, or perspectivism, and it leads to a rejection of standard accounts in the theory of interpretation as well as in the history of scholarship. The book pleads for literary scholarship grounded in sceptical philology.

The words 'grounding', 'rhetoric', and 'earth' represent the book's tripartite structure. Using a philological method Del Caro reveals the 'ecological' Nietzsche whose doctrines are strategies for responsible and creative partnership between humans and earth. The major doctrines are shown to be related to early writings linked to paganism, the quotidian, and the closest things of Human, All Too Human. Perspective is shifted from time to place in the eternal recurrence of the same, and from power to empowerment in the will to power. This book is the first to comprehensively address the issue of where Nietzsche stands in relation to environment, and it will contribute to the 'greening' of Nietzsche.

Drawing on historical and critical text studies, the author analyzes decisive factors of the relationship between art and science in Nietzsche's work. The idea of a "tragedy of knowing" as the culmination of aesthetic tragedy becomes the leitmotif of the proposed interpretation. Venturelli thereby also illuminates aspects of Nietzsche's special place in modern philosophical discourse.

Friedrich Nietzsche understood himself to be the great adversary of Christianity. In The Antichrist he escalated his critique into a controversial interpretation of the Apostle Paul. This study shows that a considered examination of Nietzsche's interpretation of Paul is theologically and philosophically fruitful despite (and even because of) its polemics.

Nietzsche's interpretation of the Apostle attacks a Christianity that reduces the Gospel to a moral that can be taught. With this contentious interpretation of Paul, which acquires theological aspects as well, Nietzsche creates a form of moral critique that attacks existing "truths" without itself being understandable as "truth".

The author inquires into the sources and development of the image of Paul in Nietzsche's thought and brings Paul and Nietzsche into a richly woven philosophical and theological discourse.

Examining works by Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida, Danto, de Man, Eagleton, Rorty, Colli, Montinari, Vattimo, and others, the author provides a comprehensive picture of the many ways in which the philosophy of Nietzsche has been received outside German-speaking countries. For each country, Reckermann also systematically elaborates the preconditions that made it possible to bring Nietzsche's thought to bear on crucial questions of current philosophy. The book contains an extensive bibliography, a name index, and a subject index.

This study demonstrates that Nietzsche developed a consistent and complete concept of ethics. It comprises a theory of action, a determination of the concept of good and the application to individual behaviours in the sense of the contextuality of ethics. The author’s reconstruction is centred less on individual works than on their systematic interconnection.

For Nietzsche, autonomy remains undefined without the reference to an action goal in the sense of the good. The comparison with Plato shows that he takes up a position from the ethics of antiquity. At the same time, Nietzsche is not simply trying to delineate himself from modern concepts of morality. He is concerned with a hermeneutic reflection on the sense that moral demands have for the self. In contrast to the present-day debate on concepts of the aesthetic art of living which cite Nietzsche as their alleged model, Nietzsche is shown in this study to be a genuinely ethical thinker.

This book argues that Nietzsche bases his affirmative morality on the model of individual responsiveness to otherness which he takes from the mythology of Dionysus. The subject is not free to choose to avoid such responding to the demands of the other. Nietzsche finds that the basic mode of responding is pleasure. This feeling, as a basis for morality, underlies the morality which is true to the earth and the major concepts of “will to power”, “eternal return”, and “amor fati”. The priority of otherness makes all thought ethical and not only aesthetic. The basis of all meanings combines the fundamental impulse of responding outwards with an immediate complement in the individual interpretation-world. This is specifically ethical because the recognition of our own historical specificity arises as a result of the refusal of others to become mere differences within our notion of the Same, and through their demand that we “become who we are” in the recognition of their separate existence.

Mit dieser überarbeiteten Neuauflage wird das Standardwerk endlich wieder verfügbar. Die Ausgabe ist bereichert durch ein Vorwort und einen Essay Nietzsches politische Philosophie in der philosophischen und politischen Diskussion der Gegenwart und eine Übersicht über die neuere Nietzsche-Forschung.

Der vorliegende Band umreißt den Einfluß des Philosophen auf das deutsche Geistesleben zwischen 1900 und 1918. Er macht deutlich, daß Nietzsches Einfluß auch nach seinem Tod nicht zurückgegangen ist, sondern, im Gegenteil, ständig zugenommen und immer weitere Kreise erfaßt hat.