Friedrich Nietzsche has emerged as one of the most important and influential modern philosophers. For several decades, the book series Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung (MTNF) has set the agenda in a rapidly growing and changing field of Nietzsche scholarship. The scope of the series is interdisciplinary and international in orientation reflects the entire spectrum of research on Nietzsche, from philosophy to literary studies and political theory. The series publishes monographs and edited volumes that undergo a strict peer-review process. The (...) book series is led by an international team of editors, whose work represents the full range of current Nietzsche scholarship. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) supported the unification of Europe and reflected on this like few other philosophers before or after him. Many ofhis works are concerned with the present state and future of European culture and humanity. Resisting the "nationalist nonsense" and "politics of dissolution" of his day, he advocated the birth of "good Europeans," i.e. "supra-national" individuals and the "amalgamation of nations." Nietzsche, Wagner, Europe analyzes the development of Friedrich Nietzsche's ideal of European culture based on his musical aesthetics. It (...) does so against the background of contemporary searches for a wider, cultural meaning beyond Europe's economic-political union. The book claims that Nietzsche always propagated the "aestheticization" of Europe, but that his view on how to achieve this changed as a result of his dramatically altering philosophy of music. The main focus is on Nietzsche's passion for and later aversion to Wagner's music, and, in direct connection with this, his surprising embrace of Italian operas as new forms of "Dionysian" music and of Goethe as a model of "Good Europeanism.". (shrink)

Die Studie stellt Nietzsches Wissen über nichtchristliche Religionen und besonders außereuropäische Kulturen dar, das ihm schwerpunktmäßig in seinem Bildungsweg vermittelt wurde, der in einem besonders hohen Umfang (einschließlich unveröffentlichter Materialien)- wie bei keinem anderen Denker- durch seine eigenen Aufzeichnungen erhalten geblieben ist. Darin spiegelt sich die Wahrnehmung "fremder" Kulturen im Bildungssystem des 19. Jahrhunderts. Zugleich trägt diese Darstellung zur konkreten Erfassung des wissenschaftsgeschichtlichen (insbesondere des vergleichend-sprachwissenschaftlichen und indogermanistischen) Umfelds der Entstehungsgeschichte der Religionswissenschaft bei, der Nietzsche schon früh begegnet ist. Hierin (...) sind wichtige Grundlagen seines späteren transkulturellen Denkens zu erblicken. (shrink)

Nietzsche ist mit dem 1887 erschienenen V. Buch der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft sein reifstes Aphorismen-Werk gelungen. Es handelt von der Heiterkeit der Zwischenzeit, in der die Befreiung des Geistes von jahrtausendealten Vorurteilen gelingt, bis die von der Tragödie des Nihilismus erreicht werden, die zu ihrer Orientierung weiterhin feste Bindungen nötig haben. Viele der 40 + 1 Aphorismen gehören zu den prominentesten in Nietzsches Werk. Hier werden sie methodisch in ihren internen und externen Kontexten und ihrer stets aussagekräftigen schriftstellerischen Form erschlossen. Dabei (...) werden neue Tiefen in Nietzsches Philosophie sichtbar. (shrink)

The works of Friedrich Nietzsche that were released during his life time were reviewed in numerous periodicals. This volume gathers all reviews (approx. 150) along with the reactions they incited among Friedrich Nietzsche and his contemporaries. It is thus an essential reference work for 19th century cultural history and reception research.

Nietzsche's metaphor of the spider that spins its cobweb expresses his critique of the metaphysical use of language - but it also suggests that ‟we, spiders‟, are able to spin different, life-affirming, healthier, non-metaphysical cobwebs. This book is a collection of 12 essays that focus not only on Nietzsche's critique of the metaphysical assumptions of language, but also on his effort to use language in a different way, i.e., to create a ‟new language‟. It is from this viewpoint that the (...) book considers such themes as consciousness, the self, metaphor, instinct, affectivity, style, morality, truth, and knowledge. The authors invited to contribute to this volume are Nietzsche scholars who belong to some of the most important research centers of the European Nietzsche-Research: Centro Colli-Montinari (Italy), GIRN (Europhilosphie), SEDEN (Spain), Greifswald Research Group (Germany), NIL (Portugal). In 2011 João Constâncio and Maria João Mayer Branco edited Nietzsche on Instinct and Language, also published by Walter de Gruyter. The two books complement each other. (shrink)

Nietzsches Denken ist in seiner Wirkung beispiellos widersprüchlich und fortgesetzt aktuell. An ihm scheiden sich bis heute die Geister. Philosophien, Kunstströmungen und politische Ideologien schwankten im 20. Jahrhundert zwischen Euphorie oder Verdammung, Affirmation oder Totschweigen. Missbräuchliche Lektüre hat unter faschistischem und stalinistischem Vorzeichen seine Ideen und Utopien pervertiert. Nach 1945 geben historisch-kritisch fundierte Auseinandersetzungen in Philosophie, Künsten und Medien zunächst vorsichtig, zum Ende des Jahrhunderts verstärkt Einblicke in die Vielfältigkeit der Deutungen seines Denkens.

The last posthumous manuscripts from 1888 bear witness to an enormous stylistic and intellectual radicalization. The Antichrist purports to be a total "reevaluation of all values." In Ecce homo, Nietzsche explores the genealogy of his own thinking, opening up new dimensions of self-reflection. Nietzsche contra Wagner sums up the many years of Nietzsche's continuing critique of Wagner, while the Dionysian Dithyrambs seek to breathe new life into lyric poetry.

Mazzino Montinari nannte Die Geburt der Tragödie "Nietzsches schwierigstes Werk". Es greift auf antike Traditionen zurück und orientiert sich weltanschaulich an Schopenhauer und Wagner, dessen,Musikdrama' Nietzsche als "Wiedergeburt der Tragödie"darstellt. Bei Nietzsche selbst und in der Kulturkritik wirkte vor allem das Konzept des Dionysischen nach. Gegen die Décadence gerichtet, wurde es zum Ideogramm eines rauschhaften Lebenskults.

When Nietzsche published his pamphlet The Case of Wagner in 1888 he succeeded in catching the attention of the reading public after many years of neglect. His radical critique of Wagner is viewed as influential in reception history. The Twilight of the Idols captures the essence of Nietzsche's late philosophy. The work shows Nietzsche at the high point of his creative powers and provides a vivid example of experimental philosophy in practice.

"Since the early period of German Idealism, the phenomenon of the tragic has been in the focus of philosophical self-understanding in that an emphasis on the tragic character of human life has sharply separated philosophy from naive theories of pluralityand progress. The essays collected here trace the path through Idealism and the nihilistic understanding of existence that led to an intensification of the tragic outlook in the 19th century. The Schopenhauerian and Nietzschean views of life as guilt andfate represent a (...) culmination of the tendencies discussed in this volume."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

The writings of Volker Gerhardt have had substantial influence on recent Nietzsche research. This volume collects a variety of his influential essays and makes them available to scholars and causal readers alike. The present collection takes stock of Nietzsche’s most prominent ideas. Gerhardt investigates which of these ideas still offer solutions for the problems of today. In the process, it becomes clear what sort of inspiration a future-oriented philosophizing can draw from Nietzsche.

This collection illuminates the concept of Bildung in the works of Fichte, Schiller, Humboldt, and Nietzsche. Besides seeking to work out the theoretical contour of aesthetic education in the 18th and 19th centuries, the contributions attempt to make reason known to itself in the interdisciplinary study of Bildung, a concept important in fields as diverse as pedagogy, philosophy, and art. Moreover, a detailed examination of the concept of aesthetic education opens new perspectives on education debates in the present. ".

Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and sociologist Norbert Elias are both famous for their influential interpretations of modern European culture as a whole. Nietzsche s On the Genealogy of Morals and Elias The Civilizing Process crossed disciplinary boundaries with respect to both content and method, and both books are still of great contemporary interest. This volume brings international specialists together for the first time to explore the connections between these two works. ".

With his talk of the ”death of God“, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche presented a diagnosis of the future that is both problematic and highly topical. Although this had been the subject of exhaustive discussion in connection with the resulting practical problem of the loss of values, its relevance for the status and selfunderstanding of the theoretical sciences has not been broached. 17 contributions from well-known scholars approach the subject by highlighting the connection between the specific nature of modern science and (...) the non-involvement of theology. (shrink)

"The contributions address the multi-dimensional category of the unconscious in Nietzsche's philosophy, in order to analyze the modern dilemmatic human existence. The approaches originate from a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, cognitive sciences, gender studies, literary studies, philosophy, psychology, and psychoanalysis. An equally broad range of topics are discussed, such as aesthetics and psychic energy in the arts, philosophy of consciousness, epistemology, morality, culture, and religion"--Provided by publisher.

S. 76-92: "Die Kraft der 'Krise': Renan, Burckhardt und Nietzsche.

The "aphoristic form causes difficulty," Nietzsche argued in 1887, for "today this form is not taken seriously enough." Nietzsche's Aphoristic Challenge addresses this continued neglect by examining the role of the aphorism in Nietzsche's writings, the generic traditions in which he writes, the motivations behind his turn to the aphorism, and the reasons for his sustained interest in the form. This literary-philosophical study argues that while the aphorism is the paradigmatic form for Nietzsche's writing, its function shifts as his thought (...) evolves. His turn to the aphorism in Human, All Too Human arises not out of necessity, but from the new freedoms of expression enabled by his critiques of language and his emerging interest in natural science. Yet the model interpretation of an aphorism Nietzsche offers years later in On the Genealogy of Morals tells a different story, revealing more about how the mature Nietzsche wants his earlier works read than how they were actually written. This study argues nevertheless that consistencies emerge in Nietzsche's understanding of the aphorism, and these, perhaps counter-intuitively, are best understood in terms of excess. Recognizing the changes and consistencies in Nietzsche's aphoristic mode helps establish a context that enables the reader to navigate the aphorism books and better answer the challenges they pose. (shrink)

In Nietzsche's Justice, Peter Sedgwick takes the theme of justice to the very heart of the great thinker's philosophy. He argues that Nietzsche's treatment of justice springs from an engagement with the themes charted in his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, which invokes the notion of an absolute justice grasped by way of artistic metaphysics. Nietzsche's encounter with Greek tragedy spurs the development of an oracular conception of justice capable of transcending rigid social convention. Sedgwick argues that although Nietzsche's (...) later writings reject his earlier metaphysics, his mature thought is not characterized by a rejection of the possibility of the oracular articulation of justice found in the Birth. Rather, in the aftermath of his rejection of traditional accounts of the nature of will, moral responsibility, and punishment, Nietzsche seeks to rejuvenate justice in naturalistic terms. This rejuvenation is grounded in a radical reinterpretation of the nature of human freedom and in a vision of genuine philosophical thought as the legislation of values and the embracing of an ethic of mercy. The pursuit of this ethic invites a revaluation of the principles explored in Nietzsche's last writings. Smart, concise, and accessibly written, Nietzsche's Justice reveals a philosopher who is both socially embedded and oriented toward contemporary debates on the nature of the modern state. (shrink)

As its title indicates, this book is a study of the trip Nietzsche made to Sorrento in 1876, after the Bayreuth festival and before the publication of Human, All Too Human. Paolo D’Iorio’s main thesis is that at Sorrento Nietzsche became a true philosopher, abandoning his metaphysics of art together with his commitment to the Wagnerian cause in order to develop his philosophy of the free spirit. D’Iorio collects all of the available documents about the Sorrento trip, from Nietzsche’s allusions (...) to his Italian experiences in his notebooks and subsequent works to letters to and from his traveling companions and memoirs of friends and acquaintances. The chief interest of the book lies in this philological work, which .. (shrink)

Nietzsche s writings cannot be truly understood without examining their specific representational forms and complex textual stagings. In this volume, an international group of scholars consider how form and content are interrelated in Nietzsche s Beyond Good and Evil. The volume includes important new essays on stylistics, rhetoric, history of philosophy, and history of editions.".

The Flame of Eternity provides a reexamination and new interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy and the central role that the concepts of eternity and time, as he understood them, played in it. According to Krzysztof Michalski, Nietzsche's reflections on human life are inextricably linked to time, which in turn cannot be conceived of without eternity. Eternity is a measure of time, but also, Michalski argues, something Nietzsche viewed first and foremost as a physiological concept having to do with the body. The (...) body ages and decays, involving us in a confrontation with our eventual death. It is in relation to this brute fact that we come to understand eternity and the finitude of time. Nietzsche argues that humanity has long regarded the impermanence of our life as an illness in need of curing. It is this "pathology" that Nietzsche called nihilism. Arguing that this insight lies at the core of Nietzsche's philosophy as a whole, Michalski seeks to explain and reinterpret Nietzsche's thought in light of it. Michalski maintains that many of Nietzsche's main ideas--including his views on love, morality (beyond good and evil), the will to power, overcoming, the suprahuman (or the overman, as it is infamously referred to), the Death of God, and the myth of the eternal return--take on new meaning and significance when viewed through the prism of eternity. (shrink)

The interconnections between Nietzsche and phenomenology constitute an area that is surprisingly underexplored. Besides Nietzsche’s well-known influence on Heidegger, and Heidegger’s Nietzsche sitting on the throne of metaphysics, there is very little written about the topic. This is a strange lacuna, one likely explanation for which is the difficulty of such comparative work. For, as the editors of Nietzsche and Phenomenology, Élodie Boublil and Christine Daigle, state in their introduction, “there is not one Nietzsche confronting one phenomenology” . The multifarious (...) corpus of Nietzsche poses enough interpretive difficulties; however, the phenomenological movement to which Nietzsche is compared is itself .. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche has emerged as one of the most important and influential modern philosophers. For several decades, the book series Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung (MTNF) has set the agenda in a rapidly growing and changing field of Nietzsche scholarship. The scope of the series is interdisciplinary and international in orientation reflects the entire spectrum of research on Nietzsche, from philosophy to literary studies and political theory. The series publishes monographs and edited volumes that undergo a strict peer-review process. The (...) book series is led by an international team of editors, whose work represents the full range of current Nietzsche scholarship. (shrink)

Nietzsche s philosophy stands at the intersection of many currents in science that animated the 19th century. Dynamic change in the humanities, natural and social sciences generated new methods, perspectives, and hierarchies of the sciences. This context is essential for understanding his philosophy. The 18 essays each discuss one academic discipline and its effects on Nietzsche s thought. It is thus a valuable guide to the history of science and ideas in the 19th century.".

Alice Gonzi’s Zarathustra a Parigi analyzes the complex reception of Nietzsche’s work in French culture between 1877 and 1930. In the first chapter, she shows how French academic philosophy, generally of neo-Kantian orientation, and the Wagnerian circles in Paris in this period did not consider Nietzsche a canonical philosopher, but rather stigmatized his thought and minimized its importance. As early as 1891, Téodor de Wyzewa, in his F. Nietzsche, le dernier metaphysician, praised Nietzsche as a writer while criticizing him as (...) a radical nihilist and pessimist. Although authors such as Daniel Halévy and Fernand Gregh treated Nietzsche as a philosopher of health and joy as well as a promoter of optimism and amor .. (shrink)

Nietzsche's thought has been of renewed interest to philosophers in the Anglo-American philosophical community as well as to philosophers of a more phenomenological and hermeneutic background. The volume aims to appeal to both communities of scholars as it seeks to deepen the growing interest and appreciation of Nietzsche's contribution to our understanding of the mind. The 16 essays by leading Nietzsche scholars examine Nietzsche's understanding of consciousness and investigate its continuities with current developments in philosophy of mind, neuroscience, neuroethics, psychology, (...) linguistics, and metaphysics. Recent work in philosophy of mind emphasises non-reductive approaches to consciousness and self-consciousness. The mental is understood as always already embodied as well as situated or embedded in and emerging from a complex system. Nietzsche's thoroughly naturalistic philosophy has received renewed attention as it challenges any reductivist attempt to understand the mental exclusively as a physical phenomenon using the methods of the natural sciences. His understanding of nature and the physical, informed by but not reducible to the natural sciences of his time, is highly idiosyncratic. It posits the mental at several levels, from unconscious and proto-conscious drives, affects and emotions, to reflective, higher-order conscious states, intentionality and language. (shrink)

Nietzsche was a severe critic of German Idealism, but what exactly is the relation between his thought and theirs? Papers from leading specialists in Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche contribute to a clearer understanding of the differences and affinities between Nietzsche's philosophy and that of his predecessors.".

The notion of nihilism assumes a prominent place in Nietzsche s thinking during the 1880s. Yet he had already condemned nihilistic Western culture in The Birth of Tragedy; in order to overcome nihilism, life must be aesthetically vindicated. The author analyzes the cultural and anthropological foundations of Nietzsche s concept of nihilism. The book concludes with a discussion of the contemporary crisis of meaning.".

Peter Bornedalprovides an interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy as a whole in the context of 19th century philosophy of mind and cognition.

Originally presented as the author's thesis--Universit'at Greifswald, 2010.

Vinod Acharya presents a new existential interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy. He contends that Nietzsche’s peculiar form of existentialism can be understood only by undertaking a thorough analysis of his characterization and critique of metaphysics. This reading remedies the shortcomings of previous existential interpretations of Nietzsche, which typically view existentialism as concerned primarily with the meaning of individual existence, and therefore necessarily at odds with the abstraction and objectivity of metaphysical thought. Acharya argues that the approach of Nietzsche’s philosophy, especially in (...) his mature works, is to make the typical existential position foundational, and then to develop to the fullest the implications of this position. This meta-existential approach necessarily yields an ambiguous and open-ended critique of metaphysics. Taking issue with the Heideggerian, the poststructuralist and the naturalistic interpretations, this book contends that Nietzsche neither simply overcomes metaphysics nor remains trapped within its confines. Acharya argues that an ever-renewed encounter with and critique of metaphysics is an essential aspect of Nietzsche's meta-existentialism. (shrink)

In this book, Vattimo continues his reinterpretation of Christianity as a religion of charity and hope, freeing society from authoritarian, metaphysical dogmatism.

For more than forty years, Gianni Vattimo has been a leading participant in the postwar turn that has brought Nietzsche back to the center of philosophical enquiry. In this collection of his essays on the subject, which is a dialogue both with Nietzsche and with the Nietzschean tradition, Vattimo explores the German philosopher's most important works and discusses his views on the Ubermensch, time, history, truth, hermeneutics, ethics, and aesthetics. He also presents a different, more "Italian" Nietzsche, one that diverges (...) from German and French characterizations. (shrink)

Giuseppe Fornari’s groundbreaking inquiry shows that Friedrich Nietzsche’s neglected importance as a religious thinker and his “untimeliness” place him at the forefront of modern thought. Capable of exploiting his own failures as a cognitive tool to discover what other philosophers never wanted to see, Nietzsche ultimately drove himself to mental collapse. Fornari analyzes the tragic reports of Nietzsche’s madness and seeks out the cause of this self-destructive destiny, which, he argues, began earlier than his rivalry with the composer and polemicist (...) Richard Wagner, dating back to the premature loss of Nietzsche’s father. Dramatic experience enabled Nietzsche to detect a more general tendency of European culture, leading to his archaeological and prophetic discovery of the death of God, which he understood as a primordial assassination from which all humankind took its origin. Fornari concludes that Nietzsche’s fatal rebellion against a Christian awareness, which he identified as the greatest threat to his plan, led him to become one and the same not only with Dionysus but also with the crucified Christ. His effort, Fornari argues, was a dramatic way to recognize the silent, inner meaning of Christ’s figure, and perhaps to be forgiven. (shrink)

In _The Smile of Tragedy_, Daniel Ahern examines Nietzsche’s attitude toward what he called “the tragic age of the Greeks,” showing it to be the foundation not only for his attack upon the birth of philosophy during the Socratic era but also for his overall critique of Western culture. Through an interpretation of “Dionysian pessimism,” Ahern clarifies the ways in which Nietzsche sees ethics and aesthetics as inseparable and how their theoretical separation is at the root of Western nihilism. Ahern (...) explains why Nietzsche, in creating this precursor to a new aesthetics, rejects Aristotle’s medicinal interpretation of tragic art and concentrates on Apollinian cruelty as a form of intoxication without which there can be no art. Ahern shows that Nietzsche saw the human body as the vessel through which virtue and art are possible, as the path to an interpretation of “selflessness,” as the means to determining an order of rank among human beings, and as the site where ethics and aesthetics coincide. (shrink)

In this extraordinary contribution to Nietzsche studies, Robert Alejandro offers an original interpretation of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy viewed as a complete whole. Alejandro painstakingly traces the different ways in which Nietzsche reconfigured and shifted his analyses of morality and of the human condition, until he was content with the final result: nothing was dispensable; everything was necessary. This is a philosophy of reconciliation--hardly nihilism--and it is a perspective that is not adequately addressed elsewhere in the literature on Nietzsche. Alejandro traces (...) the evolution of Nietzsche's thought by identifying the different layers of his philosophy, expressed in a complex array of stories and historical narratives. Alejandro analyzes the different stories of Nietzsche, places those stories within a tradition of genealogical theorizing, and interprets both the stories and the genealogy in terms of one of Nietzsche's unique features, his use of "historiobiography." According to Alejandro, historiobiography blends the idea of an attunement with all history and one's awareness of this attunement. As a mode of philosophizing, historiobiography allows Nietzsche to view all human history as if it runs through his own life and thoughts. Alejandro argues that Nietzsche deployed three strategies to find relief from his sense of the meaninglessness of life: his magnified concept of what he himself represented in human history, his doctrine of the eternal recurrence, and his philosophy of reconciliation. "I am confident that this book will be considered essential reading for any scholar doing serious research into Nietzsche's thought and its implications.... The author carefully traces the shifts and turns and occasionally the contradictions and dead-ends in the development of Nietzsche's major themes. I have never read an account of Nietzsche's thought as fully and convincingly supported by textual reference as this book. Others will disagree with the author's readings of Nietzsche, that is the nature of scholarship, but I cannot see how they could be ignored." --_Edward Portis, Texas A & M University_ "This is a major work on Nietzsche. Robert Alejandro offers us a reading of Nietzsche's Herculean efforts that Nietzsche scholars and scholars who write about modernity and postmodernity will be unable to ignore. This wide ranging and deep book addresses major issues in cultural history, psychoanalysis, cultural anthropology, and the vast literature on modernity and secularization. I expect this to be a book that generates debate and discussion for years to come." --_Robert Hollinger, Iowa State University_ "Robert Alejandro delivers a rich, lively account of Nietzsche's quest for meaning. By focusing on the theme of _historiobiography_, Alejandro illuminates Nietzsche's bold attempt to place himself at the center of a comprehensive account of the rise and fall of Western civilization. A thoughtful, well-crafted book, written very much in the spirit of Nietzsche himself." --_Daniel Conway, Texas A & M University_. (shrink)

Following Nietzsche’s call for a philosopher-physician and his own use of the bodily language of health and illness as tools to diagnose the ailments of the body politic, this book offers a reconstruction of the concept of political physiology in Nietzsche’s thought, bridging gaps between Anglo-American, German and French schools of interpretation.