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Showing posts from April, 2015

We Fearless Ones

Just after the publication of Beyond Good and Evil (BGE) in 1886, Nietzsche attempted what we would call today a "reboot" of his philosophical career. Having obtained the rights to all his previous works , he wrote new prefaces and rebound the ample supply of unsold copies as new editions. I will deal with these new prefaces in my next post. Part of this reboot was an entirely new Book Five added on to the republished version of The Gay Science in 1887. With this section, Nietzsche stitched this earlier, brilliant work published in 1882 (prior to Thus Spoke Zarathustra ) with his current thinking. Part Five allows us to see The Gay Science as the beginning of Nietzsche's mature philosophy, comparable with BGE. The new section was entitled "We Fearless Ones" and it was Nietzsche's attempt to summarize the qualities necessary for an individual to thrive in society after the death of God. It involved a criticism of many aspects of western civilization bu