In this new interpretation of Nietzsche's thought, Daniel Ahern examines Nietzsche's understanding of physiology and argues that Nietzsche saw himself in the role of a ''physician'' of culture. Through what he calls Nietzsche's ''clinical standpoint, '' Ahern describes Nietzsche's views on the history of Western culture in terms of the ''physiological dynamics'' of exhaustion, decadence, sickness, and health. This physiology is a simultaneous interpretation of the will to power and constitutes both Nietzsche's ''diagnoses'' of the ''spiritual'' sickness of modern nihilism and its possible...

In The Smile of Tragedy, Daniel Ahern examines Nietzsche's attitude toward what he called "the tragic age of the Greeks," showing it to be the foundation not only for his attack upon the birth of philosophy during the Socratic era but also for his overall critique of Western culture. Through an interpretation of "Dionysian pessimism," Ahern clarifies the ways in which Nietzsche sees ethics and aesthetics as inseparable and how their theoretical separation is at the root of Western nihilism. Ahern explains why Nietzsche, in creating this precursor to a new aesthetics, rejects...

In The Smile of Tragedy, Daniel Ahern examines Nietzsche's attitude toward what he called "the tragic age of the Greeks," showing it to be the foundation not only for his attack upon the birth of philosophy during the Socratic era but also for his overall critique of Western culture. Through an interpretation of "Dionysian pessimism," Ahern clarifies the ways in which Nietzsche sees ethics and aesthetics as inseparable and how their theoretical separation is at the root of Western nihilism. Ahern explains why Nietzsche, in creating this precursor to a new aesthetics, rejects...