Walking the Tightrope

Curtis Cate's analysis of On the Genealogy of Morals (GM) does not stress the "will to power" to the extent that Hollingdale did (see previous post).  Instead he emphasizes other strands of Nietzsche's thought ( amor fati and various positions first enunciated in his "Untimely Meditations", for example) threaded into the work.  Cate agrees with Hollingdale, however, that GM is an extension and clarification of Beyond Good and Evil .  Let's begin with an understanding of how spontaneously Nietzsche completed the core of the work, indicative of his writing style since the first part of Zarathustra was completed four years earlier. "On July 17, barely two weeks after beginning, Nietzsche informed Naumann, who must have been astonished by the 'half-blind' professor's prolixity, that he had completed a small Streitschrift (polemic pamphlet) intended to amplify and elucidate Beyond Good and Evil .  The title he had chosen was Zur Geneal...