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There is the difference of a century to be marked between Nietzsche's posthumous reflections on the necessity to expedite the devaluation of all values, and the current widespread reception of those reflections in the various celebrations of nihilism, both active and passive, which are spread out all around and about at this new turn of a century. There is then a paradox here: for the announcement which Nietzsche himself declares to be before its time is now supposed to have arrived, and in circumstances very different from those of Nietzsche's solitary, rigorous self-questioning. The essay which follows explores the implications of this transposition of nihilism from a solitary thought, for the main part developed in posthumously published manuscripts and only obliquely indicated in some of the most highly wrought texts of the tradition, defying one might suppose easy appropriation, to a commonly acknowledged theme.

DOI: 10.1057/9780230597761_4

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