Horst Hutter - Böcker

Shaping the Future maps out the ascetic practices of a Neitzschean way of life. Hutter structures his argument around the belief that Nietzsche, despite his ostensive enmity to Platonism and Socratism, understood himself to be a Socratic and someone called upon by fate to renew the Platonic task of being a philosophical legislator of modern souls, culture, and political society. Hutter also considers the paths of reasoning opened up by Pierre Hadot in his studies of ancient philosophers as teachers of life and not just as providers of "true" opinions and doctrines about the world.Shaping the Future applies the reasonings of Hadot to the work of Nietzsche, arguing that Nietzsche himself, throughout his philosophical career, conceived of doctrines as never identical to philosophy itself, but instead as a means of self-creation that had to be related to working on oneself. Hutter makes a great contribution to the study of Nietzsche and the growing movement that sees philosophy as a practical activity and way of life.

The theme of the philosopher as therapist dominates Nietzsche's entire opus, from his earliest writings to the Zarathustra period and beyond. Nietzsche wishes to hasten the coming and future sanctification of a new type of synthetic human being, and his entire teaching is shaped by his own struggles against illness.Yet few Nietzsche scholars have paid this crucial therapeutic element of his thought sufficient attention.This collection of essays by leading scholars in the field is composed around the Nietzschean insight, which has its roots in the Hippocratic tradition of ancient medicine, that beliefs, behaviours, ideals and patterns of striving are not things for which individuals or even cultures are responsible. Rather, they are symptoms of what an individual or culture is, which symptoms require diagnostic interpretation and evaluation. The book identifies three principal approaches in Nietzsche's philosophy: diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic. Each essay takes up this essential insight into Nietzsche's therapeutic philosophy from a different perspective and collectively they reveal an array of insightful approaches to self-induced enhancement, for both individuals and cultures.