Abstract

We can appreciate the strength of Friedrich Nietzsche's thought in the transformation of many of the ideas and values that have formed our Western heritage. This strength is figured in part by the questions that Nietzsche generated concerning traditional concepts of reason, nature, God, time, religion, memory, and morality. Hans‐Georg gadamer (see Article 38), a leading continental philosopher speaking when he was ninety years old, remarked that an entire generation of thinkers and artists in early twentieth‐century Europe found in Nietzsche's writings their entry into the ideas and images that incited their creative work. These writers range from Karl jaspers (Article 17) and Jean‐Paul sartre (Article 21) to Thomas Mann, Nikos Kazantzakis, and Maurice blanchot (Article 25). Martin heidegger (Article 18), Michel foucault (Article 49), Gilles deleuze (Article 51), Jacques derrida (Article 50), and Luce irigaray (Article 54) are among those continental philosophers who have been considerably influenced by Nietzsche and who have considerably influenced contemporary readings of Nietzsche. In England and the United States his work gained gradual acceptance particularly after the Second World War and after people came to understand that the use of his writings by the Third Reich in Germany constituted a shameless perversion of his thought. German National Socialism's interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy constituted a most flagrant of many misreadings of him. But his influence has been amplified by other misreadings in addition to many careful interpretations of his thought. His thought has been seen as a species of process metaphysics and compared to that of Bergson, Whitehead, and neo‐Darwinians. He has been read as an ethicist and as a strange theologian who replaced God as He is traditionally conceived with the will to power. His philosophy is frequently presented as nihilistic, as a body of beliefs and observations that leaves us with nothing to affirm and nothing to support hope and confidence for living.