Published posthumously in 1908, Ecce Homo was written in 1888 and completed just a few weeks before Nietzsche’s complete mental collapse. Its outrageously egotistical review of the philosopher’s life and works—featuring chapters called Why I Am So Wise and Why I Write Such Good Books—are redeemed from mere arrogance by masterful language and ever-relevant ideas. In addition to settling scores with his many personal and philosophical enemies, Nietzsche emphasizes the importance of questioning traditional morality, establishing autonomy, and making a commitment (...) to creativity. Essential reading for students of philosophy, this unique memoir is crucial to an understanding of Nietzsche’s other works. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most influential thinkers of the past 150 years and On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) is his most important work on ethics and politics. A polemical contribution to moral and political theory, it offers a critique of moral values and traces the historical evolution of concepts such as guilt, conscience, responsibility, law and justice. This is a revised and updated edition of one of the most successful volumes to appear in Cambridge Texts in (...) the History of Political Thought. Keith Ansell-Pearson has modified his introduction to Nietzsche's classic text, and Carol Diethe has incorporated a number of changes to the translation itself, reflecting the considerable advances in our understanding of Nietzsche in the twelve years since this edition first appeared. In this new guise the Cambridge Texts edition of Nietzsche's Genealogy should continue to enjoy widespread adoption, at both undergraduate and graduate level. (shrink)

This paper investigates the reception of a set of Florentine anatomical wax models on display at the medico-surgical academy Josephinum in late-eighteenth-century Vienna. Celebrated in Florence as tools of public enlightenment, in the Habsburg capital the models were criticised by physicians, who regarded the Josephinum and its surgeons as a threat to their medical authority. The controversy surrounding these models from the empire’s periphery temporarily destabilised the relationship between surgeons and physicians in the Austrian capital. The debate on the utility (...) of the Tuscan anatomical models in Vienna highlights the fact that the centre of the Habsburg empire was by no means medically homogeneous, and that the implementation of reforms could be as difficult to achieve in the capital as in the provinces. (shrink)

In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche expounds on the origins of Greek tragedy and its relevance to the German culture of its time. He declares it to be the expression of a culture which has achieved a delicate but powerful balance between Dionysian insight into the chaos and suffering which underlies all existence and the discipline and clarity of rational Apollonian form. In order to promote a return to these values, Nietzsche critiques the complacent rationalism of late nineteenth-century German culture (...) and makes an impassioned plea for the regenerative potential of the music of Wagner. A wide ranging discussion of the nature of art, science, and religion, The Birth of Tragedy's argument raises important questions about the problematic nature of cultural origins which are still valid today. (shrink)

Beyond Good and Evil is one of the most scathing and powerful critiques of philosophy, religion, science, politics and ethics ever written. In it, Nietzsche presents a set of problems, criticisms and philosophical challenges that continue both to inspire and to trouble contemporary thought. In addition, he offers his most subtle, detailed and sophisticated account of the virtues, ideas, and practices which will characterize philosophy and philosophers of the future. With his relentlessly energetic style and tirelessly probing manner, Nietzsche embodies (...) the type of thought he wants to foster, while defining its historical role and determining its agenda. This edition offers a new and readable translation, by Judith Norman, of one of the most influential texts in the history of philosophy, together with an introduction by Rolf-Peter Horstmann that sets it in its historical and philosophical context. (shrink)

“Supposing that truth is a women-what then?” This is the very first sentence in Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil . Not very often are philosophers so disarmingly explicit in their intention to discomfort the reader. In fact, one might say that the natural state of Nietzsche’s reader is one of perplexity. Yet it is in the process of overcoming the perplexity that one realizes how rewarding to have one’s ideas challenged. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche critiques the mediocre in (...) modernity and challenges the reader to accept their state of becoming and accept improvisation and creativity of the process. Nietzsche’s book is carefully designed to disorient the reader, to systematically provoke and tease her to the point of stealing away her certainties. It is challenging yet rewarding to overcome the perplexities of Nietzsche’s teachings. (shrink)

Never one to back away from controversy, Friedrich Nietzsche assails the Christian church in Twilight of the Idols. In this classic work, he sets out to substitute the morality of the Catholic and Protestant churches with that of Dionysian morality. Twilight of the Idols furthermore lays the foundation for key arguments that Nietzsche more fully develops in later writings.

On the future of our educational institutions -- Lecture I (January 16, 1872) -- Lecture II (February 6, 1872) -- Lecture III (February 27, 1872) -- Lecture IV (March 5, 1872) -- Lecture V (March 23, 1872).

A work of Nietzsche's later years, The Antichrist was written after Thus Spoke Zarathustra and shortly before the mental collapse that incapacitated him for the rest of his life. The work is both an unrestrained attack on Christianity and a further exposition of Nietzsche's will-to-power philosophy so dramatically presented in Zarathustra. Christianity, says Nietzsche, represents "everything weak, low, and botched; it has made an ideal out of antagonism towards all the self-preservative instincts of strong life." By contrast, Nietzsche defines good (...) as: "All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to Power, and power itself in man. What is bad?-All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness?-The feeling that power is increasing,-that resistance has been overcome." In attempting to redefine the basis of Western values by demolishing the formative influence of the Judeo-Christian tradition, The Antichrist has proved to be highly controversial and continuously stimulating to later generations of philosophers. (shrink)

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), was a provocative and profoundly influential critique of the Victorian nuclear family. Engels argued that the traditional monogamous household was in fact a recent construct, closely bound up with capitalist societies. Under this patriarchal system, women were servants and, effectively, prostitutes. Only Communism would herald the dawn of communal living and a new sexual freedom and, in turn, the role of the state would become superfluous.

There is an autonomy in life that contrasts with physico-chemical processes. It has its own biological causality. Each type of life has its teleological as well as causal side. The researches of biology should therefore be devoted to causality and teleology simultaneously, and not to one or other exclusively. Causal and teleological interpretations must not however be confused. Every life is a whole; in the organism all vital processes are integrated, and causality and teleology inherent in the whole. For the (...) concept of teleology we can substitute that of sense. The sense of vital processes transcends the individual organism. Man must also be considered as a whole: physical and psychical are different modes of expression of an organism which functions as a whole.Comparée aux phénomènes physico-chimiques, la vie possède une autonomie; elle obéit à sa propre causalité biologique. Tout phénomène de vie présente non seulement un aspect causal, mais encore un aspect final; aussi le devoir de la biologie n'est-il jamais de diriger ses recherches uniquement en raison de la causalité ou uniquement en raison de la finalité, mais toujours simultanément en raison de l'une et de l'autre. Il ne faut pas confondre l'interprétation tirée de la causalité et celle tirée de la finalité. Chaque vie forme un tout; tous les phénomènes de la vie se produisent intégrés dans l'organisme; causalité et finalité appartiennent à la totalité de l'organisme. L'idée de la finalité peut se remplacer par celle du „sens”; le sens des phénomènes de la vie dans l'organisme n'est pas seulement individuel, mais toujours aussi supraindividuel. L'homme doit pareillement être considéré comme un tout; le physique et le psychique sont deux formes différentes d'expression de l'organisme humain, qui se comporte comme une totalité. (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 44, Issue 4, Page 352-372, December 2021.

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 44, Issue 4, Page 339-351, December 2021.

Als Philologe und Philosoph ebnet Nietzsche einer Konzeption der Ein-Schreibungen und ihrer Oberflächen, der Zeichenketten und ihrer Manipulationen den Weg, ohne die die gegenwärtigen Forschungen zu den medialen Gesten, Techniken und Dispositiven des Schreibens und Lesens nicht vorstellbar wären. Der Beitrag zeigt, dass und warum Nietzsches eigene Lese- und Schreibpraxis die Notationspraxis antiker hypomnemata erneuert: Aphorismen und Fragmente sammeln und ordnen das andernorts Gelesene und Gedachte, nicht um es kulturgeschichtlich in den Zeitraum seiner Entstehung einzuschließen oder es zum Gegenstand der (...) Exegese zu machen, sondern um seine Reaktivierbarkeit in diskursiven Praktiken zu erproben, die das Subjekt an eine bestimmte Wahrheit binden. As philologist and philosopher, Nietzsche paves the way for an understanding of inscriptions and their surfaces, of character strings and their manipulations, without which contemporary research on medial gestures, techniques and dispositives of writing and reading would not be conceivable. The paper shows that and why Nietzsche's own reading and writing revives the practice of ancient : his aphorisms and fragments collect and organize what Nietzsche read and thought, not in order to confine it to the timeframe of its genesis nor to make it an object of exegesis, but to test its potential of being reactivated in discursive practices that bind the subject to a certain truth. (shrink)

As philologist and philosopher, Nietzsche paves the way for an understanding of inscriptions and their surfaces, of character strings and their manipulations, without which contemporary research on medial gestures, techniques and dispositives of writing and reading would not be conceivable. The paper shows that and why Nietzsche's own reading and writing revives the practice of ancient : his aphorisms and fragments collect and organize what Nietzsche read and thought, not in order to confine it to the timeframe of its genesis (...) nor to make it an object of exegesis, but to test its potential of being reactivated in discursive practices that bind the subject to a certain truth. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Buch 1. Geschichte des Materialismus bis auf Kant.--Buch 2. Geschichte des Materialismus seit Kant.

Libertarian views on rights tend to rule out coercive redistribution for purposes of public health care guarantees, whereas liberal conceptions support coercive funding of potentially unlimited access to medical services in the name of medical needs. Taking the “priority of liberty” seriously as supreme political value, a plausible prudential argument can avoid these extremes by providing systematic reasons for both delivering and limiting publicly financed guarantees. Given impending demographic change and rapid technical progress in medicine, only a two-tier system with (...) explicitly limited public guarantees and optional privately financed health services seems acceptable. (shrink)