Abstract

This collection of twenty-one essays presents a comprehensive, well-rounded picture of Nietzsche’s influence upon philosophy generally, and upon morals, psychology, and literature in particular. Fourteen of the essays have been previously published. To students of Nietzsche the most familiar of these fourteen will be two selections from Walter Kaufmann’s Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist—"The Death of God and the Revaluation," and "The Discovery of the Will to Power;" a discussion of perspectivism from Arthur Danto’s Nietzsche as Philosopher; Hans Vaihinger’s "Nietzsche and His Doctrine of Conscious Illusion," a précis of Nietzschean epistemology; and a selection on morality and human creativity from Karl Jaspers’ Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity. Other essays previously published include Richard Schacht’s "Nietzsche and Nihilism;" an important excerpt from the first volume of Martin Heidegger’s Nietzsche ; Henry David Aiken’s "Introduction to Zarathustra;" a short piece by Frederick A. Olafson on the relation of Nietzsche and Kant to existentialism; a selection from Max Scheler’s Ressentiment, in which Scheler develops and criticizes Nietzsche’s notion of ressentiment; and a brief exposition by Danto of the "scientific" aspect of Nietzschean eternal recurrence. Aiken’s "Introduction" here is rather unsatisfactory. A much better one would have been the "Introduction" to R. J. Hollingdale’s translation of Zarathustra. On the whole, Stambaugh’s translation of the passages from Heidegger is accurate and readable.