Nietzsche's Final Teaching

Michael Allen Gillespie

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780226684758, 9780226476889
• eBook ISBN: 9780226476919
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Modern Philosophy

In the seven and a half years before his collapse into madness, Nietzsche completed Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the best-selling and most widely read philosophical work of all time, as well as six additional works that are today considered required reading for Western intellectuals. Together, these works mark the final period of Nietzsche's thought, when he developed a new, more profound, and more systematic teaching rooted in the idea of the eternal recurrence, which he considered his deepest thought.

Cutting against the grain of most current Nietzsche scholarship, Michael Allen Gillespie presents the thought of the late Nietzsche as Nietzsche himself intended, drawing not only on his published works but on the plans for the works he was unable to complete, which can be found throughout his notes and correspondence. Gillespie argues that the idea of the eternal recurrence transformed Nietzsche's thinking from 1881 to 1889. It provided both the basis for his rejection of traditional metaphysics and the grounding for the new logic, ontology, theology, and anthropology he intended to create with the aim of a fundamental transformation of European civilization, a "revaluation of all values." Nietzsche first broached the idea of the eternal recurrence in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but its failure to gain attention or public acceptance led him to present the idea again through a series of works intended to culminate in a never-completed magnum opus. Nietzsche believed this idea would enable the redemption of humanity. At the same time, he recognized its terrifying, apocalyptic consequences, since it would also produce wars of unprecedented ferocity and destruction.

Through his careful analysis, Gillespie reveals a more radical and more dangerous Nietzsche than the humanistic or democratic Nietzsche we commonly think of today, but also a Nietzsche who was deeply at odds with the Nietzsche imagined to be the forefather of Fascism. Gillespie's essays examine Nietzsche's final teaching—its components and its political, philosophical, and theological significance. The book concludes with a critical examination and a reflection on its meaning for us today. 
 

Index

Achilles, 163–64

active nihilism, 34, 35, 36, 38, 148

Adler, Alfred, 4

Adorno, Theodor, 4

aei on (ever-being), 6, 125

Aeschylus, 44, 87, 96, 112, 176

Agamben, Giorgio, 232n5

Albrechtsberger, Johann Georg, 89–90

Alexandrian culture, 73

Altizer, Thomas, 189

amor fati, 20, 54, 101, 134, 135, 136, 147, 155, 173, 186, 194

Andreas-Salomé, Lou, 10, 204n7, 207n25, 233n7

Ansell-Pearson, Keith, 210n6

anthropology of nihilism: appearance of the lion and, 34, 212–13nn22–23; characterization of the will to power, 33; Christianity and, 35; consequences of the death of God for European humanity, 33–34, 212nn17–18; diagram of the span of human possibilities of being, 30, 33, 35; discussion of the three possibilities of being human, 31, 211nn9–10; the Great Noon’s position on the diagram of human possibilities, 33; implications if passion is the essence of the human being, 32; meaning of the last man, 29; Nietzsche’s belief in active nihilism, 34, 38; Nietzsche’s decision to abandon Zarathustra, 34, 213n25; stages of nihilism, 35, 36; tightrope analogy, 29; unexpected strengths of the liberal democratic worldview and, 38–39; vision of the Übermensch and, 29, 30, 31, 37–38, 46–47, 211n13; will to power’s connection to the psychology of the passions, 32–33

Antichrist, The, 10, 27, 34, 35, 98, 109, 114, 122–23, 184, 187, 225nn7–9

(anti-)metaphysics: basis of, 188; concept of the Dionysian and, 13, 72–73; concepts defining, 13, 207n24; distinguishing feature of, 19; doctrine of the eternal recurrence in the framework of classical metaphysics, 13–14, 17–18; notion of time and being in, 194; ontology of, 16, 18; psychology and, 77, 218n26; theological crisis created by scientific knowledge, 18

antinomy doctrine, 13, 73, 79, 93

anti-Semitism, 70, 114, 161, 188, 213n27

Apollo/Apollinian, 58, 73, 98, 104, 110, 116, 125, 129

architect, 104

architectonic, 110, 113, 115, 116, 118, 119

Arendt, Hannah, 4, 50

Ariadne, 56

aristocracy. See warrior aristocracy

Aristotle, 6, 18, 37, 97, 98, 111, 190

artist: Dionysian, 100, 117, 129–30, 198; metaphysics and, 44, 72; Nietzsche’s perception of himself as, 109; Nietzsche’s understanding of the use of art, 129–30; Plato’s view of, 170; tragic artist’s redemption of humanity, 101, 104, 105, 106, 223n37

artist-tyrant, 35, 119, 156, 159, 173, 176, 189, 213n28

asceticism, 77

“Attempt at a Self-Criticism” (Birth of Tragedy): assertion of Nie...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• Preface
• INTRODUCTION
• NIHILISM AND THE SUPERHUMAN
• NIETZSCHE AS TEACHER OF THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE
• NIETZSCHE’S FINAL TEACHING IN CONTEXT
• CONCLUSION
• List of Abbreviations
• Notes
• Index