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From Denial to Transfiguration: Nietzsche’s Break with Schopenhauer and the Artistic Creation of Value

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Saparate ways. AI image Introduction Nietzsche’s mature philosophy cannot be understood without reckoning with his decisive rupture from Arthur Schopenhauer. This break marks more than a personal or intellectual disagreement; it signals a fundamental reorientation of how value, art, and philosophy itself are conceived. Where Schopenhauer sought redemption through negation and withdrawal from the world, Nietzsche came to affirm creation, interpretation, and form. The emergence of value-creation in Nietzsche’s later work coincides directly with this departure and finds its clearest expression in his radical revaluation of art. Schopenhauer’s Ethics of Negation Schopenhauer’s influence on the young Nietzsche was profound. Nietzsche himself later recalled that upon encountering Schopenhauer for the first time, he felt an immediate and decisive recognition: he counted himself among those readers who, “after having read the first page, know for certain that they will read every page an...
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The Modern Abyss: Dostoevsky and Nietzsche Confronting the Death of God

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Dostoyevski and Nietzsche in the style of Chagall. AI image Note: This text was originally written in Spanish and is presented here in English translation. Introduction The crisis of nineteenth-century Europe was not merely political or scientific; it was, above all, spiritual. The erosion of Christian faith, the transformation of moral values, and the emergence of a radically historical consciousness confronted modern thought with an unsettling question: how is one to live when God no longer guarantees meaning? Within this horizon emerge two central figures, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Friedrich Nietzsche, often read side by side and frequently linked through the notion of a supposed direct influence. Yet what binds them is not a relation of dependence but a deeper affinity: a shared confrontation with nihilism and with the responsibility that arises once life must be lived without transcendent foundations. The decisive difference between them lies in how they respond to this condition....
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Reading Truth in Large Letters: Plato, Nietzsche, and the Scale of Illusion

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Introduction In a previous discussion of Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873) and Twilight of the Idols (1888), we observed a shift in scale: from the mechanisms of individual cognition to the historical life of ideas. What begins as an inquiry into perception and language later becomes a genealogy of metaphysical beliefs. This movement invites comparison with a well-known methodological gesture in Plato’s Republic , where Socrates proposes examining justice first in the city rather than in the individual soul, because it can be read “in larger letters.” Nietzsche’s trajectory, however, does not simply echo this Platonic strategy. It inverts it. Where Plato enlarges the soul into the polis to clarify justice, Nietzsche enlarges cognition into history to reveal the illusory foundations of truth. The City Written Large: Plato’s Methodological Analogy In Republic II, Socrates suggests that justice may be difficult to discern at the level of the individual psyc...
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From Metaphor to Fable: Nietzsche on Truth, Language, and the Construction of Reality

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Introduction Nietzsche’s reflections on truth trace an intellectual trajectory in which later developments extend rather than negate earlier insights. In On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873), he examines truth as a product of human cognition, perception, and language. Fifteen years later, in Twilight of the Idols (1888), he turns to the historical and genealogical dimensions, tracing the fate of the “true world” from Plato to positivism. Across this evolution, Nietzsche consistently challenges the assumption of an independent, intrinsic reality behind human concepts, but he shifts from analyzing the mental mechanics of truth to critiquing its moral and cultural history. This article explores that trajectory, showing how truth moves from a metaphorical construction rooted in perception to a historical fable whose necessity gradually dissolves. Truth as Metaphor and Cognitive Construction (1873) In On Truth and Lies , Nietzsche presents a radical picture of human knowledg...
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“Übermensch” Is Said in Many Ways: On the Multiplicity of Names and the Refusal of Fixity

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Introduction Anyone reading Nietzsche with even minimal attentiveness soon notices a peculiar trait: when he approaches the question of value-creation, he rarely relies on a single name. Instead, a shifting constellation of figures appears: free spirits, new philosophers, commanders and legislators, teachers of the purpose of existence, contemplatives, higher types, nobles. The temptation is to treat these expressions as loosely interchangeable, or to assume that Nietzsche simply lacked terminological discipline. Yet this reaction overlooks something essential. The multiplication of names is not a failure of precision; it is a strategy aimed precisely at resisting the illusion that a concept could ever fully capture what is at stake. A proliferation that demands attention Across Nietzsche’s works, the same structural role is repeatedly inhabited by different figures. In The Gay Science , the “free spirit par excellence” is described as one who dances “even near abysses” and maint...
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Is the Übermensch One or Many? Reconsidering the Debate through The Antichrist §4

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A Metaphor for Exceptionality. AI image Introduction Discussions of the Übermensch repeatedly return to the same interpretive impasse. Readers regularly stumble over a seemingly simple question: is the Übermensch a singular individual or a collective figure, perhaps even a future species? The difficulty is not accidental. It is encouraged by the prophetic cadence of Thus Spoke Zarathustra , where Nietzsche places the concept in the mouth of a solitary teacher who announces what is to come. This tone easily invites messianic expectations. Yet the persistence of the question suggests that something more than stylistic ambiguity is at stake. A decisive clarification emerges when one turns to The Antichrist , where Nietzsche addresses the issue with striking precision. Read carefully, §4 dissolves the apparent dilemma by reframing the very terms in which it is posed. The Übermensch as Individual: Evidence from Zarathustra and Ecce Homo Positive textual evidence favors the individu...
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