Introduction

The essays published in this issue were first presented at a conference organized at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH), Cambridge, on November 21, 2008, entitled "Nietzsche's Transvaluation of Values."¹ The conference's project was to reexamine Nietzsche's Umwerthung aller Werthe project, which has been discredited by Nietzsche's sister's and Peter Gast's fraudulent editions of The Will to Power. As will be clear from the issue, even the choice of how to translate 'Umwerthung' into English-as either 'revaluation' or 'transvaluation'-was an issue of contention from the start. Many authors in fact switched from one to the other between the conference itself and the publication of the articles.² In view of this, Duncan Large's "Philologica" discussion of the merits and demerits of translating 'Umwerthung' as either 'revaluation' or 'transvaluation' opens the issue. This is followed by Thomas Brobjer's historical exploration of the origin of the "revaluation" theme in Nietzsche's thought, which he dates in the notes of 1880-81, much earlier than most other commentators. Manuel Dries attempts to think through the conditions that must be satisfied for Nietzsche's "transvaluation" project to be successful, arguing that it is not simply an inversion of Judeo-Christian values but, rather, moves to a different understanding of what a value is and how it functions. Approaching the theme from a more philosophical perspective than Brobjer, Tracy Strong posits that Nietzsche's project of "transfiguration" is constant throughout his work and explores The Birth of Tragedy as paradigmatic of this idea. His thesis is that the transformation Nietzsche is aiming at is to be made possible through reading his books, and from this notion we start to see emerging some individual instances of what Nietzsche's transformation might produce. Finally, attempting to broaden this last point, I ask what political consequences can be drawn from Nietzsche's "revaluation" project and analyze his concepts of "Great politics" and "Mind-war" with a view to fleshing out what a Nietzschean politics might have looked like.

The essays bring together a number of different approaches to the study of Nietzsche, from literary to historical, analytical or political. If the theme of revaluation in Nietzsche is slowly being rediscovered in the secondary literature, this issue seeks to contribute to the discussion by treating it in a systematic manner from a number of different standpoints while making salient important points of disagreement. For instance, how one will translate 'Umwerthung' itself will depend on what philosophical understanding one has of the term, and the debate started here is one that must be worth pursuing.

As with all successful events, there are a number of people who must be thanked, some of them more visible than others. First, I am certain that the authors of the articles published here join me in thanking the discussants to their papers at the conference, who included Christa Davis Acampora, Keith Ansell-Pearson, Babette Babich, Ken Gemes, Melissa Lane, Simon May, Simon Robertson, Martin Ruehl, Peter Sedgewick, and Andreas Urs Sommer.³ Special thanks go to Melissa Lane and Martin Ruehl for chairing the sessions; to Anna Malinowska, who was absolutely instrumental in organizing the conference, along with Philippa Smith, to whom we owe the design of the excellent poster; and more generally to Catherine Hurley, general administrator, all of CRASSH. In fact, if the conference was so successful and ran so smoothly, it is thanks to Anna. We owe thanks for funding the conference to both CRASSH and the Trevelyan Fund of the Cambridge Faculty of History, which, along with financing travel and accommodation, allowed us to have a sumptuous conference dinner in King's College, which we also thank, to round off a both productive and highly enjoyable day. Our final thanks go to Christa Davis Acampora and the Journal of Nietzsche Studies editorial team for coordinating the peer review process that provided particularly helpful critical feedback and led to publishing the essays as one.