Centers
in The Infinite Conversation Maurice Blanchot writes, “In Nietzsche’s work there is nothing that might be called a center.” (140) the works many would perhaps like to place at the center of Nietzsche’s writing, The Will to Power or The Gay Science, for instance, do not really play that role well. The Will to Power remains incomplete, not yet ready for publication, while The Gay Science introduces but does not yet present the full critiques of nihilism, Christianity, subjectivity, and so on, that the later works flesh out. even Thus Spoke Zarathustra, wherein Nietzsche touches on many of his key ideas, can seem almost marginal to Nietzsche’s thought in its style and format. in the tradition of twentieth-century phenomenology we are accustomed to thinkers producing a great central work that stands as a kind of foundation or touchstone that helps readers navigate the rest of the body of work. one need only think of Being and Time for Heidegger, or Being and Nothingness for Sartre. but Nietzsche produced no such touchstone. instead, readers need to engage Nietzsche’s works both individually and as part of a broad corpus, relying on past readings for a useful framework but also remaining willing to venture into new areas, new critiques, and new orientations for already familiar ideas. Nietzsche’s works, if we view them as a kind of constellation, might pulse with several areas of intensity; each work, concept, or thought shining with a different kind of light. perhaps we should read Nietzsche as a thinker whose work has many centers (some are concepts, some are books), each one (the will to power, the overman, The Gay Science, force, Zarathustra, and so on) reorienting all the rest with each contact.
text cited:
Blanchot, Maurice. The Infinite Conversation. translated by Susan Hanson. University of Minnesota Press. 1993.
