Nietzsche has repeatedly commented on his already published works, and thus continuously reinterpreted them, in order to shape their public reception and to foreground the communication of specific aspects of his works. As such, he followed a specific “work politics,” or Werkpolitik. The resulting retractions are not only revealing for the reconstruction of Nietzsche’s self-understanding, but also demonstrate both the development and the dynamic character of his thinking. In the present article, this is shown through a so-called “contrasting reading,” which (...) contrasts a posthumous note about The Birth of Tragedy, the Attempt at a Self-Criticism from 1886, with the book itself and with the chapter in Ecce Homo that is dedicated to BT. Starting from a close reading of note Nachlass 1888, 17[3], which also takes into account the genesis of BT, I argue that Nietzsche’s self-commentaries combine his current philosophical reflections with work-political objectives. The subsequent comparison reconstructs the philosophical differences between the note and the texts mentioned above, thus demonstrating the dynamic character of Nietzsche’s philosophizing, which is often stated but seldom reconstructed on the basis of the actual texts. (shrink)

In this article, I wish to show that Kaufmann was right, when he claimed that “nobody has ever found a better characterization of Nietzsche” than his own, when he talked about the “music-making Socrates” in the Birth of Tragedy. Firstly, I make some general remarks on the Birth of Tragedy. Secondly, I analyse Nietzsche’s understanding of music in the Birth of Tragedy. Thirdly, I describe the particular conception of “Socrates” as Nietzsche develops it in The Birth of Tragedy. Lastly, I (...) bring these two concepts together, showing that there are various parts of Nietzsche’s mature philosophy which demonstrate a correspondence between the qualities of the “music making Socrates” and the qualities of the later Nietzsche. In this way, I establish that the later Nietzsche is very similar to the “music-making Socrates”, whom he mentioned in his Birth of Tragedy. (shrink)

This paper examines Nietzsche's attitude to the empirical by concentrating on his concept of Empfindung (sensation, perception, feeling). In Section 1, five distinctive features of his use of 'Empfindung' are described in relation to the philosophical tradition and some of his sources in 19 th Century physiology. All five features, I argue, point to Nietzsche's philosophical concern to stake out the limits of 'Empfindung' as an aspect of human finitude. In Section 2, my attention turns from the term 'Empfindung' to (...) Nietzsche's actual argumentation. The bewildering variety of perspectives and arguments concerning 'Empfindung' in his writings are broken down into three basic types of argument or discourse with radically different, incompatible presuppositions: a critical, epistemological discourse serving anti-metaphysical ends; a quasiscientific discourse serving critical-epistemological ends; and a quasi-ontological discourse of life that looks to explain the results of Nietzsche's critical epistemology. The value of this 'contradictory' practice, I contend, is twofold: Nietzsche makes epistemology fruitful for the philosophical problem of life; at the same time he offers a performative critique of epistemology by the manner in which he exceeds it. South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 25(2) 2006: 146-158. (shrink)