Abstract

This dissertation attempts to make sense out of Nietzsche's last works where he appears unsystematic and professes to be unconcerned with questions of truth. ;Chapter 1 examines Martin Heidegger's and Bernd Magnus' attempts to give a unified interpretation to the Eternal Return and concludes that there is no single correct interpretation. ;Chapter 2 discusses the efforts by Heidegger and Wolfgang Muller-Lauter to give a unified interpretation to the Will to Power. I conclude that during the writing of Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche does attempt to unify his thought around the Will to Power, but in the works which follow its importance diminishes. ;Chapters 3 and 4 examine the readings of Nietzsche by Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida. Deleuze is criticized for over-systematizing Nietzsche's thought while Derrida's reading of Nietzsche seems not to account for the fact that although Nietzsche claims emphatically that there is no truth he nonetheless believes that some interpretations are better than others. ;Chapter 5 shows how some interpretations are, according to Nietzsche, pragmatically speaking necessary. Life is possible only to the extent to which we use "necessary fictions" to create stability in a constantly changing world. We must act as if certain truths do exist even if we believe there are no truths. Chapter 6 discusses how Nietzsche uses what can be broadly interpreted as "aesthetic" criteria to justify the self-proclaimed superiority of his views. ;Chapter 7 offers a critique of Nietzsche's social thought from a Nietzschean perspective. Agreeing with Nietzsche that, in the absence of truth, there are only pragmatic necessities and aesthetic considerations I offer a critique of Nietzsche's lack of social conscience. There is, in my opinion, nothing wrong with Nietzsche's practice of basing our ethical decisions on our personal choices. What I object to is rather the particular choices he made. His lack of social concern is not suited to our world where survival is increasingly dependent upon our working together