Abstract

For Friedrich Nietzsche, the critique of metaphysics, or the critique of all presupposed 'ground' and 'nature,' is a function of modern European history, characterized above all by its spatial exteriorization and its orientation toward the future. It is the thesis of this dissertation that in Nietzsche's writings the figure of a finite earth space contributes fundamentally to his radicalization of the critique, but that this critique is itself regarded as a dissolution that must be surpassed through a re-territorialization of a global order crowned by Europe. More broadly the dissertation argues that Nietzsche's work represents the loss of modern European self-identity in the age of globality. ;Methodologically, the dissertation reads a philosophical text as neither autonomous nor fully contextual, but as an extreme instance of the contradictions of a given historical period. ;The dissertation opens by setting out the problem historically and from within Nietzsche scholarship. It then analyzes the Nietzsche corpus by dividing it into three chronological periods. It concludes with an evaluation of the interpretation of Nietzsche by Heidegger in his attempt to ground a new European identity