Reading Nietzsche, now available in English for the first time, is a group of essays that grew out of this monumental work.

In his Menschenwürde nach Nietzsche: Die Geschichte eines Begriffes (Human Dignity According to/after Nietzsche: The History of a Concept), Stefan Lorenz Sorgner conceives a bold plan and executes it remarkably well, with noteworthy results. His plan entails describing four paradigmatic notions of human dignity, then presenting Nietzsche’s critical evaluation of the notion of human dignity in relation to the four paradigms, and finally, reflecting on Nietzsche’s criticism in a way that embraces much of it and, consequently, largely rejects the humanist (...) notion of the dignity of man. Sorgner takes the additional steps of arguing for a posthumanism to replace the outmoded humanist notion of human dignity. Each phase .. (shrink)

supplies English-language readers with a crucial missing link in Nietzsche's development by reproducing the text of a lecture series delivered by the young philosopher at the University of Basel between 1872 and 1876. In these lectures, Nietzsche surveys the Greek philosophers from Thales to Socrates, establishing a new chronology for the progression of their natural scientific insights. He also roughly sketches concepts such as the will to power, eternal recurrence, and self-overcoming and links them to specific pre-Platonics.