Nietzsche philosophe

Abstract

This is a translation of the second work by Hans Vaihinger (1852-1833), first published in 1902. Its title, Nietzsche als Philosoph, may seem inconsequential to today’s readers but could have been shocking at the beginning of the twentieth century. Nietzsche had not yet been recognised as an authentic philosopher, which in the terms of the day meant the author of a philosophical system. As early as 1879, Alois Riehl had devoted an essay to him entitled: Friedrich Nietzsche. Der Künstler und der Denker. Ein Essay. In 1902, Rudolf Eisler published a work on Nietzsche’s metaphysics and theory of knowledge: Nietzsche’s Erkenntnistheorie und Metaphysik. Unlike these two authors, Vaihinger was the first to present the whole of Nietzsche’s thought systematically starting from its central core, thus showing that he can be considered and studied as a genuine philosopher. Vaihinger’s neo-Kantianism is particularly evident in his criticism of Nietzsche’s hierarchy of different types of human beings, in contrast to Kant’s recognition of the equal dignity of all human beings.