Nietzsche's 1886 prefaces, in which he reorients his earlier work toward his future project o... more Nietzsche's 1886 prefaces, in which he reorients his earlier work toward his future project of the revaluation of values, are pervaded by the theme of health, and more specifically, Nietzsche's own health. In On the Genealogy of Morals, health is not a topic in its own right, but it recedes into the background as an evaluative criterion by which to judge Christian morality. In this article, I use Nietzsche's discussion of health in the 1886 prefaces to shed light on the role of health in his project of revaluation. Specifically, I will claim that in attending to health, Nietzsche experiments with an evaluation that twists free of a faith in opposite values.
British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2020
Nietzsche thought of himself as heralding an era of ‘new philosophers’, philosophers who would pr... more Nietzsche thought of himself as heralding an era of ‘new philosophers’, philosophers who would produce new philosophical insights and practice a new kind of philosophy. This is one of the many sign...
Nietzsche's 1886 prefaces, in which he reorients his earlier work toward his future project of th... more Nietzsche's 1886 prefaces, in which he reorients his earlier work toward his future project of the revaluation of values, are pervaded by the theme of health, and more specifically, Nietzsche's own health. In On the Genealogy of Morals, health is not a topic in its own right, but it recedes into the background as an evaluative criterion by which to judge Christian morality. In this article, I use Nietzsche's discussion of health in the 1886 prefaces to shed light on the role of health in his project of revaluation. Specifically, I will claim that in attending to health, Nietzsche experiments with an evaluation that twists free of a faith in opposite values. In 1886, as Nietzsche's thought becomes more explicitly oriented toward the project of a revaluation of all values, he reframes BT and three middle period books with prefaces. Four out of the five prefaces show Nietzsche noticeably occupied with the theme of health, which serves in each of those four as a lens orienting the reader toward his earlier work. In his "Attempt at Self-Criticism, " for instance, Nietzsche suggests that the principal contribution of BT lies in the idea of the Dionysian, which carries the promise that there might exist "neuroses of health" (BT P:4).1 The preface to GS finds Nietzsche looking for a "philosophical physician" who might "pursue the problem of the total health of a people, time, race or of humanity" (GS P:2). In the preface to HH I, Nietzsche ruminates over the coming "great health" of the free spirit, while in the preface to HH II he instructs us to interpret the entirety of the two volumes of HH as "the precepts of health" (HH II P:2). As all of these examples indicate and the final example makes explicit, the prefaces reframe these early and middle period works around
While the Apollonian and Dionysian in Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy are often understood as a reha... more While the Apollonian and Dionysian in Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy are often understood as a rehashing of Schopenhauerian metaphysics, recent accounts have shown that his use of these concepts is at odds with such a metaphysics, interpreting them instead as myths. I follow this insight that Nietzsche is engaging in mythmaking in BT, but I argue that proponents of this view have missed an important dimension of that mythmaking: that Nietzsche presents multiple narratives of Apollo and Dionysus from different perspectives, each of which offers different senses of tragic affirmation. This perspectival feature of BT sheds light on the more formal ‘perspectivism’ articulated in the Third Essay of On the Genealogy of Morals, as Nietzsche uses perspective in both cases to generate an epistemic alternative to the life-denying features of modern science. Thus, the metaphysical discussions of the early Nietzsche are inseparable from the development of a stylistic practice that constitutes a radical rejection of metaphysics for the later Nietzsche, and this style is part of a project of generating a more life-affirming approach to knowledge.
British Journal for the History of Philosophy , 2018
A simple but significant historical fact has been overlooked in interpretations of Nietzsche's et... more A simple but significant historical fact has been overlooked in interpretations of Nietzsche's eternal recurrence. In making eternal recurrence the standard for the affirmation and love of life, Nietzsche accepts an understanding of love developed in Plato's Symposium: love means ‘wanting to possess the good forever’. I argue that Plato develops two distinct types of love, which remain in tension with one another. I then show that a corresponding tension arises in Nietzsche's work when we consider eternal recurrence as the love of life. By making love central in the phrase ‘love of life’, and by allowing Plato's thoughts on love to inform the love of life that Nietzsche expresses in the thought of eternal recurrence, I show that Nietzsche's dramatic presentations of the eternal recurrence do not present us with a test, but in revealing an incompatibility between loving something in life and loving life in its entirety, they present the tragic conflict in the task of life affirmation.
Nietzsche's 1886 prefaces, in which he reorients his earlier work toward his future project o... more Nietzsche's 1886 prefaces, in which he reorients his earlier work toward his future project of the revaluation of values, are pervaded by the theme of health, and more specifically, Nietzsche's own health. In On the Genealogy of Morals, health is not a topic in its own right, but it recedes into the background as an evaluative criterion by which to judge Christian morality. In this article, I use Nietzsche's discussion of health in the 1886 prefaces to shed light on the role of health in his project of revaluation. Specifically, I will claim that in attending to health, Nietzsche experiments with an evaluation that twists free of a faith in opposite values.
British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2020
Nietzsche thought of himself as heralding an era of ‘new philosophers’, philosophers who would pr... more Nietzsche thought of himself as heralding an era of ‘new philosophers’, philosophers who would produce new philosophical insights and practice a new kind of philosophy. This is one of the many sign...
Nietzsche's 1886 prefaces, in which he reorients his earlier work toward his future project of th... more Nietzsche's 1886 prefaces, in which he reorients his earlier work toward his future project of the revaluation of values, are pervaded by the theme of health, and more specifically, Nietzsche's own health. In On the Genealogy of Morals, health is not a topic in its own right, but it recedes into the background as an evaluative criterion by which to judge Christian morality. In this article, I use Nietzsche's discussion of health in the 1886 prefaces to shed light on the role of health in his project of revaluation. Specifically, I will claim that in attending to health, Nietzsche experiments with an evaluation that twists free of a faith in opposite values. In 1886, as Nietzsche's thought becomes more explicitly oriented toward the project of a revaluation of all values, he reframes BT and three middle period books with prefaces. Four out of the five prefaces show Nietzsche noticeably occupied with the theme of health, which serves in each of those four as a lens orienting the reader toward his earlier work. In his "Attempt at Self-Criticism, " for instance, Nietzsche suggests that the principal contribution of BT lies in the idea of the Dionysian, which carries the promise that there might exist "neuroses of health" (BT P:4).1 The preface to GS finds Nietzsche looking for a "philosophical physician" who might "pursue the problem of the total health of a people, time, race or of humanity" (GS P:2). In the preface to HH I, Nietzsche ruminates over the coming "great health" of the free spirit, while in the preface to HH II he instructs us to interpret the entirety of the two volumes of HH as "the precepts of health" (HH II P:2). As all of these examples indicate and the final example makes explicit, the prefaces reframe these early and middle period works around
While the Apollonian and Dionysian in Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy are often understood as a reha... more While the Apollonian and Dionysian in Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy are often understood as a rehashing of Schopenhauerian metaphysics, recent accounts have shown that his use of these concepts is at odds with such a metaphysics, interpreting them instead as myths. I follow this insight that Nietzsche is engaging in mythmaking in BT, but I argue that proponents of this view have missed an important dimension of that mythmaking: that Nietzsche presents multiple narratives of Apollo and Dionysus from different perspectives, each of which offers different senses of tragic affirmation. This perspectival feature of BT sheds light on the more formal ‘perspectivism’ articulated in the Third Essay of On the Genealogy of Morals, as Nietzsche uses perspective in both cases to generate an epistemic alternative to the life-denying features of modern science. Thus, the metaphysical discussions of the early Nietzsche are inseparable from the development of a stylistic practice that constitutes a radical rejection of metaphysics for the later Nietzsche, and this style is part of a project of generating a more life-affirming approach to knowledge.
British Journal for the History of Philosophy , 2018
A simple but significant historical fact has been overlooked in interpretations of Nietzsche's et... more A simple but significant historical fact has been overlooked in interpretations of Nietzsche's eternal recurrence. In making eternal recurrence the standard for the affirmation and love of life, Nietzsche accepts an understanding of love developed in Plato's Symposium: love means ‘wanting to possess the good forever’. I argue that Plato develops two distinct types of love, which remain in tension with one another. I then show that a corresponding tension arises in Nietzsche's work when we consider eternal recurrence as the love of life. By making love central in the phrase ‘love of life’, and by allowing Plato's thoughts on love to inform the love of life that Nietzsche expresses in the thought of eternal recurrence, I show that Nietzsche's dramatic presentations of the eternal recurrence do not present us with a test, but in revealing an incompatibility between loving something in life and loving life in its entirety, they present the tragic conflict in the task of life affirmation.
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Papers by Melanie Shepherd