Abstract

This dissertation explores the reception of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy in various sectors of French intellectual and cultural life at the turn of the century. Recognizing that numerous and often mutually-exclusive interpretations of Nietzsche have abounded throughout the twentieth century, this study inquires into the conditions that rendered such multiplicity possible. Following the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, which examines intellectual production in terms of social struggles for cultural legitimacy, the author has sketched the field of forces and divisions that constituted intellectual life in France. Taking into consideration the spheres of literature, academe, and radical politics, the author shows that commentaries on Nietzsche carried an implicit commentary on the state of the intellectual world by those groups who had a stake in that world. That is, the struggle among competing groups to posit the legitimate interpretation of Nietzsche was but one element in a continuing struggle to institute their own programs as the dominant mode of intellectual activity. What emerges is a relative uniformity of readings corresponding to shared positions and trajectories in the intellectual world