Abstract

Nietzsche repeatedly portrays himself as an advocate of what he calls a ‘philosophy of becoming’. While in his early Untimely Meditations he had considered the ‘doctrine of sovereign becoming’ to be ‘true but deadly’, from the middle-period Human, All Too Human up to and including his last writings he urges us to embrace this doctrine wholeheartedly. He consistently links the view of the world as being in a state of constant flux with the teachings of Heraclitus, the one philosopher whom he praises to the very end of his sane life. Exactly what such a doctrine amounts to is a question that has not hitherto been subjected to the substantial treatment that it deserves, and it is this issue that Robin Small sets out to address.