Nietzsche Apostle

For Peter Sloterdijk, Friedrich Nietzsche represents nothing short of a"catastrophe in the history of language" -- a new evangelist for a linguistics ofnarcissistic jubilation. Nietzsche offered a philosophical declaration of independence fromhumility, a meeting-point of sobriety and megalomania that for Sloterdijk has come to define thevery project of philosophy.

Yet for all the significance of this language-eventnamed Nietzsche, Nietzsche's contributions have too often been elided and the contradictions at theroot of his philosophy too often edited out. As Sloterdijk observes, "Never has an author soinsisted on distinction and yet attracted such vulgarity." NietzscheApostle, drawn from a speech Sloterdijk gave in 2000 on the hundredth anniversary ofNietzsche's death, looks at the ways in which Nietzsche has been branded over the years throughselective compilation, and at the ways in which Nietzsche turned himself into a brand -- a brandannounced by his proclaimed "fifth Gospel," Thus Spoke Zarathustra. ForSloterdijk, the focus should not be on the figure of Zarathustra or on the "will to power"often used as a kind of philosophical shorthand to sum up Nietzsche's work, but on Zarathustra's actof "speaking" itself. Nietzsche Apostle offers a brief history ofself-praise and self-affirmation, an examination of the evolution of boasting (both by God and byman), and a very original approach to Nietzsche, philosophy's first designer brand ofindividualism.

Peter Sloterdijk (b. 1947) is one of the best known and widely read German intellectuals writing today. His 1983 publication of Critique of Cynical Reason became the best-selling German book of philosophy since World War II. He became president of the State Academy of Design at the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe in 2001 and has been cohost of a discussion program, Das Philosophische Quartett (Philosophical Quartet) on German television since 2002.