Nietzsches Befreiung der Philosophie: Kontextuelle Interpretation des V. Buchs der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft by Werner Stegmaier (review)

Werner Stegmaier’s new work is an extensive study of the fifth book, “We Fearless Ones [Wir Furchtlosen],” of Nietzsche’s The Gay Science. However, it is not a mere commentary on the forty aphorisms contained in the book (GS 343–83). It is rather an entirely new interpretation of Nietzsche’s later philosophy. The volume consists of two parts: first, an introduction (3–88) in which Stegmaier analyzes The Gay Science in relation to Nietzsche’s other writings—and in particular to Thus Spoke Zarathustra—and the topics treated in the fifth book in relation to those of the four previous books; and, second, a commentary (91–640) in which the aphorisms of the fifth book are analyzed not in the order in which they appear, but in thematic groups. Each of the two parts concludes with a discussion of the secondary literature.

As is well known, Nietzsche published two editions of The Gay Science, the first in 1882 and the second in 1887. The first edition comprised four books and was preceded by a collection of epigram-like poems entitled “Joke, Cunning and Revenge [Scherz, List und Rache]” (also the title of a comic opera by Nietzsche’s friend Heinrich Köselitz (Peter Gast), itself a translation into music of a Singspiel by Goethe of the same title). Nietzsche’s original plan was for The Gay Science to be made up of five books, like Daybreak, but in a note of August 26, 1881, he outlined the book only in four parts, under the title “For the ‘Features of a New Way of Living’” (11[197], Stegmaier, 51, all translations are my own). In the preceding notes (11[195] and 11[196]), he also jotted down some sentences later included at the beginning of Zarathustra, indicating that the projects of The Gay Science and Zarathustra were closely connected from the beginning.

Only later did Nietzsche decide to add a fifth book to the original edition of The Gay Science, to make it reflect the structure of Daybreak. The first proofs of the new edition were sent to him at Sils-Maria on June 24, 1887 (59). Besides the fifth book, this second edition included a new introduction, written along with the new introduction to Daybreak, and an appendix of poems, “Songs of Prince Vogelfrei” (largely a reworking of the Idylls from Messina). The addition of the fifth book was not a straightforward one, however. Although Nietzsche wrote some thirty new aphorisms “of major importance and rather long” (55; translations of Stegmaier are my own) between the end of September and the end of October 1886 with the intentions of adding them to the new edition, a series of delays and misunderstandings with the editor Wilhelm Fritzsch made him consider adding them to the second edition of Beyond Good and Evil instead (56). Once the misunderstandings were overcome, he returned to his original plan and increased the number of new aphorisms to forty.

In this second edition, The Gay Science is an extraordinarily complex piece of work. Nietzsche himself appears to indicate the book’s significance when, in a letter to Carl Fuchs of July 29, 1888, he calls it “my most central book” (50). Chronologically, it encompasses Thus Spoke Zarathustra—the four parts of which were written between 1883 and 1885—and Beyond Good and Evil, published in 1886 (60). Stegmaier draws a striking conclusion from this—namely, that the second edition “supersedes the periods into which Nietzsche’s works are normally divided, thus cancelling the distinction between a middle text (before Zarathustra) and a later one (after Zarathustra)” (58). Stegmaier further claims that the second edition of The Gay Science should be considered not only an introduction to Zarathustra, “but also the work that once again was parting” from it (60). Indeed, with his most controversial claim, Stegmaier argues that, with the addition of the fifth book...