The Pre-Platonic Philosophers

The Pre-Platonic Philosophers supplies English-language readers with a crucial missing link in Nietzsche’s development by reproducing the text of a lecture series delivered by the young philosopher (then a philologist) at the University of Basel between 1872 and 1876. In these lectures, Nietzsche surveys the Greek philosophers from Thales to Socrates, establishing a new chronology for the progression of their natural scientific insights. He also roughly sketches concepts such as the will to power, eternal recurrence, and self-overcoming and links them to specific pre-Platonics. Greg Whitlock is the first scholar to have wrestled Nietzsche’s difficult manuscript into English. This superbly readable translation, now in paperback for the first time, is complete with Nietzsche’s own extensive sidenotes and philological citations, and is accompanied by a prologue, an introductory essay, commentary on the lectures, and voluminous bibliographical materials.