Nietzsche's Rhetoric

ISBN-13: 9783031429637 / Angielski / Twarda / 2023

Francesca Cauchi

Opis

This book excavates the rhetorical devices that Nietzsche habitually uses and demonstrates how they circumscribe rather than expand the reader’s interpretive horizon. Through a sustained analysis of Nietzsche’s rhetorical style, stratagems, and didactic aims in two of his early works (‘On Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense’ and Daybreak) and two of his later works (Beyond Good and Evil and Twilight of the Idols), the book assesses the extent to which Nietzsche’s substantial rhetorical arsenal undermines the philosophical claims he is seeking to advance. The four case studies also bring to the fore some of the less palatable aspects of Nietzsche’s thought such as racial stereotyping, the essentialising of a so-called slave mentality, and the ranking of human beings based on a highly idiosyncratic and prejudiced view of what qualifies as noble and ignoble.

Spis treści

Introduction

Chapter 1 / ‘On Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense’ (1873): Gnats, Spiders, Bees and not so Clever Beasts

Chapter 2 / Daybreak (1881): Nietzsche’s Extensive Rhetorical Arsenal

Chapter 3 / Beyond Good and Evil (1886): The Rank Odour of Rank Order

Chapter 4 / Twilight of the Idols (1888): Magnanimity, Restraint and Tomfoolery

O autorze

Francesca Cauchi is an Associate Professor at National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan. She is the author of two books on Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and her work on Nietzsche has appeared in scholarly journals such as Nietzsche-Studien, Oxford German Studies, and Philological Quarterly.

Blurb

This book excavates the rhetorical devices that Nietzsche habitually uses and explains how they constitute a distinctive form of philosophical argumentation. Through a sustained analysis of Nietzsche’s rhetorical style, stratagems, and didactic aims in two of his early works (‘On Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense’ and Daybreak) and two of his later works (Beyond Good and Evil and Twilight of the Idols), the book assesses the extent to which Nietzsche's substantial rhetorical arsenal undermines the philosophical claims he is seeking to advance. The four case studies also bring to the fore some of the less palatable aspects of Nietzsche’s thought such as racial-stereotyping, the essentialising of a so-called slave mentality, and the ranking of human beings based on a highly idiosyncratic and prejudiced view of what qualifies as noble and ignoble.