Perspectives on Nihilism & Nietzsche's Overcoming of Heidegger's Nietzsche

Abstract

<p>This study is an attempt to challenge the hermeneutical soundness of Heidegger's reading Nietzsche as a nihilist. Nietzsche finds nihilism to be the logical result of the moral and metaphysical postulations of the Western philosophical tradition. Nietzsche's task is to revaluate this tradition and seek a way of overcoming its effects. My thesis lays out an interpretative framework within which Nietzsche can be seen to have succeeded by pursuing fundamental questions neglected in Heidegger's reading of him as the last metaphysician of the Western tradition. By following Nietzsche's lead as thinker from the direction of Dionysos, my thesis displays the untenability of Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzschean thought as the culmination of metaphysics' subjectivistic tendencies.</p>