This book is an attempt to compare and contrast the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) and G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), and in particular the criticisms made by these two philosophers of the mode of thinking they both call ‘metaphysics’. I have undertaken this project in order to challenge the claim which is sometimes made that Nietzsche's writings represent a revolution in philosophical thinking, which makes any thought of a return to more traditional conceptions of philosophy, in particular to the great conceptual systems of German Idealism, impossible. This book tries to show that, pace Nietzsche, a return to Hegel is defensible, and indeed that the inadequacies of Nietzsche's own philosophy became fully manifest when his ‘Dionysiac’ vision of life is contrasted with the dialectical thought of Hegel. The point of the book is not, however, simply to maintain that Hegel is more consistent than Nietzsche, or that he deals with areas of experience – such as political and economic life – which Nietzsche largely ignores, though these are claims I would wish to uphold. The point is rather to show that Hegel is more far-reaching and more profound than Nietzsche in precisely the area in which Nietzsche's philosophy has been held to be so revolutionary: the critique of the conceptual distinctions and oppositions (Gegensätze) of metaphysical thought, and in particular the distinction between the subject and the predicate.