Nietzsche, Biology and Metaphor

This book explores Friedrich Nietzsche's response to the debates sparked by Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species.

Nietzsche, Biology and Metaphor examines key themes of the German philosopher's thought - his critique of morality, his philosophy of art and the Übermensch - in the light of the theory of evolution, the nineteenth-century sense of decadence and the rise of anti-Semitism.Nietzsche, Biology and Metaphor explores the German philosopher's response to the intellectual debates sparked by the publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species. By examining the abundance of biological metaphors in Nietzsche's writings, Gregory Moore questions his recent reputation as an eminently subversive and (post-) modern thinker, and shows how deeply Nietzsche was immersed in late nineteenth-century debates on evolution, degeneration and race. The first part of the book provides a detailed study and interpretation of Nietzsche's much disputed relationship to Darwinism. Uniquely, Moore also considers the importance of Nietzsche's evolutionary perspective for the development of his moral and aesthetic philosophy. The second part analyzes key themes of Nietzsche's cultural criticism - his attack on the Judaeo-Christian tradition, his diagnosis of the nihilistic crisis afflicting modernity and his anti-Wagnerian polemics - against the background of fin-de-siècle fears about the imminent biological collapse of Western civilization.