This unique book explores Nietzsche’s philosophy at the time of Dawn’s writing and discusses the modern relevance of themes such as fear, superstition, terror, and moral and religious fanaticism. The authors highlight Dawn’s links with key areas of philosophical inquiry, such as “the art of living well,” skepticism, and naturalism. The book begins by introducing Dawn and discussing how to read Nietzsche, his literary and philosophical influences, his relation to German philosophy, and his efforts to advance his (...) ‘free spirit’ philosophy. Subsequent discussions address a wide range of topics relevant to Dawn, including presumptions of customary morality, hatred of the self, free-minded thinking, and embracing science and the passion of knowledge. (shrink)

Although caution ought to be exercised when it comes to his retrospective assessment of his past works, Nietzsche’s EH accurately describes D as a significant beginning, and a preparatory work. The preparation in question is for a broad critical reappraisal of the function of morality. More specifically, the object of Nietzsche’s critique is that which he titles “customary morality.” It is D that got the ball rolling on this project, as well as on many familiar Nietzschean themes that find arguably (...) maturer exposition in later works, those more systematically studied on university syllabi. In this respect and others, Keith Ansell-Pearson and Rebecca Bamford are justified in their claim that D itself is a significant... (shrink)

This chapter seeks to make a contribution to the growing interest in Nietzsche's relation to traditions of therapy in philosophy that has emerged in recent years. It is in the texts of his middle period that Nietzsche's writing comes closest to being an exercise in philosophical therapeutics, and in this chapter I focus on Dawn from 1881 as a way of exploring this. Dawn is a text that has been admired in recent years for its ethical (...) naturalism and for its anticipation of phenomenology. My interest in the text in this chapter is in the way it revitalises for a modern age ancient philosophical concerns, notably a teaching for mortal souls who wish to be liberated from the fear and anguish of existence, as well as from God, the ‘metaphysical need’, and romantic music, and are able to affirm their mortal conditions of existence. As a general point of inspiration I have adopted Pierre Hadot's insight into the therapeutic ambitions of ancient philosophy which was, he claims, ‘intended to cure mankind's anguish’. This is evident in the teaching of Epicurus which sought to demonstrate the mortality of the soul and whose aim was, ‘to free humans from “the fears of the mind”.’ Similarly, Nietzsche's teaching in Dawn is for mortal souls. In the face of the loss of the dream of the soul's immortality, philosophy for Nietzsche, I shall show, has new consolations to offer in the form of new sublimities. Indeed, for Nietzsche it is by reflecting, with the aid of psychological observation, on what is ‘human, all too human’, that ‘we can lighten the burden of life’. Nietzsche's thinking in Dawn contains a number of proposals and recommendations of tremendous value to philosophical therapeia, including a call for a new honesty about the human ego and human relations, including relations of self and other and love, so as to free us from certain delusions; the search for an authentic mode of existence which appreciates the value of solitude and independence; the importance of having a rich and mature taste in order to eschew the fanatical. After an introduction to Nietzsche's text the chapter is divided into two main parts. In the first main part I explore various aspects of his conception of philosophical therapy, including purification of the higher feelings and liberation from the destructive effects of ‘morality’ and Christianity. In the second main part I explore his conception of ‘the passion of knowledge’, which is the passion that guides modern free spirits as they seek to overcome the need of religion and constraints of ‘morality’, and to access the new sublimities of philosophy. (shrink)

Professional higher education is expected to educate large numbers of students to become innovative professionals within a time frame of three or four years. A mission impossible? Not necessarily, according to Henriëtta Joosten who is a philosopher as well as a teacher. She uses the experimental, liberating, but also dangerous ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche to rethink contemporary higher professional education. What does it mean to teach students to strive for better in a professional world where horizons tend to disperse and (...) the possibility of long-term orientation is disappearing? Following Nietzsche, five key elements of striving for better are explored: uncertainty, excellence, critical thinking, truth seeking friendship, and learning through ups and downs. From these five perspectives, Joosten scrutinises existing educational discourses on professional higher education in search for openings to transform these discourses into new, more appropriate ones. Understanding excellence as rising above oneself, she argues for a learning environment in which all students are encouraged to excel. Such an environment allows for uncertainty and learning through ups and downs. Furthermore, teachers are prepared to risk their certainties in order to let a joined quest - that is, a quest of students and teacher - for better truths arise. Using the Nietzschean-inspired notions which have been developed in the study, Joosten describes two factual cases. One case relates to a course in close reading: first-year students jointly read philosophical and scientific texts. The second case involves a group of eleven senior students developing a course in project management. These descriptions and the recommendations serve as a catalyst for constructive debate on the question of how all students can be equipped for a dynamic professional world. (shrink)

This article assesses Nietzsche’s engagement with the sublime in Dawn to shed light on an aspect thereof that has so far been overlooked: Nietzsche’s deployment of the sublime as a philosophical framework for coming to terms with epistemic limits and transcendental errors. By engaging with the sublime both descriptively and methodologically, Nietzsche promotes an awareness of cognitive limits that fosters, instead of impeding, the pursuit of knowledge and the accomplishment of philosophical endeavors. While complicating the minimal existing literature on (...) the topic, this article highlights Nietzsche’s philosophically unique use of the sublime in navigating a characteristically post-Kantian epistemic issue (the awareness of epistemic partiality and inadequacy) and in mitigating an illusory faith in reason. (shrink)

The author claims that the will to translation from foreign languages is an intrinsic tendency of development of any language. The article deals with the following problems of Ukrainian translation of the work «The Dawn of Day» by Friedrich Nietzsche: (1) Reproduction of the poetic style of Nietzsche’s writing. (2) Translation of Nietzsche’s neologisms that are not adopted in modern German language. (3) Interpretation of the influence of Nietzsche’s life experience on his thinking. -/- The author analyses his own (...) experience of translation of this work. He describes his strategy of translation which is based on the assumption that Nietzsche’s text should be translated not only as philosophical but also as a poetical one. The style of Nietzsche’s writing is deeply rooted in his life experience, and first of all in his illness. His main concepts express the fundamental aspects of existence. That is why Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s thinking can be used as methodological basis for translation of Nietzsche’s works. From this point of view we can understand and translate Nietzsche not only as a philosopher but also as a poet. -/- So the strategy of translation is based on the following principles: (a) The text should be interpreted in the context of Nietzsche’s life experience. (b) The principal words of Nietzsche should be understood not as rigorous notions but as «existentials». (c) The Ukrainian translation should reproduce not only the meaning of the original text but also the poetical style of Nietzsche’s writing. (shrink)

In this essay I seek to show that a philosophy of modesty informs core aspects of both Nietzsche’s critique of morality and what he intends to replace morality with, namely, an ethics of self-cultivation. To demonstrate this I focus on Dawn: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, a largely neglected text in his corpus where Nietzsche carries out a quite wide-ranging critique of morality, including Mitleid. It is one of Nietzsche’s most experimental works and is best read, I claim, (...) as an Epicurean-inspired critique of the present and an exercise in moral therapy. In the opening sections I draw attention to the wider social dimension of the text and its concern with a morality of compassion, which is rarely done in the literature. I then turn to highlighting Nietzsche’s Epicurean moment, followed by two sections on Nietzsche on the self in which I aim to bring to light his ethics of self-cultivation and show in what ways his revaluation makes central to ethics a modest egoism and care of self. In the conclusion to the essay I provide a contrast between Nietzsche and Kant and deal with reservations readers might have about his ethics. Overall, the essay seeks to make a contribution to an appreciation of Dawn as a work of moral therapy. (shrink)

v. 1. The birth of tragedy; or, Hellenism and pessimism.--v. 2. Early Greek philosophy & other essays.--v. 3. On the future of our educational institutions. Homer and classical philology.--v. 4-5. Thoughts out of season.--v. 6-7. Human, all-too-human.--v. 8. The case of Wagner. Nietzsche contra Wagner. Selected aphorisms.--v. 9. The dawn of day.--v. 10. The joyful wisdom.--v. 11. Thus spake Zarathustra.--v. 12. Beyond good and evil.--v. 13. The genealogy of morals. Peoples and countries.--v. 14.-15. The will to power.--v. 16.--The twilight (...) of the idols; or, How to philosophise with the hammer. The antichrist.--v. 17. Ecce homo, Nietzsche's autobiography.--v. 18. Guppy, R. Index to Nietzsche. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

This is an annotated English edition of all of Nietzsche's work. The book is a translation of the celebrated Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden (1980) edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari.

This volume includes the commentaries on two works from the third volume of the Critical Studies Edition of Nietzsche s Works Morgenrothe (The Dawn), and Idyllen aus Messina (Idylls from Messina). Volume 3.2 will be devoted to commentary on The Gay Science. This volume includes the manuscript facsimiles of the Idyllen aus Messina.".

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nietzsche’s Reading and Private Library, 1885–1889Thomas H. BrobjerOne can easily get the impression that Nietzsche read little, especially later in his life. He criticizes reading because it is not sufficiently life-affirming and Dionysian: “Early in the morning at the break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one’s strength, to read a book—I call that vicious!...” 1 He also criticizes it for making one reactive and (...) forcing one to be concerned with the thoughts of others rather than with one’s own:My eyes alone put an end to all bookwormishness, in plain terms philology: I was redeemed from the “book,” for years I read nothing—the greatest favour I have ever done myself!—That deepest self, as it were buried and grown silent under a constant compulsion to listen to other selves (—and that is what reading means!) awoke slowly, timidly, doubtfully—but at length it spoke again. 2This impression is strengthened by the fact that in his published books from 1885–88 very few contemporary and minor authors and books are mentioned. [End Page 663] He also explicitly claims that he read little: “It does not perhaps lie in my nature to read much or many kinds of things: a reading room makes me ill.... Caution, even towards new books is rather part of my instinct.” 3 Concretely, he claims in Ecce Homo that, “I have to reckon back half a year to catch myself with a book in my hand. But what was it?—An excellent study by Victor Brochard, les Sceptiques Grecs.” 4 As suggested in a quotation above, and as a major leitmotif in his letters, his health and especially that of his eyes is another reason to assume that he read little. This is also how most philosophers and historians have tended to treat Nietzsche—as an isolated, profound thinker.However, this impression and Nietzsche’s claims here are to a large extent incorrect. Nietzsche was, in fact, a rather substantial reader. This is true not only for his younger days but also for his last four active years, 1885–88. 5 Contrary to his claim that he is hostile to new books, he was very pleased with the large trilingual bookshop Löscher in Turin. He was a frequent and good enough customer to know its “Chef “ and to make contacts through it. 6 Nietzsche frequently used other bookshops, ordered book catalogues, and asked for recommendations of new book titles. 7 Nietzsche found some of the most important books in his life as random discoveries in bookshops, for example, those of Schopenhauer, Stendhal, and Dostoyevsky. Contrary to his claim that a reading room made him ill, he praised Turin for its good libraries, 8 and he wrote to his sister: “one cannot even with ten horses draw me to a place where, if I am correctly informed, not even a good library is to be found.” 9 Libraries were [End Page 664] important for Nietzsche’s reading, and the quality of the libraries was an important determining factor in deciding Nietzsche’s travels and places of residence. He even occasionally wrote to libraries to inquire if they were suitable for his purposes and for deciding if he would visit the town. 10 During the period 1885–88 Nietzsche used the libraries in Nice, Leipzig, Chur, Venice, Turin, and the Hotel Alpenrosen’s library in Sils-Maria. He probably also used the library in Zürich and possibly in other towns, and he planned to visit Stuttgart for the sake of its library.Nietzsche did not have a permanent address during the period discussed in this article and hence travelled frequently. But travelling was difficult for him and almost without exception made him ill, and it was more difficult still with a heavy load of books. During these years Nietzsche lived on a low pension from the University of Basel and constantly worried about his expenses. In spite of this he bought a not insignificant number of books. His private library today contains 60 books published from 1885 to 1888 and in 23 of these Nietzsche has made markings, often extensively, and from several... (shrink)

This chapter examines the basis of Nietzsche's campaign against customary morality in Dawn. It consider what problems there are with mounting a successful campaign against morality, and to what extent Nietzsche's campaign against morality leaves room for a positive ethics. The chapter shows that Nietzsche's fundamental concern is that morality as it currently stands is bad for humans. The basic problem with the campaign against morality that Nietzsche pursues in the original aphorisms of Dawn can (...) be developed in greater depth by examining evidence from its 1886 Preface, which illustrates Nietzsche's awareness of the challenge that his campaign against morality faces. Aphorism supports Nietzsche's experimental disruption of the social and emotional systemic functioning of customary morality, and allows for exploration of alternatives to the mood of fear that Nietzsche shows to be pervasive to customary morality. (shrink)

ABSTRACT As a classical philologist, Nietzsche was extremely familiar with the work of many ancient Greek writers. It is well known that Nietzsche made a practice of identifying with and praising ancient thinkers with whom he felt a kinship. It is worth investigating, then, whether Nietzsche's mention of Hippocrates in D signals a sustained interest in the so-called father of medicine. I argue that there is no evidence that Nietzsche paid special attention to Hippocrates or the Hippocratic corpus. Instead, (...) Nietzsche's curious allusion to Hippocrates is likely influenced in part by his reading of the Comtean positivist Émile Littré. Finally, I argue that if Nietzsche is consciously “Hippocratic” at all, he is so in virtue of the “medical posture” he adopts in D, where Nietzsche's remarks suggest his mission is to relieve humankind of the psychological suffering caused by morality. (shrink)

Nietzsche is not known for his theory of empathy. A quick skimming of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on empathy demonstrates this. Arthur Schopenhauer, Robert Vischer, and Theodor Lipps are among those whose views are considered representative, but Nietzsche has been simply forgotten in discussion of empathy. Nietzsche’s theory of empathy has not yet aroused sufficient interest among commentators. I believe that his views on this subject merit careful consideration. Nietzsche scholars have been interested in his naturalistic accounts of (...) other phenomena, but there seems to be relatively limited interest in his naturalistic account of a phenomenon that is so central to his disagreement with Schopenhauer, namely, empathic concern for others. This is surprising because Nietzsche makes a valuable contribution; he has views more in keeping with contemporary theories of empathy than others of his time. My goal here is to fill in this gap in the scholarship and provide the first thorough analysis of Nietzsche’s theory of empathy, which appears most clearly in Dawn. (shrink)

Nietzsche was a severe critic of German Idealism, but what exactly is the relation between his thought and theirs? Papers from leading specialists in Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche contribute to a clearer understanding of the differences and affinities between Nietzsche's philosophy and that of his predecessors.".

Chulpforta, 1862 -- Napoleon III as president -- Saint-just -- Two-poem cycle two kings -- Louis the sixteenth -- Louis the fifteenth -- Agonistic politics, 1871-1874 -- The Greek state, 1871 -- On the future of our educational institutions, third lecture, February 27th, 1872 -- Homer's contest -- Untimely meditations -- David Strauss : the confessor and the writer, 1873 -- Schopenhauer as educator, 1874 -- The free spirit, 1878-1880 -- Human, all too human : a book for free spirits, (...) 1878 -- Miscellaneous maxims and opinions, 1879 -- The wanderer and his shadow, 1880 -- The campaign against morality, 1881-1885 -- Dawn of day thoughts on the prejudices of morality, 1881 -- The joyful wisdom, 1882 -- Thus spoke Zarathustra : a book for everyone and no one, 1883-1885 -- On the new idol -- On the rabble -- On the Tarantulas -- On old and new law tablets -- Conversation with the kings -- Nachlass fragments, 1883-1885 -- Aristocratic radical, 1886-1887 -- Beyond good and evil : prelude to a philosophy of the future, 1886 -- The joyful wisdom, book v, 1887 -- On the genealogy of morals : a polemical tract, 1887 -- First essay, good and evil, good, and bad -- Second essay, guilt, bad conscience, and related matters -- Third essay, what do ascetic ideals mean? -- Nachlass fragments, 1885-1887 -- The antichrist, 1888 -- Twilight of the idols : or how one philosophises with a hammer, 1888 -- Morality as anti-nature -- The improvers of mankind -- What the Germans lack -- Skirmishes of an untimely man -- The antichrist : a curse on Christianity, 1888 -- Ecce homo : how one becomes what one is, 1888 -- Why I am so wise -- Why I write such good books -- The case of Wagner : a musician's problem -- Why I am a destiny -- Nachlass fragments, 1887-1888. (shrink)

This essay is an explanation of how the concept of the sublime is deployed by Nietzche in Dawn . This text represents a high point in Nietzche's thinking on the sublime. Nietzche, I show, wants us to purify ourselves of the origins and sources of our desire for the sublime because the higher feelings associated with it are bound up with humanity's investment in an imaginary world. However, he does not propose that we simply jettison the sublime but, rather, (...) seek new experiences of it and these will cenre on knowledge and our right to self-experimentation. I suggest that Nietzsche is in effect opening up new "spaces" and "times" for thinking. My interpretation aims to show in what way Nietzsche commits himself to fashioning new sublimities of philosophy, including expanding our appreciation of the beautiful. By focusing on the topic of the sublime I hope to reveal in what way Dawn represents an important moment in the evolution of Nietzsche's conception of the role and tasks of philosophy.Der Aufsatz untersucht, wie der Begriff des Erhabenen von Nietzsche in Morgenröhe verwendet wird, wo er einen Höhepunkt in Nietzsches Denken des Erhabenen bildet. Nietzsche will, so zeige ich, dass wir uns selbst von den Ursprüngen udn Quellen unseres strebens nach dem Erhabenen reinigen, weil die es begleitenden höheren Gefühle mit menschlichen Investionen in eine imaginäre Welt verbunden sind. Er will jedoch nicht, dass wir das Erhabene einfach über Bord werfen, sondern vielmehr nach neuen Erfahrungen des Erhabenen suchen, wobei das Wissen und unser Recht auf Selbstversuche dabei im Zentrum stehen. Ich meine, dass Nietzsche dadurch neue 'Räume' und 'Zeiten' für das Denken öffnet. Meine interpretation soll zeigen, auf welche Weise Neitzsche sich damit auf die Gestaltung neuer Sublimitäten der Philosophie festlegt, einschließlich der Erweiterrung unseres Gefallens am Schönen. Durch die Fokussierung auf das Erhabene hoff ich zeigen zu können, inwiefern Morgenröthe einen bedeutenden Moment in der Evolution von Nietzsches Auffassung über Rolle und Aufgaben der Philosophie darstellt. (shrink)

Nietzsche's wider political thinking has been widely recognized as therapeutic in orientation, as part of its connection to the history of psychology. This chapter examines the remarks that Nietzsche does make with respect to the political in Dawn, focusing on his concern with the effects on humanity of capital and industrial development upon Europeans. It explores his remarks on migration as a therapeutic measure for the workers of Europe and considers some of the problematic claims involved in (...) class='Hi'>Nietzsche's appeal to migration as a key part of his therapeutic approach. The chapter discusses whether or not Nietzsche's therapeutic politics in Dawn can be defended. Nietzsche contends that money substitutes for truth, and that the same fanaticism that previously drove truth‐seeking now drives people to the increasing, and increasingly rapid, acquisition of wealth. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on Nietzsche's analyses of religion and Christianity, as well as a religious figure such as Saint Paul, so as to highlight the character of his critical procedures and the probing manner in which he subjects so‐called “spiritual” phenomena and matters to psychological scrutiny. Nietzsche attempts to develop a purely psychological explanation of the religious states, including the need for salvation, one that will be free of mythology. One prejudice Nietzsche attacks in Dawn is that of (...) “pure spirit”. He seeks to expose the costs to the health of the body of a teaching of pure spirituality. An important point to note is that, on Nietzsche's account, Paul and Christianity both stand in opposition to science. According to Nietzsche, Christianity is said to be a religion out of touch with reality and is mortally opposed to the wisdom of the world or to “science”. (shrink)

This chapter examines Nietzsche's thinking on the concept of Mitleid and discusses the complexities of translating this concept into English in Dawn. It describes how Nietzsche's critical engagement with this concept is importantly dependent on the role of drives in his wider moral psychology. The chapter also examines the role of mood and social transmission of feeling in his critique, arguing that these factors play key roles in Nietzsche's development of a substantial critique of an ethic (...) of compassion, and in his pursuit of an alternative ethic. It shows how Nietzsche's exposure of an ethic of compassion as fundamentally flawed opens up the possibility of a reconfiguration of the concept of moral imagination, and facilitates development of a more robust, creative, and experimental concept of ethical imagination as a part of Nietzsche's broader effort to provide a framework for ongoing moral therapy. (shrink)

Since the dawn of Romanticism, artists and intellectuals in Germany have maintained an abiding interest in the gods and myths of antiquity while calling for a new mythology suitable to the modern age. In this study, George S. Williamson examines the factors that gave rise to this distinct and profound longing for myth. In doing so, he demonstrates the entanglement of aesthetic and philosophical ambitions in Germany with some of the major religious conflicts of the nineteenth century. Through readings (...) of key intellectuals ranging from Herder and Schelling to Wagner and Nietzsche, Williamson highlights three crucial factors in the emergence of the German engagement with myth: the tradition of Philhellenist neohumanism, a critique of contemporary aesthetic and public life as dominated by private interests, and a rejection of the Bible by many Protestant scholars as the product of a foreign, "Oriental" culture. According to Williamson, the discourse on myth in Germany remained bound up with problems of Protestant theology and confessional conflict through the nineteenth century and beyond. A compelling adventure in intellectual history, this study uncovers the foundations of Germany's fascination with myth and its enduring cultural legacy. (shrink)

This chapter clarifies several of the main aspects of Nietzsche's work on subjectivity, self, and drives in Dawn. It shows how Nietzsche's thinking on subjectivity, the self, and drives in Dawn emerges from his affirmation of the Enlightenment spirit, his hope for a new enlightenment, and his critical engagement with morality. The chapter examines the skeptical dimension of Nietzsche's thinking on subjectivity and the self. It points out how Nietzsche criticizes some of common presumptions about (...) subjectivity and the self, using the notion of drives to stimulate the critical engagement he is calling for. The chapter explores how Nietzsche maintains a commitment to the notion of self‐cultivation in Dawn. It also considers how Nietzsche's undermining of such presumptions leads him to make an important distinction between the subjectivity of an agent shaped by customary morality, and that of a free‐spirited ethical agent. (shrink)

This chapter examines Nietzsche's remarks on Epicurus in the earlier middle writings, to provide an interpretative framework through which to clarify Nietzsche's thinking on death in Dawn. It considers some points of continuity between Nietzsche's account of death in Dawn and in his later texts. Nietzsche champions Epicurus as a figure who has sought to show mankind how it can conquer its fears of death. The chapter contends that Nietzsche uses Epicurean thinking as a strategy (...) to do his work in Dawn, picking up the Epicurean doctrine on death and putting it to critical effect. Nietzsche's fundamental aim in writing about death, within the wider context of his project in Dawn, is to counter our socially conditioned yearning for immortality. A careful reading of Epicurus attests to the significance of Epicureanism as a strategy informing Nietzsche's thinking on death in Dawn. (shrink)

Drawing on Zen as well as on Nietzsche's thought and its ramifications in and for western culture, this book is a fervent call for a re-visioning of philosophy ...

Some major figures of early (1977-1984) Post-Punk, such as Joy Divison’s Ian Curtis or The Fall’s Mark E. Smith, were strongly influenced by existentialist themes they encountered in the writings of philosophers such as Camus or Nietzsche. Central among these themes is the modern struggle with nihilism. Nietzsche (at times) felt hopeful that some of us still possess the strength to see our modern disorientation as a creative opportunity and to (eventually) overcome the threat of nihilism: in this vein he (...) declares that when "we hear the news that ‘the old god is dead’” it is “as if a new dawn shone on us." By contrast, I argue that foundational Post-Punk artists express a post-Nietzschean, 20th century stance of succumbing to nihilism, an overwhelming experience of defeat and self-disgust. They write and sing from a profound sense that the modern degeneration diagnosed by Nietzsche has now reached unprecedented lows so that our “disgust at life”, our “exhaustion and… wish for the ‘end’…for being otherwise, being elsewhere” has become wholly inescapable. Nietzsche's new dawn has faded. (shrink)

This chapter considers how care of the self is a fundamental part of the task of experimenting with what the ethical, when freed from the constraints of moral fanaticism, might mean. Nietzsche provides a sustained critique of moral fanaticism that carries important implications for contemporary analysis of security. Through his psychological probing of the “fantastical instincts” and of the need for the feeling of power Nietzsche is led to cultivate skepticism about politics in Dawn and to favor instead a (...) program of therapeutic self‐cultivation. Nietzsche also admires Epictetus on account of his dedication to his own ego and for resisting the glorification of thinking and living for others. Nietzsche holds to the view that human beings need to be discouraged from making important decisions while in a condition of romantic love, observing how too much of life is easily squandered with the chanciness of marriages rendering any great advance of reason and humanity impossible. (shrink)

_Dawn_ is the most recent volume to appear in the first complete, critical, and annotated English edition of all of Nietzsche's work. The edition, organized originally by Ernst Behler and Bernd Magnus, is a translation of the celebrated _Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden_ edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. The book is the first to appear under the editorial direction of Alan D. Schrift, Keith Ansell-Pearson, and Duncan Large, and to incorporate subsequent corrections to the 1980 edition. Continuing (...) the positivistic turn of _Human, All Too Human_, _Dawn_ is the second installment in the free spirit trilogy that culminated in _The Joyful Science_. One of Nietzsche's "yes-saying" books, it marks his first significant confrontation with morality and offers glimpses of many of the signature themes in his mature works. _Dawn_ has come to be admired in recent years for its ethical naturalism, psychological observations, and therapeutic insights. Presented in Nietzsche's aphoristic style, it is a text with hidden riches, one that must be read between the lines and one that the discerning reader will admire and cherish. (shrink)

Nietzsche employs the concept of pregnancy metaphorically at various points in his writings; discussing the pregnancy of philosophers (GM III 8, BGE 292), spiritual pregnancy (EH, Clever 3; GS 72) and being pregnant with thoughts or deeds (D 552). I explore how Nietzsche uses the notion of pregnancy in Dawn, arguing that it connects to the theme of self-cultivation. I employ the various associations that Nietzsche makes with pregnancy, including the unknown, selfishness, strangeness, and solitude, to elucidate Nietzsche’s understanding (...) of self-cultivation. I show how the metaphor of pregnancy, in which we do not control what we give birth to, both expresses and helps us explore the problem of what, if the self is made up of and directed by many competing drives, shapes and directs self-cultivation. I argue that Nietzsche’s deliberate references to the context of Plato’s discussion of pregnancy involve a self-conscious challenge to Plato’s concept of the philosopher, and of philosophy, and a reimagining of what they will give birth to. The appropriation of Plato’s famous metaphor thus underscores how Nietzsche’s concept and method of self-cultivation contrasts to Plato’s care for the soul and is rooted in attentiveness to the body and its drives. (shrink)

This article addresses the role and meaning of prayer as well as the language of piety and praise in Nietzsche’s writings, notably in Zarathustra. This essay was first presented as a talk in German at the 2017 Nietzsche colloquium in Sils Maria, the theme of which was “Zarathustra und Dionysos”. In preparing it for a publication in English, the argument has been reworked and expanded and references have been added, while partly preserving the tone and structure of the oral delivery. (...) I am grateful to the instructive comments and suggestions of the anonymous reviewers for Nietzsche-Studien. Nietzsche can be read as an uncompromising critic of religion but also as the initiator of a new form of faith, described by some scholars as a “Dionysian piety”. The analysis takes its lead from the way in which Z refers to his yes-saying as also saying “amen”, exploring how Nietzsche explicitly incorporates the language of religious discourse into his writing. Examining passages where he explicitly questions the adoption of confessional language and prayer, it criticizes as overly simplistic the view of his thinking as seeking a new piety. The discussion of the significance of prayer from a psychological, linguistic, and poetological perspective highlights the experience of “inspiration” as a key to the adoption of confessional language in Z. In an interpretation of the last part of this book, it shows how its concluding scenes coalesce precisely around the role and possibility of prayer and piety, and how a crisis in the narrative is triggered by the inability of Zarathustra’s visitors to properly understand his message in this regard. A concluding interpretation of the section “Before Sunrise” in the third part of the book shows how it gathers the philosophical stakes involved in Nietzsche’s understanding of prayer, piety, and confessional praise. (shrink)

This collection both reflects and contributes to the recent surge of philosophical interest in The Antichrist and represents a major contribution to Nietzsche studies. Nietzsche regarded The Antichrist, along with Zarathustra, as his most important work. In it he outlined many epoch-defining ideas, including his dawning realisation of the 'death of God' and the inception of a new, post-moral epoch in Western history. He called the work 'a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision (...) that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed'. One certainly need not share Nietzsche's estimation of his achievement in The Antichrist to conclude that there is something significant going on in this work. Indeed, even if Nietzsche overestimated its transformative power, it would be valuable nonetheless to have a clearer sense of why he thought so highly of this particular book, which is something of an outlier in his oeuvre. Until now, there has been no book that attempts to account with philosophical precision for the multiple themes addressed in this difficult and complex work. (shrink)

This volume includes the commentaries on two works from the third volume of the Critical Studies Edition of Nietzsche's Works: Morgenröthe (The Dawn), and Idyllen aus Messina (Idylls from Messina). Volume 3.2 will be devoted to commentary on The Gay Science. This volume includes the manuscript facsimiles of the Idyllen aus Messina.

This chapter examines the consequences of Nietzsche's campaign against morality for the pursuit of knowledge in philosophy, and specifically, on values and methods of the German Enlightenment. In Dawn, Nietzsche explores how an experimental approach to knowing and to knowledge involves us in adopting different ways of being toward things in the world, as well as toward ourselves and our experiences, and in using associated diverse methods of inquiry. Nietzsche's free‐spirit writings, including Dawn, are works of (...) a particular kind of enlightenment project that works against all expressions of fanaticism, especially religious and moral, and in an effort to temper emotional and mental excess. Nietzsche's primary commitment in Dawn is to experimentation in which the love of, or passion for, knowledge gives humanity back its right to engage in self‐experimentation. (shrink)

Based on an original interpretation of the core concepts in Nietzsche’s thought, and on their subsequent overcoming, this book embodies a radically new perspective that in essence reconsiders, upon grounded ontological premises and revealed anthropological evidences, both the notions of human and superhuman as still bound to a prevailing standpoint of impotence and limitation. The chief themes of metaphysics, from being to becoming, from entity to identity are all dealt with in the leading terms of the category power and of (...) its dialectical self-negation to inhere in parallel within a far more extended view of the human respecting a dualist assumption and the unfathomable spatio-temporal vastness of the Real in which the phase of man is but infinitesimal. It is supported by more than 500 notes and a glossary with more than 60 key terms, each carefully explained. References are contained to authors spanning millennia and in several fields of knowledge. Narrative suggestions are also included, serving as an aid to the comprehension of the exposition to follow in compliance with the underlying mythical aspect of the argument. A challenge to existing concepts, this book introduces the reader to the actual existence of a human reality which exceeds the hitherto known and considered from whatever point of view and which has remained latent and indistinct under the form of myths, from the dawn of history until nowadays mass media culture as a need of power in an intrinsically powerless human world. Revealed in its necessary function of actual presence antithetical to the limitedness of man, and referred accordingly to the comprehensive meaning of power, this condition radically opposes any limitation thus far ascribed to the human. (shrink)

Riassunto: Questo lavoro mira a un confronto tra la psicologia morale di Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche e l’approccio socio-intuizionista al giudizio morale proposto da Jonathan Haidt. Questo confronto metterà in luce somiglianze notevoli tra i due modelli. Il lavoro intende inoltre chiarire quali implicazioni Nietzsche trae dalla sua descrizione della psicologia umana e quali cambiamenti di prospettiva egli esorta a operare rispetto alla comprensione di noi stessi come “esseri morali”. Parole chiave: Giudizio morale; Sviluppo morale; Intuizionismo; Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche; Jonathan Haidt (...) The Dawn of Moral Psychology. Nietzsche’s Moral Psychology and some Recent Empirical Investigations: Comparing Nietzsche’s moral psychology and the social intuitionist approach to moral judgment proposed by Jonathan Haidt, this paper reveals remarkable similarities between the two models. It also clarifies what implications Nietzsche drew from his description of human psychology and the perspective changes these entail for understanding ourselves as “moral beings”. Keywords: Moral Judgment; Moral Development; Intuitionism; Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche; Jonathan Haidt. (shrink)

The text presented here is dedicated to the specific features of Pascal’s thought that Nietzsche pursued in his middle period – especially in the works Human, All Too Human and Dawn of Day. The key question that the author tries to answer is: How does Pascal’s tragic view of the world relate to the negative conception of freedom of Nietzsche’s “free spirits”? In his analysis, the author focuses primarily on the opposition between the concepts of the herd and the (...) contemplative life, as well as on the motifs of distraction, boredom, and despair. Last but not least, the article analyzes Nietzsche’s concept of the strong and predisposed temperament, which he applies specifically to Pascal, Montaigne, and Nietzsche himself. In the conclusion of the study, the author attempts to prove the connection between the process of liberation and healing in all three of the above-mentioned authors. (shrink)

Many of Nietzsche's texts, particularly those that form part of his later writings, have received significant individual attention within English‐speaking Nietzsche studies. This chapter argues that Nietzsche's core critical innovations in Dawn are in identifying why customary morality is a significant problem for humanity, and in developing a sustained critique of this form of morality in order to motivate critical re‐engagement with the ethical. In Dawn, Nietzsche attacks the view that everything that exists has a connection (...) with morality and thus a moral significance can be projected onto the world. Nietzsche's project in Dawn focuses on addressing the presumptions and prejudices of customary morality. The challenge of understanding the philosophical contribution that Dawn makes is complicated by Nietzsche's writing styles: he combines innovative deployment of aphorism and punctuation with use of multiple voices or characters, and a range of rhetorical devices. (shrink)

The philosophy of the art of living asks the age-old question of orienting one’s own life: ‘How can I live well?’ An art of living is always called for when people do not know what to do and how to go on, when the ways of life are no longer self-evident, when traditions, conventions, rules, and norms lose their plausibility and individuals begin to worry about themselves. The art of living and of its philosophy has a practical aim: It is (...) not concerned with ethical principles, but with the concrete practice of people’s everyday life, with their individual and successful lives. Friedrich Nietzsche, as he often did, pushed the problem of the art of living to the extreme, making it palpable both in its dignity and in its force. For him, the modern uncertainty of human orientation caused by nihilism pointed to art and aesthetics, which, he supposed, makes life if not justifiable, at least bearable. The arts open up a multi-perspectival seeing and hearing, they experiment with alternative forms and techniques, and create the finest sensibilities for both – Nietzsche himself, with his rich forms of philosophical writing, is an outstanding example of this. -/- The volume we present here, entails contributions of German-speaking scholars on Nietzsche and the ways of living he proposes, especially, but not alone in Dawn. The papers are selected from a book series on the common issue “Critical Art of Living,” edited by Günter Gödde, Jörg Zirfas, and others, and translated on behalf of the Foundation for Philosophical Orientation. (shrink)

This essay provides a close reading of the intriguing aphorism entitled “In the great silence”’ that opens the final part of Nietzsche’s text of 1881, Dawn (Morgenröthe). Highly enigmatic and interpretatively demanding, aphorism 423 of the book is an instance of Nietzsche's unique style of doing philosophy and reveals important facets of his thinking. Our essay in particular attempts to illuminate Nietzsche’s thinking on nature, the sublime, and silence. We bring him into rapport with Emerson in an effort (...) to clarify the aphorism’s teaching on silence and with Santayana to illuminate the nature and character of our sympathy with nature. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Killing God, Liberating the “Subject”: Nietzsche and Post-God FreedomMichael LackeyIIndeed, we philosophers and “free spirits” feel, when we hear the news that “the old god is dead,” as if a new dawn shone on us; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, premonitions, expectations. 1After God’s death, if Michel Foucault is to be believed, the death of the subject followed quite naturally. But how, one might ask, did that (...) fateful event of God’s death necessarily lead to the demise of that most noble animal? Answering this question is crucial, for once we understand how, for Nietzsche, God’s existence and His metaphorical participation in the creation of humanity are most destructive of what is most vital within the human, then we will see how, in killing God and His crown of creation, Nietzsche does not become the quintessential nihilist; rather, he becomes, to his mind, the first sane voice crying in the intellectual wilderness: make way the coming of a new human, a “subject” which can only become a “self “ when it paradoxically learns to overcome its very constructed “self.” Nietzsche’s logic therefore runs as follows: so long as God exists, a subject which overcomes itself cannot come into being; for as Richard Schacht rightly notes, the God-hypothesis serves as a support for the traditional subject-hypothesis in Nietzsche’s writings. So to produce a self-overcoming subject Nietzsche must first kill what he considers that stodgy old tyrant of the soul. But this raises the question of how one goes about doing away with [End Page 737] God. In Twilight of the Idols Nietzsche gives his reader a puzzling answer to this question when he says that he fears that “we are not getting rid of God because we still believe in grammar” (“Reason,” 5). 2 Given Nietzsche’s logic, to kill off God he needs to eliminate belief in grammar, and once God is dead, he can then do away with the subject. In what follows I will show how Nietzsche tries to eliminate God and the traditional subject through his extended analysis of what it means to “believe in grammar.”IIIf there is today still no lack of those who do not know how indecent it is to “believe”—or a sign of decadence, of a broken will to live—well, they will know it tomorrow. 3To understand what it means to believe in grammar, it is best to note how Nietzsche contrasts belief and freedom. More starkly, we could say that for Nietzsche to have faith means, necessarily, to lack freedom; or to be free means, necessarily, to reject faith. Nietzsche makes this clear in the fifth book of GS when he says: “Once a human being reaches the fundamental conviction that he must be commanded, he becomes ‘a believer.’ Conversely, one could conceive of such a pleasure and power of self determination, such a freedom of the will that the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for certainty, being practiced in maintaining himself on insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near abysses” (§ 347). I isolate this passage not in order to outline Nietzsche’s criticism of belief but rather to understand how Nietzsche defines freedom by contrasting it with belief. Such an analysis of course begs the question how it is possible that belief necessarily precludes freedom. Intuitively, it would seem that belief and freedom entail no contradiction. For instance, given two choices, to believe in God or not to believe in God, I exercise my freedom in choosing one belief over the other. With this example, it would seem that belief necessarily presupposes freedom. So how is it that Nietzsche concludes that freedom and belief are irreconcilable?That Nietzsche considers faith obscene is clear when he tells us in AC that belief of any kind is a “sign of decadence” (§ 50) which leads to “self-alienation” (§ 54). In fact he goes so far as to claim that faith is actually “slavery in a higher sense” (§ 54). To see why belief implies slavery we must first understand what Nietzsche means by faith. While the standard view suggests that faith is... (shrink)

An introduction and translator's note by translator Peter Preuss are included in the text.

The presence of interpretation according to different perspectives in art forms in which we expect the 'truth' about the subject matter, provides an opportunity to understand what truth means in the context of perspectivism, the view that there is no objective standard of truth free from any perspective against which we can measure the veracity of an account. In this article, I explore perspectival truth through Nietzsche's philosophical autobiography, Ecce Homo , and Herzog's films, particularly Little Dieter Needs to (...) Fly. I argue that these artworks both contribute to and exemplify a perspectival truth practice. (shrink)

Throughout Nietzsche’s writings we find discussion of various human maladies and sicknesses, such as the historical malady and decadence, along withvarious conceptions of a possible cure or therapy. In this essay I argue that Nietzsche’s conception of philosophy’s therapeutic role centres on the protection and promotion of authenticity and explore his preoccupation with authentic existence in each one of his three main intellectual periods. After an opening section on therapeia and paideia in Nietzsche, I focus first on writings from his (...) early period, notably the untimelies on history and Schopenhauer; in the next main section I select Dawn from the middle period as a text that highlights Nietzsche’s continued preoccupation with authenticity; and in the final main section I focus on the late Nietzsche and note the continuities in his lifelong project of self-cultivation and emphasis on the goals of culture. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s perspectivism has received restricted and unrestricted interpretations. The latter take the cognitive effects of ‘perspectives’ to be pervasive and general; the former argue they are restricted to special subject matters, have limited effects, or are not essentially cognitive at all. I argue on textual grounds that Nietzsche was committed to the unrestricted view. Comparison to A.W. Moore’s treatment of perspectival representation in Points of View illuminates both the nature of perspectivism and key arguments needed to defend it. Nietzschean perspectivism (...) must deny the very possibility of absolute representations (sensu Moore), and to do so, it must block a form of argument that promises to integrate perspectival representations into progressively less restricted, and ultimately absolute, representations of the world. Such arguments depend on a strong assumption about the unity of the independent world, which Moore accepts and Nietzsche denies. Nietzsche’s pluralism about perspectives thereby turns out to rely on pluralism about the world, which shapes his understanding of us as essentially bounded cognitive agents. Nietzsche holds that the longing for absolute representation manifest in Moore, Leibniz, and many other philosophers, which aspires to overcome the limitations of perspective, amounts to ascetic self-denial about our cognitive condition. (shrink)

This collection of essays provides an introduction to Nietzsche's thought and educational writings, and examines questions concerning the centrality of values for education in postmodernity.

This article challenges the claim that Friedrich Nietzsche is a good reader of the French moralist, Chamfort, when it comes to Chamfort's politics. Chamfort is a meritocrat rather than the bitter egalitarian Nietzsche protrays him to be. Moreover, the moralist's meritocratic beliefs, his hopes for a new social order and the emergence of a new aristocracy resemble many of Nietzsche's own values. Had Nietzsche read Chamfort as a meritocrat, he could have found much to stimulate and clarify his own (...) thoughts about the aristocracy of the future. (shrink)