Abstract

This generally fine, smooth and flowing translation is, in most respects, an improvement over that of J. M. Kennedy and one that artfully displays what Nietzsche called, in Ecce Homo, the opening salvo of his "campaign against morality." Aside from a few lapses, Hollingdale has conveyed the freshness, the subtle, the paradoxical turns of phrase, of Morgenröte. In the "Preface" composed in 1886 both Kennedy in his earlier translation and Hollingdale in this one miss the Hegelian significance of the key phrase in section 4, the characterization of this pithy work as die Selbstaufhebung der Moral. What Nietzsche is surely saying is that his collection of "thoughts on the prejudices of morality" is a "self-suppression of morality," a negation of morality in one sense and its preservation in another, a critique of morality from a new moral point of view. This is made clear when he proposes his four cardinal virtues and when he makes clear that he does not deny that "many actions called immoral ought to be avoided and resisted, or that many called moral ought to be done and encouraged". Although the central theme of Daybreak is a critique of moral prejudices and an analysis of the origin of many moral values, the string of aphorisms comprising this work deal with numerous other themes, with "psychological observations", with reflections on the importance of the "feeling of power" in man, with the need for an appreciation of science and the overcoming of bombastic philosophical idealism and much more. With lynx's eyes Nietzsche uncovers the shameful origin of moral values and postures, wonders if the "knowledge-drive" in man will lead to his destruction, and repeatedly exposes fraud and hypocrisy almost everywhere. Despite the seriousness of his intentions, or because of it, Nietzsche adopts in this work what Tanner, in his introduction, calls a "light touch." Daybreak has lost little of its freshness, its sense of liberation from tradition, or its relevance. Even though Nietzsche's aphorisms sometimes misfire, they are typically insightful and stimulating. So much in his own philosophy and in psychoanalysis is foreshadowed in this compact series of aperçus that we are both informed about the seeds of his later thought and startled by his protopsychoanalytical insights. In Daybreak Nietzsche's subtle and experimental reflections are not marred by the later excesses, the bitterness, the hysteria, the swashbuckling prose. In many ways, Daybreak would serve as a fine introduction to his thought and his style of philosophizing.--George J. Stack, SUNY at Brockport.