This book deals with the philosophy of Nietzsche whose work has exerted a profound influence on western philosophy and modern intellectual history; and presents his relation to his time and some characteristics of his thinking.
Our present age regards everything as the product of evolution, it tells us that we are what we are because our ancestors were what they were, that we do what we do because they did what they did; it traces the development of the thinker, the poet, the statesman, of law, morality, religion, art, literature and science; it justifies our conceptions and institutions on the ground that they have grown from simple beginnings and will develop in their own good time into more and more complex and perfect forms. The individual is the child of the past, in him our grandfathers are speaking to the present, in him their ideals and values are asserting themselves; they are the laws of the present, he is their mouthpiece. Against these conceptions and values a man of our time, Friedrich Nietzsche, has uttered his everlasting No. "Man alone," he says," finds himself so hard to bear. That is because he carries so many strange things upon his shoulders. Like the camel he kneels down and allows a heavy load to be placed on his back. Particularly, the strong, burden-bearing man, in whom reverence dwells: too many heavy strange words and values he loads upon his back—and now life seems to him a desert." He breaks the old tables of values and demands that new ones be set up in their stead. He is not content with studying the conditions that gave rise to the ideals which we now uphold; indeed, he regards the historic sense as the cause of the weakness of our times. We must cease feeling that we are epigoni. It is the function of the philosopher, in his opinion, to create new values, new ideals, a new civilization. "The real philosophers," he declares, "are commanders and legislators; they say: Thus shall it be; they alone determine the whither and wherefore of man; with creative hands they touch the future - their knowing is creation, their creation is legislation, their will for truth is - will for power."