Abstract

It is well known that archaeological and geological metaphors designate what lies at the heart of Nietzsche's analysis: The genealogy of the present status, the origin of which was constituted in the past by a contingent event and in this way structured behaviour and thinking in ways of a binary logic. It has yet hardly been recognized that Nietzsche's method runs parallel to the scientific ways of analysing the ground of the Earth. In both respects Nietzsche's philosophy matches the aim of Phenomenology according to Husserl and Merleau-Ponty: Decades before Foucault realized the potential of Archaeology as writing a meta-history of epistemological configurations, the phenomenological method of reduction traced back the given, intentional perceptions to the layers of different historical and regional life-world contexts lying underneath. The paper not only pays attention to the continuity of that critical topic from Nietzsche to Phenomenology, but also discusses Husserl's and Merleau-Ponty's explicit references to Nietzsche