In this paper I respond to criticisms of the book Can God Be Free? set forth by Bruce Russell, William Wainwright, Klaas Kraay, and Michael Almeida.

This book is a well researched, topically organized, nine-chapter synopsis of Nietzsche’s works from 1878 to 1882, including Human, All Too Human, Assorted Opinions and Maxims, The Wanderer and His Shadow, Daybreak, and parts 1–4 of The Gay Science. This group of aphoristic texts is arguably the least appreciated, the least understood, and the least read portion of the Nietzsche corpus. Abbey’s aim is to defend the distinctiveness, as well as the “superior worth,” of this neglected phase of Nietzsche’s development, (...) and thereby to take the first steps toward a “genealogical inquiry” into the “choices Nietzsche made across the course of his writing career”. Abbey initiates this inquiry in a spirit of competent cross-examination. Her approach is logical, her Nietzsche liberal in outlook. (shrink)