NIETZSCHE, Friederich.

Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen III: Schopenhauer als Erzieher (Unconventional Observation III: Schopenhauer as Educator).

Chemnitz: Ernst Schmeitzner, 1874. FIRST EDITION TP + [3]-113, Octavo. Schaberg 27. Despite the fact that there were approximately 750 copies of the first edition in this first issue state, this is the rarest and most difficult to obtain of the four "Unconventional Observations." The third "Unconventional Observation" took up the topic of self-preservation and set up the philosopher Schopenhauer - then one of Nietzsche's philsophical heroes - as a paradigm of self-direction. "The man who would not belong in the mass needs only to cease being comfortable with himself. He should follow his conscience that shouts at him: "Be yourself! You are not really all you do, think, and desire now." While Nietzsche would lionize Schopenhauer here, he spent much of the rest of his career attempting to overcome the pessimism that lies at the heart of Schopenhauer's philosophy - rejecting Schopenhauer's "eastern" denial of life and proclaiming that one must "Say 'YES' to Life!" Nietzsche's friend Franz Oberbeck called him "a virtuoso of self-overcoming." In these early meditations, Nietzsche is often at pains to free himself from preconceptions to which his own spirit had drawn him, establishing a model for the life of the "free-spirits" and the "dangerous thinkers" of whom Nietzsche saw himself the harbinger. The essay represents one of Nietzsche's first serious engagements with the Darwinian philosophy, in the course of which Nietzsche elaborates a conception of nature and its alleged purposes that recalls the Greeks and their conception of "physis" - as a mode of which he would characterize human society as well as the physical world - as opposed to the Victorian rigidity of Darwin's followers. Recently rebound in contemporary looking boards and spine label. Lightly foxed throughout. Overall a very nice copy of one of Nietzsche's early works. PHOTOS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST.

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• bookseller: Athena Rare Books (USA)