Nietzsche as Cultural Physician

Nietzsche did not simply want to argue with his age; he wanted to diagnose it. Daniel Ahern takes that ambition seriously, reading Nietzsche from what he calls a clinical standpoint, in which the history of Western culture becomes a matter of exhaustion, decadence, sickness and health. These physiological dynamics, Ahern argues, are another way of interpreting the will to power, and they shape both Nietzsche's account of modern nihilism and his thinking about its possible cure.

To show how spirit can be a force for both degeneration and vitality, Ahern turns to Nietzsche's view of the ancient Greeks and the ancient Jews. In doing so he gives careful textual grounding to the more inflammatory, and less often discussed, parts of Nietzsche's cultural criticism. A focused, serious study for readers who want to understand what Nietzsche believed had gone wrong with modernity, and what he hoped might heal it.