The Mask Of Enlightenment

This landmark study is a detailed textual and thematic analysis of one of Nietzsche’s most important but least understood works. Stanley Rosen argues that in Zarathustra Nietzsche lays the groundwork for philosophical and political revolution, proposing a change in humanity’s condition that would be achieved by eliminating the decadent existing race and breeding a new race to take its place. Rosen discusses Nietzsche’s systematically duplicitous rhetoric of esoteric messages in Zarathustra, and he places the book in the contexts of Greek, Christian, Enlightenment, and postmodernist thought.

This landmark study is a detailed textual and thematic analysis of one of Nietzsche's most important but least understood works. Stanley Rosen argues that in Zarathustra Nietzsche lays the groundwork for philosophical and political revolution, proposing a change in humanity's condition that would be achieved by eliminating the decadent exisiting race and breeding a new race to take its place. Rosen discusses Nietzsche's systematically duplicitous rhetoric messages in Zarathustra, and he places the book in the contexts of Greek, Christian, Enlightenment, and postmodernist thought.

This book is intended as a major interdisciplinary contribution to the study of Nietzsche’s thought in particular, and the political right more generally. Historically the assessment of Nietzsche’s politics has ranged from denouncing him as a forerunner to Nazism to claiming he effectively did not have articulated political convictions. During the latter half of the 20th century he surprisingly became a major theoretical influence on a variety of post-structuralist radical critics, who saw in his perspectivism and genealogy of power useful tools to critique existent structures of domination. This collection of essays reframes the debate by looking at Nietzsche’s constructive political project defending aristocratic values from the levelling influence of the herd and its liberal, socialist, and democratic spokesmen. The essays will also explore how this defense of aristocratic values continues to have an influence on the political right, inspiring moderates like Jordan Peterson and far right authors and activists like Aleksandr Dugin and Steve Bannon.

Helping students and researchers get to grips with the work of this compelling but often baffling thinker, this introductory guide surveys the impact and continuing influence of the work of Friedrich Nietzsche on modern European thought. Interpreting Nietzsche explores how some of the most important thinkers of the 20th century have responded to the legacy of his writings. Each chapter focuses on how Nietzsche's work has been read by such major figures as: Martin Heidegger Jacques Derrida Giles Deleuze Luce Irigaray Gianni Vattimo Encouraging students to take their studies further, each chapter also includes annotated guides to further primary and secondary reading.

Faithful to the Earth, winner of the Bross Prize for Christian Scholarship that is awarded only once every 10 years, goes way beyond contrasting the theist with the atheist. J. Thomas Howe argues that Alfred North Whitehead's understanding of God lays the foundation for a religious life strikingly similar to that described in Friedrich Nietzsche's tragic, but affirmative, philosophy.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra is Nietzsche's most problematic text. There appears to be no thematic connection between its four Parts and numerous sections. To make it even worse, the book contains a number of thematic contradictions. The standard approach has been a method of selective reading, that is, most critics select a few brilliant passages for edification and ignore the rest. This approach has turned Nietzsche's text into a collection of disjointed fragments. Going against this prevalent approach, T.K. Seung presents the first unified reading of the whole book. He reads it as the record of Zarathustra's epic journey to find spiritual values in the secular world. The alleged thematic contradictions of the text are shown to indicate the turns and twists that are dictated by the hero's epic battle against his formidable opponent. His heroic struggle is eventually resolved by the power of a pantheistic nature-religion. Thus Nietzsche's ostensibly atheistic work turns out to be a highly religious text. The author uncovers this epic plot by reading Nietzsche's text as a baffling series of riddles and puzzles. Hence his reading is not only edifying but also breathtaking. In this unprecedented enterprise, the author takes a complex interdisciplinary approach, engaging the five disciplines of philosophy, psychology, religious studies, literary analysis, and cultural history.