Nietzsche and Paradox
Newly translated into English, this book analyzes the paradoxical discourse that flows through and fundamentally characterizes Nietzsche’s writings. Examining Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy; Human, All Too Human; Beyond Good and Evil; On the Genealogy of Morals; and The Antichrist; Rogério Miranda de Almeida patiently opens these texts to the multiplicity of truths that unfold through the process of continuous reinterpretation and reevaluation. Never formally defining the contradictions within Nietzsche’s conception of metaphysics, religion, art, science, and philosophy, Miranda de Almeida acknowledges instead that the history of thought, and the development of Nietzsche’s writings in particular, is an interplay of forces and drives, encroachment and surrender, construction and destruction, overcoming and transformation, lack and fulfillment, satisfaction and dissatisfaction, pleasure and displeasure, pain and delight. This book reveals the endless perspectives and truths that Nietzsche creates and transforms.
“Drawing on the broad tradition of the ‘French Nietzsche,’ this book offers a rich tapestry of reflections on the multiplicities still to be mined in Nietzsche’s thought, including the aesthetics of art and appearance, on woman and dissimulation, as well as morality, religion, and, of course, paradox.” — Babette E. Babich, author of Words in Blood, Like Flowers: Philosophy and Poetry, Music and Eros in Hölderlin, Nietzsche, and Heidegger
“From texts prior to The Birth of Tragedy through the final works of 1888, Miranda de Almeida dramatically draws out the tensions, torsions, and the dynamics of Nietzsche’s theoretical development. In remarkably clear terms, he explains how, for Nietzsche, the whole subsoil of concepts and values are orchestrated by drives and needs—whether they be fictive or real—and shows how this results in the unique character of his ever-changing appreciation of the cultural symbolic.” — David B. Allison, author of Reading the New Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy, The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and On the Genealogy of Morals.
[Suny Press]