Abstract

Nietzsche has repeatedly commented on his already published works, and thus continuously reinterpreted them, in order to shape their public reception and to foreground the communication of specific aspects of his works. As such, he followed a specific “work politics,” or Werkpolitik. The resulting retractions are not only revealing for the reconstruction of Nietzsche’s self-understanding, but also demonstrate both the development and the dynamic character of his thinking. In the present article, this is shown through a so-called “contrasting reading,” which contrasts a posthumous note about The Birth of Tragedy, the Attempt at a Self-Criticism from 1886, with the book itself and with the chapter in Ecce Homo that is dedicated to BT. Starting from a close reading of note Nachlass 1888, 17[3], which also takes into account the genesis of BT, I argue that Nietzsche’s self-commentaries combine his current philosophical reflections with work-political objectives. The subsequent comparison reconstructs the philosophical differences between the note and the texts mentioned above, thus demonstrating the dynamic character of Nietzsche’s philosophizing, which is often stated but seldom reconstructed on the basis of the actual texts.