Nietzsche's Noble Aims

Paul E. Kirkland is assistant professor of political science at Carthage College.

• Part 1 IntroductionChapter 2 1. Educating the Free SpiritChapter 3 2. Masks of HonestyChapter 4 3. Nobility and ResponsibilityChapter 5 4. The Esteeming AnimalChapter 6 5. Willing and TimeChapter 7 6. Redeeming Time: The Teaching of the Eternal ReturnChapter 8 7. Eternal Return and the Ethics of ContestChapter 9 8. Politics of ContestChapter 10 9. Heights of the Soul: Laughter and the Perspective of LifeChapter 11 10. Challenging the Old and New Tablets: Nietzsche's Art of WritingPart 12 Conclusion

Paul Kirkland gives an impressively comprehensive and illuminating account of Nietzsche's thought, emphasizing its life-affirming goals more than the critique of traditional metaphysics and modern science. Kirkland argues that in his major works Nietzsche takes on a set of distinctive stances or rhetorical "masks"—the free spirit, the proponent of perspectivism, and the philosopher of the eternal return—to create a "politics of contest." Out of that contest, Nietzsche hopes that a new form and understanding of human nobility will arise.