Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the texts and abbreviations
- Chronology of Nietzsche's life
- Introduction
- A note on Nietzsche and liberalism
- I THE QUESTION OF NIETZSCHE
- II ANCIENTS AND MODERNS
- III MAN AND OVERMAN
- IV THE QUESTION OF NIETZSCHE NOW
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Guide to further reading
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the texts and abbreviations
- Chronology of Nietzsche's life
- Introduction
- A note on Nietzsche and liberalism
- I THE QUESTION OF NIETZSCHE
- II ANCIENTS AND MODERNS
- III MAN AND OVERMAN
- IV THE QUESTION OF NIETZSCHE NOW
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Guide to further reading
- Index
Summary
Speaking directly, the ultimate possible attitudes toward life are irreconcilable, and hence their struggle can never be brought to a final conclusion. Thus it is necessary to make a decisive choice.
Max Weber, ‘Science as a Vocation’ (1919)Nietzsche is an ambiguous and paradoxical thinker whose writings never cease to disturb, provoke, and inspire, even when they challenge one's innermost convictions. He has been a key figure on the intellectual and cultural landscape for over a hundred years, and his thought has to be reckoned with. As Martin Heidegger once put it, everyone who thinks today does so in Nietzsche's light and shadow, whether they are ‘for’ him or ‘against’ him. He is important because he was, first and foremost, a philosopher of life, not because he is now academically respectable and has all the dubious status of a ‘modern master’. Nietzsche's writing deals with the most important questions about what it means to be a human being (he defines man as the questioning animal). For Nietzsche, however, this existential questioning about human identity cannot be separated from an understanding of history (especially of morality), of culture, and of politics.
For most of this century Nietzsche's political thought has been a source of confusion and embarrassment. The consensus which held sway for several decades from the end of the Second World War until quite recently, was that Nietzsche was not a political thinker at all, but someone who was mainly concerned with the fate of the solitary, isolated individual far removed from the cares and concerns of the social world.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- An Introduction to Nietzsche as Political ThinkerThe Perfect Nihilist, pp. 1 - 8Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994