Philosophy of the Morning: Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration

Nietzsche’s life project remains constant throughout his life: it is the project of transformation or transfiguration. He formulates this as the necessity of dealing with the way that one’s past (be it that of an individual, or a society, or the species) shapes one’s present. The paradigm for this transformation is first to be found in The Birth of Tragedy, but it reappears in various guises in all of his work. I argue that Nietzsche’s writing is itself designed so as to make possible such a transformation in his readers.