On Reading Nietzsche’s Aphorisms

Abstract

The article discuses text hermeneutics, which many years ago were disputed by Gadamer and Derrida. Buczyńska-Garewicz considers the importance of the notion of the eternal return in Nietzsche’s writings. She analyses various connotation strata of this notion, and concludes that they are compatible rather than exclusive. Thus, the widely shared conviction that the notion of eternal return is fundamentally unc-lear is falsified. Buczyńska-Garewicz treats this concept as anaxis along which the whole philosophy of Nietzsche is concentrated. This notion has many masks, and in the end its ambiguity turns out to be a positive rather than a negative trait.

The article demonstrates that there is need of intellectual empathy which transcends the formal rules of text analysis. Nietzsche treated thinking not as the lifeless letter of doctrine, but as live experience, and this should be constantly kept in mind while reading his writings. Intellectual empathy appears to be the most important aspect in the process of comprehensive reading.