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Chapter 1 - Nietzsche: Writings from the early notebooks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Robert Pippin
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Summary

No modern philosopher has been read in as many different ways or appropriated by as many diverse schools of thought, social and political movements or literary and artistic styles as Nietzsche – perhaps, Plato's towering figure aside, no philosopher ever. Notorious during much of the twentieth century as a ‘precursor’ of German National Socialism, he was also an inspiration to left-wing and avant-garde radicalism in the century's early years as well as to the European and American academic left toward the century's end. Denounced by some for undermining all traditional faith in truth and goodness, he has been praised by others for confronting honestly and truthfully the harmful and deceptive ideals of a self-serving past.

Nietzsche's almost irresoluble ambiguity and many-sidedness are partly generated by his style of writing – playful, hyperbolic, cantering and full of twists and turns – and by his fundamental philosophical conviction that ‘the more affects we allow to speak about a thing, the more eyes, various eyes we are able to use for the same thing, the more complete will be our “concept” of the thing, our “objectivity”'. Nietzsche was intentionally a philosopher of many masks and many voices. His purported objectivity is also due to the fact that most of his writing (more than two thirds of his total output, not counting his voluminous correspondence) has come to us in the form of short notes, drafts of essays and outlines of ideas and books he never published – fragmentary texts that allow great latitude in interpretation. These unpublished writings – his Nachlass – were mostly inaccessible until the recent publication of the standard edition of his works. His readers had to rely on a series of different editors who, beginning with his own sister, selected the texts to be published according to their own preconceptions, arranged them in idiosyncratic ways, and sometimes attributed to him ideas and even whole books he had never himself contemplated.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

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References

Nietzsche, FriedrichOn the Genealogy of MoralityCambridge University Press 1994
Nietzsche, FriedrichSämtliche Werke, Kritische GesamtausgabeBerlinde Gruyter 1967
The Will to Power: Attempt at a Revaluation of All ValuesKaufmann, WalterHollingdale, R. J.New YorkRandom House 1968
Heidegger, MartinNietzscheSan FranciscoHarper & Row 1979
Derrida, JacquesSpurs: Nietzsche's StylesUniversity of Chicago Press 1979
Nietzsche, FriedrichThe Birth of TragedyNew YorkRandom House 1966
Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870'sBreazeale, DanielNew JerseyHumanities Press 1979
Payne, E. J. 1958
Schlechta, KarlWerke in Drei BändenMunichCarl Hanser Verlag 1960
Nietzsche, FriedrichSchopenhauer as EducatorUntimely MeditationsCambridge University Press 1983 133
Kant, ImmanuelCritique of Pure ReasonCambridge University Press 1998 305
1999 3
Young, JulianSchopenhauerLondonRoutledge 2005 53
Staten, HenryNietzsche's VoicesIthaca, N.Y.Cornell University Press 1990 187
Porter, JamesThe Invention of Dionysus: An Essay on ‘The Birth of Tragedy’Stanford University Press 2000 57
1968
Nietzsche, FriedrichThe Gay ScienceCambridge University Press 1981
Clark, MaudemarieNietzsche on Truth and PhilosophyCambridge University Press 1990
Nietzsche, FriedrichBeyond Good and EvilCambridge University Press 2002
Norman, JudithFriedrich Nietzsche: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Other WritingsCambridge University Press 2005
Nietzsche, FriedrichHuman, All Too Human: A Book for Free SpiritsCambridge University Press 1996

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