William Wood

Nietzsche’s relationship to Epicurus is usually understood to have undergone an important change from very positive to negative, or at least ambivalent, between his middle and later periods. This article argues that if Nietzsche’s published remarks on Epicurus in both periods are examined closely, this change can be seen as largely, or perhaps wholly, illusory. Rather than evincing a change, Nietzsche’s later remarks build on and deepen the insights he already expressed in his middle period, while the apparently negative stance which he develops toward Epicurus can be seen as largely or wholly rhetorical. The later Nietzsche regards Epicurus as a genuine philosopher and as far more skeptical than he appears to be. Although the paper is a contribution to our understanding of Nietzsche’s view of Epicurus, it also suggests that Nietzsche was an original reader of Epicurus and that his insights into his precursor have implications for scholarship on Epicurus and the Epicurean tradition.

We present spectra for 14 high-redshift supernovae, which were discovered by the Supernova Cosmology Project as part of a campaign to measure cosmological parameters. The spectra are used to determine the redshift and classify the supernova type, essential information if the supernova are to be used for cosmological studies. Redshifts were derived either from the spectrum of the host galaxy or from the spectrum of the supernova itself. We present evidence that these supernovae are of Type Ia by matching to spectra of nearby supernovae. We find that the dates of the spectra relative to maximum light determined from this fitting process are consistent with the dates determined from the photometric light curves, and, moreover, the spectral time sequences for SNe Ia at low and high redshift are indistinguishable. We also show that the expansion velocities measured from blueshifted Ca H and K are consistent with those measured for low-redshift SNe Ia. From these first-level quantitative comparisons we find no evidence for evolution in SN Ia properties between these low- and high-redshift samples. Thus, even though our samples may not be complete, we conclude that there is a population of SNe Ia at high redshift whose spectral properties match those at low redshift. © 2005. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

Religion plays an important role in Nietzsche’s thought, but the exact nature of this role is far from clear. Four recent books treat different aspects of Nietzsche’s thought about religion in general and Christianity in particular. Nevin’s book is an interpretation of Nietzsche by a believing Christian which reads him as the culmination of the dialectic of secularization in German Protestantism. Saarinen inquires into religion in Nietzsche through a methodological focus on “mood” (Stimmung). The volume edited by Manning and Santini compiles essays which deal with various themes related to religion in Nietzsche, such as Apollo, the ancient Greek mystery cults, polytheism, and St. Paul’s notion of flesh. The volume edited by Came compiles essays by leading scholars of Nietzsche in the Anglo-American analytic style of interpretation. Two of these essays read Nietzsche as defined by the Christian heritage against which he rebels. All deal in some way with the question of “life affirmation.” Nietzsche’s decision to present his own thought in part through increasingly strident polemics against Christianity allows us to conclude that coming to grips with Nietzsche involves coming to grips with Christianity – and that he wanted it to be this way.

This article presents a close reading of BGE 27 and 28, which concern how to read philosophical books and the kind of friendship such reading makes possible. In BGE 27, Nietzsche distinguishes three kinds of readers who have different paces of thought and life, comparable to rivers, frogs and tortoises. While he implies a hierarchy by saying some are “at best” comparable to frogs, he does not state explicitly which type is best. Most commentators assume “rivers” are ideal, but the article argues that Nietzsche is deliberately misleading; though he provokes this misinterpretation, he actually implies that “tortoises” are the best readers. Tortoise-like readers are often posthumous, reading authors who are already dead, but they enjoy a kind of friendship with the deceased unavailable to most contemporaries, who lack the right “nature.” The transition from BGE 27 to 28 reflects the shift from “good friends” among the living to true friends among the dead. The article also explores the idea of posthumous friendship in Nietzsche more broadly and suggests that his ideal of friendship as “shared joy” (Mitfreude), rather than “compassion” or “shared suffering” (Mitleid), is best realized in posthumous friendship with philosophers, which takes the form almost exclusively of shared joy.