Unpublished Writings From The Period Of Unfashionable Observations

This is the third volume to appear in an edition that will be the first complete, critical, and annotated English translation of all of Nietzsche's work. It provides for the first time English translations of all of Nietzsche's unpublished notebooks from the summer of 1872 to the end of 1874.

In recent decades, memory has become one of the major concepts and a dominant topic in philosophy, sociology, politics, history, science, cultural studies, literary theory, and the discussions of trauma and the Holocaust. In contemporary debates, the concept of memory is often used rather broadly and thus not always unambiguously. For this reason, the clarification of the range of the historical meaning of the concept of memory is a very important and urgent task. This volume shows how the concept of memory has been used and appropriated in different historical circumstances and how it has changed throughout the history of philosophy. In ancient philosophy, memory was considered a repository of sensible and mental impressions and was complemented by recollection-the process of recovering the content of past thoughts and perceptions. Such an understanding of memory led to the development both of mnemotechnics and the attempts to locate memory within the structure of cognitive faculties. In contemporary philosophical and historical debates, memory frequently substitutes for reason by becoming a predominant capacity to which one refers when one wants to explain not only the personal identity but also a historical, political, or social phenomenon. In contemporary interpretation, it is memory, and not reason, that acts in and through human actions and history, which is a critical reaction to the overly rationalized and simplified concept of reason in the Enlightenment. Moreover, in modernity memory has taken on one of the most distinctive features of reason: it is thought of as capable not only of recollecting past events and meanings, but also itself. In this respect, the volume can be also taken as a reflective philosophical attempt by memory to recall itself, its functioning and transformations throughout its own history.

"In recent decades, memory has become a dominant topic in philosophy, politics, history, science, literature, and the discussions of trauma and the Holocaust. This volume shows how the concept of memory has been used in different historical circumstances and how it has changed throughout the history of philosophy"--

Nietzsche's love affair with the theater was among the most profound and prolonged intellectual engagements of his life, but his transformational role in the history of the modern stage has yet to be explored. In this pathbreaking account, David Kornhaber vividly shows how Nietzsche reimagined the theatrical event as a site of philosophical invention that is at once ancestor, antagonist, and handmaiden to the discipline of philosophy itself. August Strindberg, George Bernard Shaw, and Eugene O'Neill— seminal figures in the modern drama's evolution and avowed Nietzscheans all—came away from their encounters with Nietzsche's writings with an impassioned belief in the philosophical potential of the live theatrical event, coupled with a reestimation of the dramatist's power to shape that event in collaboration with the actor. In these playwrights' reactions to and adaptations of Nietzsche's radical rethinking of the stage lay the beginnings of a new direction in modern theater and dramatic literature.

Nietzsche's Zarathustra takes an interdisciplinary approach to Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, focusing on the philosophical function of its literary techniques and its fictional mode of presentation. It argues that the fictional format is essential to Nietzsche's philosophical message in his work. Part of that message is Nietzsche's alternative to the Western worldview as developed by Plato's dialogues and the Christian Gospel, which he presents through the teachings of his hero, Zarathustra. Another part of that message is that any doctrine, including those of Zarathustra himself, has an ambivalent nature. Although doctrinal formulations are designed to preserve and communicate philosophical insights, they can become dead formulas, out of touch with the live philosophical discoveries that they aimed to capture. Thus Spoke Zarathustra explores Zarathustra's own vulnerability to this risk, and his way of regaining real connection with living wisdom. The doctrine of eternal recurrence, which is particular prominent in Zarathustra, is a case in point. The doctrine is offered in opposition to the worldview that Nietzsche associates with the Christian doctrine of sin, which in his view promotes a view of this life as devoid of intrinsic value. However, certain ways of adhering to this doctrine themselves rob life of its value. The book also defends the importance of Part IV of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which many scholars have seen as unimportant by comparison with the first three parts. Nietzsche's Zarathustra argues that Part III would not have been a culmination for the work, and that Part IV is essential to Nietzsche's project. Part IV's allusions to Apuleius' The Golden Ass, an ancient Menippean satire, suggest that it should be read as a satire in which Zarathustra falls into and recovers from folly. It is thus the culminating statement of the point that there is always a discrepancy between the living philosophical insight and any attempt to articulate it,

Although he had a short career, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was a prolific writer, publishing seventeen books in the span of seventeen years. Convinced that “style must live,” he focused obsessively on a wide variety of factors that could potentially affect readers’ uptake of his work, from the craft of preface writing to punctuation choices to the aesthetics of book jackets. Nietzsche as Stylist traces the emergence of the philosopher’s idiosyncratic writing style as he experimented with various rhetorical approaches. Introducing a contextual and historical sensibility to readings of Nietzsche’s published and unpublished works – as well as his correspondence, his journal entries, and other documents he interacted with, such as reviews of his work – the book highlights how Nietzsche’s style evolved in relation to his life and world. Martine Béland situates his writings within contemporaneous debates about the professionalization of academia: by resisting what he felt was an anti-philosophical climate, Nietzsche developed a synesthetic and performative style, hoping that his philosophical ideas could engage diverse readers in multiple ways. Through careful stylistic and contextual analysis, Nietzsche as Stylist explores how Nietzsche cultivated skills as a rhetorician and a writer to bring philosophy into a wider field of attention, thought, and experience.