This volume provides the first English translation of Nietzsche's unpublished notes from late 1879 to early 1881, the period in which he authored Dawn, the second book in the trilogy that began with Human, All Too Human and concluded with The Joyful Science. In these fragments, we see Nietzsche developing the conceptual triad of morals, customs, and ethics, which undergirds his critique of morality as the reification into law or dogma of conceptions of good and evil. Here, Nietzsche assesses Christianity's role in the determination of moral values as the highest values and of redemption as the representation of humanity's highest aspirations. These notes show the resulting tension between Nietzsche's contrasting thoughts on modernity, which he critiques as an unrecognized aftereffect of the Christian worldview, but also views as the springboard to "the dawn" of a transformed humanity and culture. The fragments further allow readers insight into Nietzsche's continuous internal debate with exemplary figures in his own life and culture—Napoleon, Schopenhauer, and Wagner—who represented challenges to hitherto existing morals and culture—challenges that remained exemplary for Nietzsche precisely in their failure. Presented in Nietzsche's aphoristic style, Dawn is a book that must be read between the lines, and these fragments are an essential aid to students and scholars seeking to probe this work and its partners.

This 6th volume in the acclaimed series The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche presents a new translation of one of the philosopher's most familiar and beloved works, The Joyful Science, and the first English translations of the Idylls from Messina and his unpublished notebooks of 1881-1882.

This volume provides the first English translation of Nietzsche's unpublished notes from the spring of 1884 through the winter of 1884-85, the period in which he was composing the fourth and final part of his favorite work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. These notebooks therefore provide special insight into Nietzsche's philosophical concept of superior humans,as well as important clues to the identities of the famous nineteenth-century European figures who inspired Nietzsche's invention of fictional characters such as "the prophet," "the sorcerer," and "the ugliest human."In these notebooks, Nietzsche also further explores ideas that were introduced in the first three parts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Zarathustra's teaching about the death of God; his proclamation that it is time for humankind to overcome itself and create the superhumans; his discovery that the secret of life is the will to power; and his most profound thought--that the entire cosmos will eternally return. Readers will encounter here a wealth of material that Nietzsche would include in his next book, Beyond Good and Evil, as he engages the ideas of Kant and Schopenhauer, challenges cultural icons like Richard Wagner, and mercilessly exposes the foibles of his contemporaries, especially of his fellow Germans. Readers will also discover an extensive collection of Nietzsche's poetry. Richly annotated and accompanied by a detailed translators' afterword, this volume showcases the cosmopolitanism at work in Nietzsche's multifaceted and critical exploration of aesthetic and cultural influences that transcend national (and nationalist) notions of literature, music, and culture.

Nietzsche regarded Thus Spoke Zarathustra as his most important philosophical contribution because it proposes solutions to the problems and questions he poses in his later books – for example, his cure for the human disposition to vengefulness and his creation of new values as the antidote to nihilism. It is also the only place where he elaborates his concepts of the superhuman and the eternal recurrence of the same. In this Critical Guide, an international group of distinguished scholars analyze the philosophical ideas in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, discussing a range of topics that include literary parody as philosophical critique, philosophy as a way of life, the meaning of human life, philosophical naturalism, fatalism, radical flux, human passions and virtues, great politics, transhumanism, and ecological conscience. The volume will be invaluable for philosophers, scholars and students interested in Nietzsche's thought.

In this erudite new work, Elliot R. Wolfson explores philosophical gnosis in the writings of Susan Taubes, Gillian Rose, and Edith Wyschogrod. The juxtaposition of these three extraordinary, albeit relatively neglected, philosophers provides a prism through which Wolfson scrutinizes the interplay of ethics, politics, and theology. The bond that ties together the diverse and multifaceted worldviews promulgated by Taubes, Rose, and Wyschogrod is the mutual recognition of the need to enunciate a response to the calamities of the twentieth century based on an incontrovertible acknowledgment of the decadence and malevolence of human beings, without, however, succumbing to acrimony and despair. The speculation of each of these philosophers on melancholia and the tragicomedy of being is unquestionably intricate, exhibiting subtle variations and idiosyncrasies, but we can nevertheless identify a common denominator in their attempt to find the midpoint positioned between hope and hopelessness. As Wolfson articulates, Taubes, Rose, and Wyschogrod exemplify a philosophical sensibility informed by a nocturnal seeing, which is not merely a seeing in the night but rather a seeing of the night. Ultimately, the book reveals the potential for these thinkers' ideas to enhance our moral sensitivity and to encourage participation in the ongoing struggle for meaning and decency in the present.

This volume brings together essays that explore the intersections between Nietzsche and Wittgenstein from various perspectives. While some chapters focus on the philological and biographical connections of Wittgenstein’s reading of Nietzsche, others reflect on the ideas that are implicitly shared by the two thinkers. For Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, philosophy is inextricably connected to ethics and the arts and therefore takes a peculiar method that differs from the sciences. Nevertheless, their thinking strives for knowledge and truth by means of discursive text forms, however unconventional they may be. The first group of chapters contextualize explicit references to Nietzsche in Wittgenstein’s writings and clarify their philosophical function. In Part II, the contributors take a philosophical problem as their starting point and show how it can be illuminated by comparing or contrasting Wittgensteinian and Nietzschean arguments and methods. Together the chapters trace Nietzsche’s influence on Wittgenstein’s thought concerning the critique of language, ethics, aesthetics, religion, and philosophical method. Wittgenstein and Nietzsche will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in the history of philosophy and intellectual history.

Nietzsche’s reputation, like much of Europe, lay in ruins in 1945. Giving a platform to a philosopher venerated by the Nazis was not an attractive prospect for Germans eager to cast off Hitler’s shadow. It was only when two ambitious antifascist Italians, Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, began to comb through the archives that anyone warmed to the idea of rehabilitating Nietzsche as a major European philosopher. Their goal was to interpret Nietzsche’s writings in a new way and free them from the posthumous falsification of his work. The problem was that 10,000 barely legible pages were housed behind the Iron Curtain in the German Democratic Republic, where Nietzsche had been officially designated an enemy of the state. In 1961, Montinari moved from Tuscany to the home of actually existing socialism to decode the “real” Nietzsche under the watchful eyes of the Stasi. But he and Colli would soon realize that the French philosophers making use of their edition were questioning the idea of the authentic text and of truth itself. Felsch retraces the journey of the two Italian editors and their edition, telling a gripping and unlikely story of how one of Europe’s most controversial philosophers was resurrected from the baleful clutch of the Nazis and transformed into an icon of postmodern thought.