Nietzsche and Race

"An admirable project." * Publishers Weekly *
“Following in the vein of Karl Schlechta, de Launay turns to Nietzsche’s texts to dispel many of the misunderstandings of his ideas and thoughts. Centering the role of the Nietzsche Archive, de Launay historically contextualizes notorious efforts to associate Nietzsche’s works and words with Nazism and philologically traces Nietzsche’s enigmatic but decidedly non-nationalistic notion of race. In the end, de Launay rightly shifts the focus away from Nietzsche’s allusions to human heredity and toward his exaltation of the universal and indiscriminate possibility of human genius.” -- A. Todd Franklin, Hamilton College
“De Launay’s elegantly written book is an extremely valuable introduction to Nietzsche’s much misunderstood concept of ‘race.’ The book successfully debunks the idea that Nietzsche advanced a racist use of the term and instead foregrounds the complex historicity of the concept itself. A precise and thoughtful reader of the original texts, de Launay offers a philosophical interpretation that convincingly shows that Nietzsche’s use of the term ‘race’ should not be understood along biologistic lines.” -- Christian Emden, Rice University