Prof. Peery's first two books emphasized Nietzsche's concerns and contributions as a cultural critic and cultural historian; this time, she concentrates on his major legacy as a philosopher. Taking a tender scalpel to his works, from Ecce Homo and...

Prof. Peery's first two books emphasized Nietzsche's concerns and contributions as a cultural critic and cultural historian; this time, she concentrates on his major legacy as a philosopher. Taking a tender scalpel to his works, from Ecce Homo and Thus Spake Zarathustra to Beyond Good and Evil and others, she gets inside to the heart of his writing and creates an intellectual dialogue involving everyone from Dionysus and Democritus to Jacob Burckhardt and GWF Hegel. "By dialectical process," she notes, "Nietzsche reasserts Heraclitus' views of the constant tension, or process, always occurring between two opposites, interacting elements, or forces." She also brings in the contributions of R. J. Hollingdale and other Nietzsche analysts to present a range of insights into these nuanced writings whose application to current reality seems perhaps more apt than ever.During his lifetime (1844'1900), the impact of Nietzsche's thinking was dimly perceived, if at all, by most of his contemporaries or readers. Into and during the 20th century, however, the unexpected, the dangers, but mostly the possibilities, of his ideas began to be recognized, explored, and adopted ' and resisted. There were exciting creative achievements far beyond Nietzsche's philosophy. These ideas continued to rapidly display their increasingly amazing and untapped resources.Well into the 21st century appreciating, interpreting, and evaluating Nietzsche's thinking appear to be rising ' still, or again. And he repays generously every effort, every investment.

My task, as I perceive it, is to identify, or reidentify, those ideas of Nietzsche's which appear to have continually demanded his attention and development. And not only to identify, but also to refocus, to sharpen, put under the microscope, those ideas again ' for our time. The fruitfulness and exciting possibilities in Nietzsche's thinking are alive and becoming more enticing. I have become persuaded that the stalk ' 'the supporting or connecting part; the main stem, often with dependent parts,'� ' the idea which we probably should attend to first, is the idea of change. Nietzsche believed that the world of human beings ' always in the process of changing ' could be changed, could become something better than it was. That this required changing the ways in which we perceive, feel, and think about this world. That it was his 'destiny'� to be a major agent of this change. And that his 'message'� ' his new, creative ideas, his words ' would someday be heard and understood....Nietzsche, as we would expect, rejected any notion of repeating traditional models of a system, or systematic philosophizing. Instead, his ideas gradually formed a network ' 'an intricate pattern or structure suggestive of something woven; or a web of shifting interwoven strands.'� Or, perhaps better, his thinking was more suggestive of being organic ' 'having the characteristics of an organism; developing in the manner of a living plant or animal.'�