Abstract
Nietzsche is definitely advocating a system. The key to understanding him to understand the nature of this system, and those whom it is directed against. This paper will attempt to enunciate Nietzsche’s system comparing it to traditional interpretations from both the analytic and continental tradition. It will start off by drawing a contrast between the Anglo-American and the Continental representations of Nietzsche. I would start with Rawls's view of Nietzsche, and of some other views which saw him as an elitist, and contrast these with the views proffered by writers like Georges Bataille and Gilles Deleuze. I will take a tentative look at the evidence for each set of views, and would then proceed to a partisan affirmation of the 'new' Nietzsche, as represented in Deleuze's work. By way of proceeding I will seek additional support for this view by examining Nietzsche's acknowledgements to Spinoza as in his correspondence with Overbeck and in his identification of common themes - of making knowledge a powerful affect; the denial of freedom of the will; the denial of teleology, the denial of a moral world order; the denial of evil, etc. The affinities between Spinoza and Nietzsche are, I will argue, of significance for an understanding of Nietzsche's purposes, which lead one to caste serious doubt on the Anglo-American view. Having done this I will review briefly Heidegger's criticisms of Nietzsche in his four part study. I will also briefly examine various right wing political and moral attacks on Nietzsche and review the representations that attempt to characterise Nietzsche as an ‘elitist’, or a ‘Nazi’. Hopefully, at the end, it will become clear on what basis, and at what cost, Nietzsche can be rehabilitated. The specific nature of Nietzsche’s system will be claimed to revolve a certain conception of survival, and a new way of proceeding philosophically.