Introduction: becoming a philosopher -- Traveling South -- A stateless man's passport -- Night train through Mont Cenis -- The camels of Pisa -- Naples: first revelation of the South -- "The school of educators" at the Villa Rubinacci -- Richard Wagner in Sorrento -- The monastery of free spirits -- Dreaming of the dead -- Walks on the land of the sirens -- The carnival of Naples -- Mithras at Capri -- Sorrentiner papiere -- Rée-alism and the chemical combinations of atoms -- The logic of dreams -- An epicurean in Sorrento -- Sacred music on an African background -- The sun of knowledge and the ground of things -- The blessed isles -- The bells of Genoa and Nietzschean epiphanies -- Epiphanies -- The value of human things -- Crossed geneses -- The azure bell of innocence -- Zarathustra's night song -- Epilogue to the bell -- Torna a Surriento

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) loved nature and his daily walks in the Swiss Mountains and by the Mediterranean Sea heavily influenced his writing, and particularly his most famous book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. By following the philosopher on these ramblings and reflecting on Zarathustra's (Nietzsche's alter ego) surprising interactions with the animals he meets on his way, Henk Manschot cleverly shows how all these experiences were reflected in the philosopher's thinking on the relationship between human beings and the Earth. Working at the intersection of philosophy and environmental studies, Manschot presents key Nietzschean concepts as the foundations of an ecological 'art of living' for the twenty-first century. In a unique contribution to the field, he also introduces the concept of 'terra-sophy', which combines the notions of terra (earth) and sophy (wisdom), to contend that humans should reimagine themselves as in a reciprocal relationship with the planet. For Manschot, Nietzsche's thought can inspire humanity to move from a human to an Earth-focused relationship to the world; a shift in thought that would considerably benefit a generation facing an unprecedented ecological crisis.

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most widely read authors in the world, from the time of his death to the present—as well as one of the most controversial. He has been celebrated as a theorist of individual creativity and self-care but also condemned as an advocate of antimodern politics and hierarchical communalism. Rather than treating these approaches as mutually exclusive, Jeremy Fortier contends that we ought instead to understand Nietzsche’s complex legacy as the consequence of a self-conscious and artful tension woven into the fabric of his books. The Challenge of Nietzsche uses Nietzsche as a guide to Nietzsche, highlighting the fact that Nietzsche equipped his writings with retrospective self-commentaries and an autobiographical apparatus that clarify how he understood his development as an author, thinker, and human being. Fortier shows that Nietzsche used his writings to establish two major character types, the Free Spirit and Zarathustra, who represent two different approaches to the conduct and understanding of life: one that strives to be as independent and critical of the world as possible, and one that engages with, cares for, and aims to change the world. Nietzsche developed these characters at different moments of his life, in order to confront from contrasting perspectives such elemental experiences as the drive to independence, the feeling of love, and the assessment of one’s overall health or well-being. Understanding the tension between the Free Spirit and Zarathustra takes readers to the heart of what Nietzsche identified as the tensions central to his life, and to all human life.

Originally published: Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969.

History and memory rank as central themes in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. As one of the last philosophers of the 19th century, Nietzsche naturally belongs to the so-called ‘historical century’. The contentious exchange with the past and with antiquity – as much as the mechanisms, the dangers, and the lessons of memory and tradition – are continually examined and stand in close relationship with Nietzsche’s vision of life and his project of human development. As Jacob Burckhardt once wrote of the cultural critique to his Basel colleague: "Fundamentally, you are always teaching history" (9/13/1882). Following Burckhardt’s judgment, the contributors focus on the analysis of core questions in the philosophies of history and memory, and their respective convergence in the thought of Nietzsche. The epistemological relevance of these central concepts will be thematized alongside those concerning tradition, and education. The discussion of these rich themes unifies a broad spectrum of questions, ranging from cultural memory to contemporary philosophy of mind. The contributions are revised versions of selected papers presented at the 2018 conference of the annual meeting of the Nietzsche Society in Naumburg.

In Uncanny Rest Alberto Moreiras offers a meditation on intellectual life under the suspension of time and conditions of isolation. Focusing on his personal day-to-day experiences of the “shelter-in-place” period during the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, Moreiras engages with the limits and possibilities of critical thought in the realm of the infrapolitical—the conditions of existence that exceed average understandings of politics and philosophy. In each dated entry he works through the process of formulating a life’s worth of thought and writing while attempting to locate the nature of thought once the coordinates of everyday life have changed. Offering nothing less than a phenomenology of thinking, Moreiras shows how thought happens in and out of a life, at a certain crossroads where memories collide, where conversations with interlocutors both living and dead evolve and thinking during a suspended state becomes provisional and uncertain.

The trajectory of Friedrich Nietzsche’s thought has long presented a difficulty for the study of his philosophy. How did the young Nietzsche—classicist and ardent advocate of Wagner’s cultural renewal—become the philosopher of Will to Power and the Eternal Return? With this book, Laurence Lampert answers that question. He does so through his trademark technique of close readings of key works in Nietzsche’s journey to philosophy: The Birth of Tragedy, Schopenhauer as Educator, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, Human All Too Human, and “Sanctus Januarius,” the final book of the 1882 Gay Science. Relying partly on how Nietzsche himself characterized his books in his many autobiographical guides to the trajectory of his thought, Lampert sets each in the context of Nietzsche’s writings as a whole, and looks at how they individually treat the question of what a philosopher is. Indispensable to his conclusions are the workbooks in which Nietzsche first recorded his advances, especially the 1881 workbook which shows him gradually gaining insights into the two foundations of his mature thinking. The result is the most complete picture we’ve had yet of the philosopher’s development, one that gives us a Promethean Nietzsche, gaining knowledge even as he was expanding his thought to create new worlds.