Nietzsche: An Introduction

This book is both a concise and lucid introduction to Nietzsche and an original contribution to critical debates concerning Nietzsche interpretation and reception. This overview takes issue with the prevailing tendency to focus on Nietzsche s later work, which reaches its extreme with Heidegger s almost exclusive focus on the group of late notes posthumously collected as The Will to Power. Vattimo aims to mediate between two prominent hermeneutic readings of Nietzsche: Wilhelm Dilthey s view that Nietzsche s work fits into the nineteenth-century tradition of the philosophy of life and Heidegger s belief that Nietzsche is best understood as the author of a pair of ontological doctrines, the will to power and the eternal return of the same. Vattimo aims to show that Nietzsche s early interest in cultural and historical criticism can be found throughout his corpus and that it informs, and helps to explain, Nietzsche s later doctrines and writings. This allows us to understand these later doctrines in a deeper way, to see their connections with his wider concerns, and thus to make greater sense of Nietzsche s philosophy as a whole.