From Hegel to Nietzsche [antikvár]

FOREWORD TO THE FIRST EDITIONHegel and Nietzsche are the two end points between which the historical course of the German spirit in the nineteenth century moves. But, because Hegel's work has usually been viewed as the brilliant culmination of the systems of idealism, and random portions have been excerpted from Nietzsche's works for opportunistic use, caution has been necessary in the case of each. Hegel seems to stand very far removed from us and Nietzsche very near, if we consider only the latter's infiu-ence and the former's works. In fact, though, Hegel's work, mediated through his pupils, had an effect upon intellectual and political life which it would be difficult to overestimate, while the numerous influences exerted by Nietzsche since 1890 have given birth to a German ideology only in our own time. The Nietzscheans of yesterday correspond to the Hegelians of the 1840's.In contrast to the academic petrifaction of Hegel's system by scholars of Hegel and the popular warping of Nietzsche's writings by worshipers of Nietzsche, the following studies seek to bring accurately to life the epoch which starts with Hegel and ends with Nietzsche, "transcribing" the philosophical his-tory of the nineteenth century within the horizon of the present. To transcribe history does not mean to counterfeit the irrevocable power of what has taken place once and for all, or to increase vitality at the expense of truth, but to do justice to the vital fact of history so that the tree may be known only by its fruits, the father by his son. The twentieth century has clarified and made explicable the actual events of the nineteenth. In the process, the deadly consistency of philosophical development since Hegel has made easier the pursuit of the consecutive stages which have led to such an extreme result.Nevertheless, these studies in the history of the spirit are not a contribution to Geistesgeschichte in the usual sense of