Walking the Tightrope

The 1885-1886 time period was one of fundamental becoming for Nietzsche. His sister, to whom he was still close despite the strain on their relationship in recent years, would marry a prominent anti-Semite and attempt to form a colony in Paraguay. Fritz would sue his publisher and obtain the sole rights to all his published books along with, relatively, substantial cash. He would finally finish Zarathustra and move on to compose what I consider to be his finest philosophic work, Beyond Good and Evil . He was entering a new phase of his life. Nietzsche's latest work can be considered in conjunction with his next, On the Genealogy of Morals , as a distinctive segment of his intellectual life. "As we have seen, by the mid-1880's Nietzsche had developed a regular routine: Sils-Maria in the summer, the Italian or French Riviera in the winter, with the transitional months of the spring or the fall still a problem. To Malwida von Meysenbug , on December 13, 1886, he wrot...