Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Nietzsche's Free Spirit Works
  • Cited by 7
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
April 2019
Print publication year:
2019
Online ISBN:
9781108564847
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108564847
Subjects:
Nineteenth-Century Philosophy, Philosophy
Information

Book description

Between 1878 and 1882, Nietzsche published what he called 'the free spirit works': Human, All Too Human; Assorted Opinions and Maxims; The Wanderer and His Shadow; Daybreak; and The Gay Science. Often approached as a mere assemblage of loosely connected aphorisms, these works are here re-interpreted as a coherent narrative of the steps Nietzsche takes in educating himself toward freedom that executes a dialectic between scientific truth-seeking and artistic life-affirmation. Matthew Meyer's new reading of these works not only provides a more convincing explanation of their content but also makes better sense of the relationship between them and Nietzsche's larger oeuvre. His argument shows how these texts can and should be read as a unified project even while they present multiple, in some cases conflicting, images of the free spirit. The book will appeal to anyone who is interested in Nietzsche's philosophy and especially to those puzzled about how to understand the peculiarities of the free spirit works.

Reviews

‘This is a superb intellectual history of Nietzsche's philosophical quest to emancipate his self-legislating spirit from the debilitating influences of metaphysics, religion, morality, and the scientific desire for truth at all costs.'

Paul S. Loeb - University of Puget Sound, Washington

'Matthew Meyer’s ambitious and exciting new book … is not only the most illuminating study we now have of Nietzsche’s middle period, but an important call to a very different way of approaching Nietzsche’s whole oeuvre.'

Source: Agonist

'… genuinely thought-provoking … will stimulate productive discussions about the meaning and significance of Nietzsche’s middle works for many years to come.'

Source: Journal of Nietzsche Studies

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents
References

Metrics

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.