Nietzsche.

First edition. Two volumes. Small 8vo. 662, [2]; 481, [1] pp. Original black cloth, spines lettered in white, dust jackets (neat ownership inscription and monograph stamps 'S.M' to front free endpapers and title pages, otherwise internally clean and unmarked; some minor shelf wear to tips of spine panels, otherwise a near fine set). Pfullingen, Günther Neske.

'During the 100 years since Nietzsche slipped into the abyss of insanity, the mountain of his thought has proven an insurmountable obstacle to all those who have sought to pass through his terrain. Many have tried to scale this precipitous peak and a few have reached the lesser heights but no one has conquered the summit and thus no one has been able to describe the vast panorama that Nietzsche’s thought open up. For the most part, we are lift with limited explorations of the foothills and descriptions of the mountain from a distance or with grand failures that seek to climb beyond their strength and thus plunge into the depths of absurdity.'

'Among these climbers of Nietzsche’s mountain, one will not find Martin Heidegger. Heidegger is more Nietzschean, ever aware of Nietzsche’s dictum that students must deny their teacher if they are not always to remain mere students. He thus follows a fundamentally Nietzschean path not, however, to the top of Nietzsche’s mountain but to the top of his own craggy prominence. His consideration of Nietzsche is thus not an interpretation in the strict sense of the term but an Auseinandersetzung, ‘a setting-apart-from-one-another’, a dialogue or debate with his fellow ‘hermit of the spirit’ across the gulf that separates their two peaks' (review by Michael Allen Gillespie, Political Theory, 1987).

Stock Code: 250341