NIETZSCHE'S NOBLEA IMS AFFIRMINLGI FEC,O NTESTIMNOGD ERNITY PAULE .K IRKLAND Nietzsche's Noble Aims Nietzsche's Noble Aims AffirmiLnifgeC ,o nteMsotdienrgn ity PAULE. KIRKLAND LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham• Boulder• New York• Toronto •Plymouth, UK LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 Lanham, MD 20706 Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom Copyright © 2009 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kirkland, Paul E., 1972- Nietzsche' s noble aims : affirming life, contesting modernity I Paul E. Kirkland. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 978-0-7391-2729-2 (cloth: alk. paper) eISBN: 978-0-7391-3929-5 1. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900. 2. Life. 3. Eternal return. I. Title. B33 l 7.K527 2009 193-dc22 2009011544 Printed in the United States of America 8"'T he paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSl/NISO 239.48-1992. For my parents Contents Abbreviations of Nietzsche's Works ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction Educating the Free Spirit 19 2 Masks of Honesty 43 3 Nobility and Responsibility 65 4 The Esteeming Animal 89 5 Willing and Time 111 6 Redeeming Time: The Teaching of Eternal Return 133 7 Eternal Return and the Ethics of Contest 153 8 Politics of Contest 177 9 Heights of Soul: Laughter and the Perspective of Life 215 IO Challenging Old and New Tablets: Nietzsche's Art ofW riting 245 Conclusion 273 Bibliography 279 Index 291 Abbreviations of Nietzsche's Works I have used the following abbreviations for citations to Nietzsche's works. All citations refer to sections or aphorisms where numbered continuously, part and aphorism where needed. For Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I refer to Parts by Roman numeral and number the sections, e.g., TSZ 1.7 refers to Part One, "On Reading and Writing." For other works where there are subdivisions and aphorisms are not numbered continuously, I have used abbreviations of the subheadings, eg., TI, Ancients 2 refers to Twilight of the Idols, "What I Owe the Ancients" 2. A The Antichrist BGE Beyond Good and Evil BT The Birth of Tragedy cw The Case of Wagner D Daybreak EH EcceHomo GM On the Genealogy of Morals GS The Gay Science HH Human, All Too Human KSA Kritische Studienausgabe ix