In Ecce Homo Nietzsche tells us that the third and fourth of the Untimely Meditations were not actually about Schopenhauer or about Wagner, but really about Nietzsche himself : "Wagner in Bayreuth is a vision of my future; Schopenhauer as Educator is my innermost history." In this course we shall devote the first half of each lecture to Nietzsche's history, exploring the meaning for him not only of Schopenhauer, but also of Goethe, Spinoza, the Italian Renaissance Neoplatonists (Ficino, Vico, Bruno), the French Enlightenment thinkers (Rousseau, Voltaire, LaRouchfoucault), the Latin Classics, (Apuleius, Sallust, Cato, Tully), and above all Heraclitus. We will then devote the second half of each lecture to "Nietzsche's future" by working our way through the secondary literature in chronological order:
- 1889 Friedrich Nietzsche Ecce Homo (publ. in German 1908, tr. Ludovici 1911, tr. Kaufmann 1967, tr. Hollingdale 1979)
- 1889 George Brandes "An essay on aristocratic radicalism", published in Eng tr. in 1914 together with three additional essays dated "December 1899", "August 1900", and "1909")
- 1894 Lou Salomé Nietzsche in his Works (tr. 1970, reprinted 1988)
- 1895 Rudolf Steiner Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom (tr. 1985)
- 1900 Oswald Crawfurd "Nietzsche: An Appreciation" The Nineteenth Century, "Oct." pp.592-606.
- 1906 A. R. Orage Friedrich Nietzsche: the Dionysian Spirit of the Age (also his Nietzsche in Outline & Aphorism of 1911)
- 1908 Henry L. Mencken Friedrich Nietzsche
- 1908 M. A. Mügge Nietzsche: his life and work
- 1909 Daniel Halévy The Life of Friedrich Nietzsche (tr. 1911)
- 1914 Georges Chatterton-Hill The Philosophy of Nietzsche: an exposition and an appreciation
- 1919 Ernst Bertram Nietzsche: Attempt at a Mythology (tr. 2009)
- 1924 Norman Lindsay Creative Effort
- 1927 Jack Lindsay Dionysos: Nietzsche Contra Nietzsche
- 1930 Eric Podach The Madness of Nietzsche (tr. 1974)
- 1934 Carl Jung Nietzsche’s Zarathustra : notes of the seminar given in 1934-1939 (tr. 1988).
- 1935 Karl Jaspers Nietzsche: an intro to the understanding of his philosophical activity (tr. 1965)
- 1936 - 1942 Heidegger Nietzsche (Lectures, published in German 1961)
- 1939 Karl Löwith From Hegel to Nietzsche (tr. 1964)
- 1941 Crane Brinton Nietzsche (reprinted 1965)
- 1942 Frederick Copleston Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher of Culture (also chapters XXI to XXIII of volume VII of his A History of Philosophy from 1963)
- 1945 Georges Bataille On Nietzsche
- 1946 H. A. Reyburn Nietzsche: the Story of a Human Philosopher (English version 1948)
- 1950 Walter Kaufmann Nietzsche (2nd ed 1956, 3rd ed 1968, 4th ed 1974)
- 1951 "Friedrich Nietzsche" (forgery by Samuel Roth) My Sister and I (reprinted 1991 by Amok)
- 1956 - 1971 Leo Strauss : four seminar series on Nietzsche
- 1960 Eugen Fink Nietzsche's Philosophy
- 1962 Gilles Deleuze Nietzsche and Philosophy (tr. 1983)
- 1965 Reg Hollingdale Nietzsche: The Man and his Philosophy
- 1965 Arthur Danto Nietzsche as Philosopher
- 1966 Ivo Frenzel Friedrich Nietzsche: an illustrated biography (tr. 1967)
- 1969 Pierre Klossowski Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle (tr. 1997)
- 1971 Janko Lavrin Nietzsche: a biographical introduction
- 1971 W. Mueller-Lauter Nietzsche: His Philosophy of Contradictions and the Contradictions
- 1975 Tracy Strong Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration (2nd edition 1988)
- 1977 H. F. Peters Zarathustra's Sister
- 1977 Harold Alderman Nietzsche's Gift
- 1978 J. P. Stern Nietzsche
- 1980 Luce Irigaray Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche (tr. 1991)
- 1981 Silk and Stern Nietzsche On Tragedy
- 1982 Roger Hollingrake Nietzsche, Wagner and the Philosophy of Pessimism
- 1982 Mazzino Montinari Reading Nietzsche (tr. 2003)
- 1983 Hinton Thomas Nietzsche in German Politics and Society: 1890-1918
- 1983 Richard Schacht Nietzsche
- 1984 Ofelia Schutte Beyond Nihilism: Nietzsche Without Masks
- 1985 Alexander Nehamas Nietzsche: Life as Literature
- 1985 Gianni Vattimo Nietzsche: An Introduction (tr. 2002) also his Dialogue With Nietzsche (2000, tr. 2006)
- 1986 Peter Sloterdijk Thinker On Stage: Nietzsche's Materialism (tr. 1989)
- 1987 Peter Bergmann Nietzsche, the Last Antipolitical German
- 1987 Ernest Joós Poetic Truth and Transvaluation in Nietzsche's Zarathustra (tr. 1991)
- 1988 Keith May Nietzsche and Modern Literature
- 1989 Gary Shapiro Nietzschean Narratives
- 1989 Joachim Köhler Zarathustra's Secret (tr. 2002)
- 1990 Jean Graybeal Language and "The Feminine" in Nietzsche and Heidegger
- 1990 Alan White, Within Nietzsche's Labyrinth
- 1990 Leslie Paul Thiele Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of the Soul
- 1991 Carl Pletsch Young Nietzsche: becoming a genius
- 1991 Mark Warren Nietzsche and Political Thought
- 1991 Gary Shapiro Alcyone: Nietzsche on Gifts, Noise and Women
- 1991 Keith Ansell-Pearson Nietzsche contra Rousseau
- 1992 Ben Macintyre Forgotten Fatherland: the Search for Elizabeth Nietzsche
- 1993 Bernd Magnus et al, Nietzsche's Case: Philosophy and/as Literature
- 1994 Michael Tanner, Nietzsche
- 1994 Irving Zeitlin Nietzsche: A Re-examination
- 1994 Weaver Santaniello Nietzsche, God and the Jews
- 1995 Claudia Crawford To Nietzsche: Dionysus, I love you! Ariadne
- 1995 Lawrence Hatab A Nietzschean Defense of Democracy
- 1995 Stanley Rosen The Mask of Enlightenment: Nietzsche's Zarathustra
- 1996 Joachim Köhler Nietzsche and Wagner: a lesson in subjugation (tr. 1998)
- 1996 Lesley Chamberlain Nietzsche in Turin
- 1996 Carol Diethe Nietzsche's Women: Beyond the Whip
- 1996 Laurence Lampert Leo Strauss and Nietzsche also his Nietzsche's Task: An Interpretation of BGE (2001)
- 1997 Nuno Nabais Nietzsche and the Metaphysics of the Tragic (tr. 2006)
- 1997 Sheridan Hough Nietzsche's Noontide Friend: The Self as a Metaphoric Double
- 1998 Laurence Gane and Kitty Chan Introducing Nietzsche
- 1998 Jennifer Wise Dionysus Writes: the Invention of Theatre in Ancient Greece
- 1998 Aaron Ridley Nietzsche's Conscience
- 1998 Siegfried Mandel Nietzsche and the Jews
- 1998 Didier Franck Nietzsche and the Shadow of God (tr. 2011)
- 1999 Caroline Picart Resenment and the "Feminine" in Nietzsche's Politico-Aesthetics
- 2000 Eugene Victor Wolfenstein Inside/Outside Nietzsche: psychoanalytic explorations
- 2000 Rüdiger Safranski Nietzsche: a philosophical biography (tr. 2002)
- 2000 Matthew Rampley Nietzsche, Aesthetics and Modernity
- 2000 Raymond Furness Zarathustra's Children
- 2002 Curtis Cate Friedrich Nietzshe: A Biography
- 2002 Robert Wicks Nietzsche
- 2002 Giles Fraser Redeeming Nietzsche: on the piety of unbelief
- 2003 Alenka Zupančič The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two
- 2003 R. Kevin Hill Nietzsche's Critiques: the Kantian Foundations of his Thought also his Nietzsche: A Guide for the Perplexed (2007)
- 2005 Lawrence Hatab Nietzsche's Life Sentence
- 2005 Paul Swift Becoming Nietzsche: Early Reflections on Democritus, Schopenhauer and Kant
- 2007 Tasmin Shaw Nietzsche's Political Skepticism
- 2007 Aaron Ridley Nietzsche on Art
- 2009 Vanessa Lemm Nietzsche's Animal Philosophy
- 2010 Peter Bornedal The Surface and the Abyss
- 2012 Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen American Nietzsche
- 2013 Paul Daniels Nietzsche and The Birth of Tragedy