Band 1 : Allgemeiner teil. - 2007. - 263 S.

I was first attracted to Friedrich Nietzsche as an undergraduate at Brigham Young University. He represented a radical independence of thought to me, and I wrote my senior honors paper on what then seemed the most provocative of his ideas. As a graduate student in intellectual history at the University of Chicago, I decided to write my dissertation about Nietzche as well. By that time, the fog of adolescent enthusiasm had cleared somewhat, and the categories of psychoanalysis came naturally to hand as a means of explaining his unusual manner of thinking. Fortunately, Professor William McNeill, my adviser, countenanced and even encouraged my interest in psychobiography. The psychoanalytic focus of the dissertation also led me to a rewarding association with D r. George Moraitis of the Institute for Psychoanalysis in Chicago, who helped me to appreciate my own psychological involvement with Nietzsche as well asto avoid some of the pitfalls of historical diagnosis. I became dissatisfied with my psychoanalytic treatment of Nietzsche's life as I realized that it did not suffice to illuminate the conjuncture of his ideas. Nietzsche had carefully constructed both his life and his works as monuments of creativity and had cast himself in the role of the genius. I began to explore the theory of genius, which had become, in the nineteenth century, a veritable ideology, a vehicle for conveying the grand aspirations of unusual individuals to the culture at large. Many writers and artists employed it, both to marshal their own energies and to construct themselves and their oeuvres to fit this new archetype of creative life, thus making themselves recognizable to the public. The question of how Nietzsche became a genius, or how he constructed himself as a genius, linked what I knew about his unique personality to the cultural category of genius, a socially constructed role. Nietzsche learned about it from widely revered examx pIes like Goethe and Schiller. With his need fo r fa therly mentors, he fa stened his attention upon these men and emulated them. And after an extended apprenticeship to Schopenhauer and Wagner, he assumed the mantle of genius fo r himself. With th is understanding Nietzsche's development, I was in a position to write a quite dIoolt rent book. In fa ct, I found that the complementary relationShIp of personal psychology and the culture of ge nius provides a strategy fo r investigating many other great and unique creative figures. I had a research agenda that went far beyond Nietzsche. I have a great many fr iends and colleagues to thank fo r th eir confidence in me and my gradually developing project, and for their fri endship. Thanks first to my far-flung fr ends who believed that I could bring this to fru ition; to fo rmer colleagues in the Department of History at the University of North Carol ina; in the Department of German at the University of Pittsburgh; and in the Departments of History at Appalachian State University and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington; and finally to my current colleagues at Miami University in Oxfo rd, Ohio. In the years SInce I began to write this book, I have incurred many other debts too personal to mention here, but no less gratefully re membered. For her sustaining confidence I am particularly grateful to Joyce Seltzer at The Free Press. Without her encouragement during the last several years, this book might not have been published. Without her intellectual advice and editorial criticism, it would bemuch less satisfactory than it is. To my daughter Laura, who can hardly know how uch she has helped with the book, I dedicate it.