Walking the Tightrope

"In this book you will discover a 'subterranean man' at work, one who tunnels and mines and undermines. You will see him - presupposing you have eyes capable of seeing this work in the depths - going forward slowly, cautiously, gently inexorable, without betraying very much of the distress which any protractors deprivation of light and air must entail; you might even call him contented, working there in the dark." So begins the new preface for Daybreak . Nietzsche makes it plain that he is critiquing his work and his working methods from the beginning, putting present context into his past thought in order to show an alleged progression to the point where he found himself in 1887. In that year Nietzsche republished his initial works in two phases.  First came Daybreak and The Gay Science with its new Book Five.   Human, All-too-Human and The Birth of Tragedy followed a few months later. Each "new edition" of these works contained a new preface.  Each p...