Nietzsche As Egoist And Mystic

This book is an attempt to make sense of the tension in Nietzsche’s work between the unashamedly egocentric and the apparently mystical. While scholars have tended to downplay one or other of these aspects, it is the author’s contention that the two are not only compatible but mutually illuminating. This book demonstrates Nietzsche’s sustained interest in mysticism from the time of The Birth of Tragedy right through to the end of his productive life. This book argues against situating Nietzsche’s religious thought in the context of Buddhist or Christian mystical traditions, demonstrating the inadequacy of attempts to mediate between Nietzsche and Meister Eckhart and the Bodhisattva ideal of Mahayana Buddhism. Rather, it is argued that Nietzsche’s egoism and mysticism are best understood in the intellectual context which he himself avowed, according to which his “ancestors” were Heraclitus, Empedocles, Spinoza, and Goethe.

This book is an attempt to make sense of the tension in Nietzsche’s work between the unashamedly egocentric and the apparently mystical. While scholars have tended to downplay one or other of these aspects, it is the author’s contention that the two are not only compatible but mutually illuminating. This book demonstrates Nietzsche’s sustained interest in mysticism from the time of The Birth of Tragedy right through to the end of his productive life. This book argues against situating Nietzsche’s religious thought in the context of Buddhist or Christian mystical traditions, demonstrating the inadequacy of attempts to mediate between Nietzsche and Meister Eckhart and the Bodhisattva ideal of Mahayana Buddhism. Rather, it is argued that Nietzsche’s egoism and mysticism are best understood in the intellectual context which he himself avowed, according to which his “ancestors” were Heraclitus, Empedocles, Spinoza, and Goethe.

Reproduction of the original: Nietzsche and other Exponents of Individualism by Paul Carus

The ten essays that comprise this volume wrestle with the tension between the individual and the community in Nietzsche's philosophy.

This volume explores facets of Nietzsche relatively untouched by the majority of the vast literature on him. Stambaugh concentrates on his ideas on art and creativity in general, regarding these realms of human endeavor as not limited to aesthetics in the narrower sense, but as constitutive of life itself. She also explores a much neglected side of Nietzsche's thought, a dimension that is poetic and mystical. Drawing mainly from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche's most enigmatic and profound work, Stambaugh interprets Nietzsche's ultimate affirmation of life out of his experience of eternity.

Julian Young provides the most comprehensive biography available of the life and philosophy of the nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

Jungian psychologist Liliane Frey-Rohn describes the psychological factors that brought Nietzsche into the depths of his own nature through a process in which sacrifice, loss and intense loneliness alternated with hero worship and "audacious self-glorification." In this book, a number of human problems are explored and discussed in relation to the brilliant but haunted biography of the 19th century philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. The problem of good and evil, the search for personal truth, the questions of nihilism and life’s meaning, and the dangers of self-inflation in the wake of religious experience are each considered in this in-depth psychological analysis. The author sheds new light on Nietzsche’s extraordinary life and work, illuminating many aspects of his personal spiritual struggle, while providing insights into some of the most basic and problematic questions that confront us all.