Obras completas: Volumen IV. Escritos de madurez II y complementos a la edición

by Friedrich Nietzsche

En este volumen se reúnen las obras del último período de la vida lúcida de Nietzsche, escritas entre 1883 y 1889. El pensamiento que contienen aprovecha los conceptos y desarrollos de los escritos precedentes al presentar ahora los grandes temas representativos de la madurez de su la muerte de Dios, el nihilismo, la voluntad de poder, el eterno retorno, el Übermensch o la transvaloración. En la evolución de este conjunto de potentes y vibrantes ideas, Así habló Zaratustra es el grandioso y sorprendente experimento de ofrecer un elevado pensamiento especulativo bajo una forma lírica intencionadamente antigua, oracular, profética, pero, a la vez, suspendida sobre la fragmentación y el vacío de lo moderno. Más allá del bien y del mal aborda, por su parte, la necesidad de una nueva definición de la tarea de la filosofía, que debe sustituir la clásica problemática de la verdad por la más radical del valor. Sobre la base de esta investigación, La genealogía de la moral traza con finísima penetración psicológica la historia genealógica de nuestros prejuicios morales, a los que subyace el trabajo subterráneo de una cultura de la domesticación y su pedagogía de la culpabilización y el debilitamiento de los individuos. Su propósito es enseñar cómo librarse de los ideales ascéticos y sus metamorfosis para superar el nihilismo. Por último, en unos pocos meses del año 1888, Nietzsche redacta un conjunto de breves obras en las que brilla la admirable perfección formal de su singular estilo, y que van a sonar como un final a la vez tempestuoso y enigmá El caso Wagner, Crepúsculo de los ídolos, El Anticristo, Ecce homo, Ditirambos de Dioniso y Nietzsche contra Wagner. En ellos perfila un agudo diagnóstico de la modernidad, señala a sus responsables últimos, denuncia falsos intentos de renovación como el proyecto estético-político de Wagner, y muestra con ingenio y hasta con humor todo el escaparate de sus heterodoxias filosóficas.

1192 pages, Paperback

Published October 20, 2016

About the author

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture, who became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24, but resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties, with paralysis and probably vascular dementia. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900, after experiencing pneumonia and multiple strokes.
Nietzsche's work spans philosophical polemics, poetry, cultural criticism, and fiction while displaying a fondness for aphorism and irony. Prominent elements of his philosophy include his radical critique of truth in favour of perspectivism; a genealogical critique of religion and Christian morality and a related theory of master–slave morality; the aesthetic affirmation of life in response to both the "death of God" and the profound crisis of nihilism; the notion of Apollonian and Dionysian forces; and a characterisation of the human subject as the expression of competing wills, collectively understood as the will to power. He also developed influential concepts such as the Übermensch and his doctrine of eternal return. In his later work, he became increasingly preoccupied with the creative powers of the individual to overcome cultural and moral mores in pursuit of new values and aesthetic health. His body of work touched a wide range of topics, including art, philology, history, music, religion, tragedy, culture, and science, and drew inspiration from Greek tragedy as well as figures such as Zoroaster, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Wagner, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
After his death, Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth became the curator and editor of his manuscripts. She edited his unpublished writings to fit her German ultranationalist ideology, often contradicting or obfuscating Nietzsche's stated opinions, which were explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism. Through her published editions, Nietzsche's work became associated with fascism and Nazism. 20th-century scholars such as Walter Kaufmann, R.J. Hollingdale, and Georges Bataille defended Nietzsche against this interpretation, and corrected editions of his writings were soon made available. Nietzsche's thought enjoyed renewed popularity in the 1960s and his ideas have since had a profound impact on 20th- and early 21st-century thinkers across philosophy—especially in schools of continental philosophy such as existentialism, postmodernism, and post-structuralism—as well as art, literature, music, poetry, politics, and popular culture.