Some Perplexities in Nietzsche

Abstract

I feel that I must begin by confessing a prejudice. I find it difficult to take seriously commentators who ascribe a fixed or final position to Nietzsche. By this time Nietzsche scholarship has brought us safely beyond the crudest mis-identifications: Darwinian Eugenicist, Racist, Proto-Nazi, etc. But subtler ones persist. It is still generally supposed that one must identify Nietzsche with such doctrines as the Will to Power, the Übermensch, and the Eternal Recurrence in much the same way The Forms have been identified with Plato and the Categorical Imperative with Kant. I see no way of refuting such notions in one stroke short of reproducing the entire Nietzschean corpus—accurately translated and with careful textual exegeses wherever needed—in such a way that its impact can be felt in one synoptic overview. This being impractical, we shall have to settle for something less.

“I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where’er I sail. The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my tracks; let them; but first I pass.” Moby Dick, “The Sunset”