Reading Nietzsche through the Ancients

An Analysis of Becoming, Perspectivism, and the Principle of Non-Contradiction

Matthew Meyer

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781614518150
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Philosophy

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.

Table of contents

• Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter One Becoming, Being, and the Problem of Opposites in Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks
• Chapter Two Aristotle’s Defense of the Principle of Non-Contradiction in Metaphysics IV
• Chapter Three Naturalism, Becoming, and the Unity of Opposites in Human, All Too Human
• Chapter Four Heraclitean Becoming and Protagorean Perspectivism in Plato’s Theaetetus
• Chapter Five Heraclitean Becoming, Protagorean Perspectivism, and the Will to Power in Beyond Good and Evil
• Epilogue Five Prefaces to Five Unwritten Books on Nietzsche’s Published Works
• Appendix The Periodization of Nietzsche’s Works
• Bibliography
• Index