Nietzsches Self Referential Paradox

This book represents a unique contribution to Nietzschean scholarship in its analysis of the concept of power as preliminary to addressing Nietzsche’s psychological version of will to power. It advances a fresh interpretation of will to power that connects it explicitly to the meaning of human life, and, in so doing, the author addresses major questions such as: What does will to power designate? What does it presuppose? What effects does it engender? What is its status, epistemologically and metaphysically? How is will to power to be evaluated? How persuasive is will to power as an explanation of fundamental human instincts and as the lynchpin of a way of life? The volume argues that Nietzsche’s psychological notion of will to power cannot plausibly be understood as merely a first-order drive to attain and exert power. Moreover, despite some of the philosopher’s extravagant rhetoric, will to power is not an inherent instinct to oppress other people or things. Instead, will to power, understood generically, is a second-order desire to have, pursue and attain first-order desires; it bears a relationship to confronting and overcoming resistances and obstacles, and is related to the pursuit of excellence and personal transformation, as well as to experiences of feeling power. As, according to Nietzsche’s account, all human beings embody will to power, the book concludes that we should distinguish at least three varieties: robust, moderate, and attenuated will to power. Only by doing this, can we understand and evaluate will to power concretely.

Newly translated into English, this book analyzes the paradoxical discourse that flows through and fundamentally characterizes Nietzsche's writings. Examining Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy; Human, All Too Human; Beyond Good and Evil; On the Genealogy of Morals; and The Antichrist; Rogério Miranda de Almeida patiently opens these texts to the multiplicity of truths that unfold through the process of continuous reinterpretation and reevaluation. Never formally defining the contradictions within Nietzsche's conception of metaphysics, religion, art, science, and philosophy, Miranda de Almeida acknowledges instead that the history of thought, and the development of Nietzsche's writings in particular, is an interplay of forces and drives, encroachment and surrender, construction and destruction, overcoming and transformation, lack and fulfillment, satisfaction and dissatisfaction, pleasure and displeasure, pain and delight. This book reveals the endless perspectives and truths that Nietzsche creates and transforms.

Nietzsche’s work was shaped by his engagement with ancient Greek philosophy. Matthew Meyer analyzes Nietzsche’s concepts of becoming and perspectivism and his alleged rejection of the principle of non-contradiction, and he traces these views back to the Heraclitean-Protagorean position that Plato and Aristotle critically analyze in the Theaetetus and Metaphysica IV, respectively. At the center of this Heraclitean-Protagorean position is a relational ontology in which everything exists and is what it is only in relation to something else. Meyer argues that this relational ontology is not only theoretically foundational for Nietzsche’s philosophical project, in that it is the common element in Nietzsche’s views on becoming, perspectivism, and the principle of non-contradiction, but also textually foundational, in that Nietzsche implicitly commits himself to such an ontology in raising the question of opposites at the beginning of both Human, All Too Human and Beyond Good and Evil.

This long-overdue translation brings to the English-speaking world the work that set the tone for the Post-structuralist reading of Nietzsche.

This book reconstructs the cornerstones of Jesus’s moral teachings about how to lead a good, even exemplary, human life. It does so in a way that is compatible with the most prominent, competing versions of the historical Jesus. The work also contrast Jesus’ understanding of the best way to lead our lives with that of Friedrich Nietzsche. Both Jesus and Nietzsche were self-consciously moral revolutionaries. Jesus refashioned the imperatives of Jewish law to conform to what he was firmly convinced was the divine will. Nietzsche aspired to transvalue the dominant values of his time —which themselves were influenced greatly by Christianity— in service of what he took to be a higher vision. The interplay of these radical versions of the good human life, seasoned with critical commentary emerging from modern findings in the sciences and humanities, opens possibilities and lines of inquiry that can inform our choices in answering that enduring, paramount question, “How should we live our lives?”

A clear, concise student guide that covers the full range of Nietzsche's major works and ideas, including a detailed examination of his best known work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Nietzsche's critique of the modern subject is often presented as a radical break with modern philosophy and associated with the so-called ‘death of the subject’ in 20th century philosophy. But Nietzsche claimed to be a ‘psychologist’ who was trying to open up the path for ‘new versions and sophistications of the soul hypothesis.’ Although there is no doubt that Nietzsche gave expression to a fundamental crisis of the modern conception of subjectivity (both from a theoretical and from a practical-existential perspective), it is open to debate whether he wanted to abandon the very idea of subjectivity or only to pose the problem of subjectivity in new terms. The volume includes 26 articles by top Nietzsche scholars. The chapters in Part I, “Tradition and Context”, deal with the relationship between Nietzsche's views on subjectivity and modern philosophy, as well as with the late 19th century context in which his thought emerged; Part II, “The Crisis of the Subject”, examines the impact of Nietzsche's critique of the subject on 20th century philosophy, from Freud to Heidegger to Dennett, but also in such authors as Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida, or Luhmann; Part III, “Current Debates - From Embodiment and Consciousness to Agency”, shows that the way in which Nietzsche engaged with such themes as the self, agency, consciousness, embodiment and self-knowledge makes his thought highly relevant for philosophy today, especially for philosophy of mind and ethics.

The contributors discuss the current debate about what philosophy is, how it works, and how Nietzsche's thought clarifies or complicates its understanding. They represent a wide range of views and practices, some aggressively postmodern in their approach, some profoundly skeptical about postmodernism. Although the issue of postmodernism is the central focus, the essays also touch on many other areas of interest to readers of Nietzsche.