Appearing between two historical touchstones--the alleged end of communism and the 100th anniversary of Nietzsche's death--this book offers a provocative hypothesis about the philosopher's afterlife and the fate of leftist thought and culture. At issue is the relation of the dead Nietzsche (corpse) and his written work (corpus) to subsequent living Nietzscheanism across the political spectrum, but primarily among a leftist corps that has been programmed and manipulated by concealed dimensions of the philosopher's thought. If anyone is responsible for what Geoff Waite maintains is the illusory death of communism, it is Nietzsche, the man and concept. Waite advances his argument by bringing Marxist--especially Gramscian and Althusserian--theories to bear on the concept of Nietzsche/anism. But he also goes beyond ideological convictions to explore the vast Nietzschean influence that proliferates throughout the marketplace of contemporary philosophy, political and literary theory, and cultural and technocultural criticism. In light of a philological reconstruction of Nietzsche's published and unpublished texts, Nietzsche's Corps/e shuttles between philosophy and everyday popular culture and shows them to be equally significant in their having been influenced by Nietzsche--in however distorted a form and in a way that compromises all of our best interests. Controversial in its "decelebration" of Nietzsche, this remarkable study asks whether the postcontemporary age already upon us will continue to be dominated and oriented by the haunting spectre of Nietzsche's corps/e. Philosophers, intellectual historians, literary theorists, and those interested in western Marxism, popular culture, Friedrich Nietzsche, and the intersection of French and German thought will find this book both appealing and challenging.
'The greatest book of philosophy I have ever read, on a par with Nietzsche himself.' Michel Foucault Pierre Klossowski (1905-) is the author of numerous philosophical works, as well as several novels. He published many translations of German poets and philosophers, including Nietzsche himself. Recognised as a masterpiece of Nietzsche scholarship, Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle emphasises and explores the notion of Eternal Return - central to an understanding of Nietzsche's self-denial, self-refutation and self-consumption. Translated by Daniel W. Smith>
Malcolm Bull offers a detailed analysis of nihilism in Nietzsche's works. Along with accompanying commentaries by Cascardi and Clark, he explores the significance of Nietzscheís views given the fact that a wide range of readers have come to embrace his ideas as new orthodoxy. There seem to be no anti-Nietzscheans today, but Bull demonstrates that this wide embrace of Nietzsche runs counter to the very meaning of nihilism as Nietzsche understood it.
The place (or absence) of God in Nietzsche's thought remains central and controversial. Nietzsche's proclamation of 'the death of God' is one of the most famous (and parodied) slogans in modern philosophy, seeming to encapsulate the nineteenth-century loss of religious faith in the affirmation that God has "turned out to be our oldest lie" and yet the nature of Nietzsche's own 'theology' is far from clear. This volume engages with Nietzsche's arguments about God, theology, and religion. The volume extends the discussion to an engagement of Nietzsche with alternative models of God, with ancient Greek religions, and with discussions of diversity (race, class, gender, sex) in dis/conjunction with religion. The chapters examine Nietzsche's genealogy of religion and his claims about the place of God and theology in the history of Western thought ("that faith of the Christians, which was also Plato's faith"), as well as his engagements with alternative conceptions of God. The volume also examines the historical and contemporary reception of Nietzsche's arguments about God by religious and non-religious thinkers, asking to what extent Nietzsche's philosophy of God speaks to the challenges of today's globalized philosophy and religion.
Among Nietzsche’s favourite authors were Bonapartists, who largely formed Nietzsche’s view of Napoleon – open the pages of the Nietzschean corpus and you will find a Napoleonic landscape, and Nietzsche’s promotion of Napoleon serves to support the Bonapartist movement of the late nineteenth century. This book contains an innovative treatment of Nietzsche’s political thought, far exceeding in scope and insight any previous writings on the subject.
Introduction by Peter Gay Translated and edited by Walter Kaufmann Commentary by Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, and Gilles Deleuze One hundred years after his death, Friedrich Nietzsche remains the most influential philosopher of the modern era. Basic Writings of Nietzsche gathers the complete texts of five of Nietzsche’s most important works, from his first book to his last: The Birth of Tragedy, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, The Case of Wagner, and Ecce Homo. Edited and translated by the great Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann, this volume also features seventy-five aphorisms, selections from Nietzsche’s correspondence, and variants from drafts for Ecce Homo. It is a definitive guide to the full range of Nietzsche’s thought. Includes a Modern Library Reading Group Guide
This volume contains the complete text of two books. H. L. Mencken translated the book The Philosophy of Frederick Nietzsche from the original German. The second book, The Antichrist, was written by F. W. Nietzsche and translated by Mencken, who also wrote the forward. The book has been reformatted for consistency, to produce an accurate Table of Contents, and to display well on modern e-readers. Some redundancy has been removed from available electronic editions. The original manuscripts were used to correct errors of totally garbled text that appear in all the previously published free electronic versions. Mencken was an admirer of Nietzsche's ideas. It appears that some of Mencken's ideas about Jews and blacks (not his term, unfortunately) became more enlightened because of the influence of Nietzsche's writings. The two men had relatively similar, but highly controversial, especially for the time, views of religion. The Central branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore contains Mencken's papers and many of his books. They are stored, fittingly, in the library's Mencken Room. In 1907, Mencken published a book entitled The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, continuing his lifetime of study of the work of Nietzsche. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was October 15, 1844 in the small town of Rocken, in what is now Germany, but was then considered part of the Prussian Province of Saxony. (He did not use the middle name Wilhelm in his most important writings.) He died on August 25, 1900. He was, as was Mencken, an important contributor to many disciplines. He was especially well-known for his writings as a philosopher, poet, cultural critic and philologist. He was a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Basel for ten years, providing him with an ideal occupation in which to pursue his writing. Where Mencken was heavily influenced by reading Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Nietzsche may have had his views on religion influenced by the book Life of Jesus by David Strauss while a young man. While Nietzsche was most renowned as a philosopher, and his ideas continue to be influential, in the popular culture that dominates the current era he is, perhaps, most famous for some 1960s era graffiti for both a quotation and a (purported) response. Nietzsche: God is dead. God: Nietzsche is dead. The two men are linked in several ways. Mencken was of German descent and, of course, Nietzsche was born in what became the country of Germany after its unification in 1871. In this volume, Mencken is connected to Nietzsche because of the controversial writings of both men, his aforementioned The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, and because he both translated Nietzsche's The Antichrist and wrote the forward to it. It is important to understand the language used in this volume. Some of the language used in Mencken's works is considered disgusting and incredibly troubling by modern standards. The racism and sexism are not acceptable in modern society. Indeed, as this introduction is being written, several members of their countries' Olympic teams have been removed from competition in the 2012 London Olympic Games for communicating racist remarks. The use of Nietzsche's work by Nazism to justify its policies is well-known. This volume contains the complete text of two books. H. L. Mencken translated the book The Philosophy of Frederick Nietzsche from the original German. The second book, The Antichrist, was written by F. W. Nietzsche and translated by Mencken, who also wrote the forward. The book has been reformatted for consistency, to produce an accurate Table of Contents, and to display well in print and on modern e-readers. Some redundancy has been removed from available electronic editions. The original manuscripts were used to correct errors of totally garbled text that appear in all the previously published free electronic versions.
