Introduction

Summary

And if a man today is praised for living “wisely” or “as a philosopher,” it hardly means more than “prudently and apart.” Wisdom – seems to the rabble a kind of escape, a means and trick for getting well out of a dangerous game. But the genuine philosopher – as it seems to us, my friends? – lives “unphilosophically” and “unwisely,” above all imprudently, and feels the burden and the duty of a hundred attempts [Versuchen] and temptations [Versuchungen] of life – he risks himself constantly, he plays the dangerous game.

(BGE 205)

This book undertakes a critical appraisal of the political philosophy that informs the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche from the period 1885–88. The interpretive task I have set for myself is twofold: First, I reconstruct the revised critique of modernity that Nietzsche develops in the writings of this period; second, I situate his post-Zarathustran political thinking within the self-referential context of his revised critique of modernity. My specific focus is the “symptomatological” critique of modernity that emerges in this period, from such writings as Beyond Good and Evil (1886), On the Genealogy of Morals (1887), Twilight of the Idols (1888), The Antichrist(ian) (1888), The Case of Wagner (1888), and Ecce Homo (1888).