For Peter Sloterdijk, Friedrich Nietzsche represents nothing short of a "catastr
ophe in the history of language" -- a new evangelist for a linguistics of narcis
sistic jubilation. Nietzsche offered a philosophical declaration of independence
from humility, a meeting-point of sobriety and megalomania that for Sloterdijk
has come to define the very project of philosophy.
Yet for all the significance
of this language-event named Nietzsche, Nietzsche's contributions have too ofte
n been elided and the contradictions at the root of his philosophy too often edi
ted out. As Sloterdijk observes, "Never has an author so insisted on distinction
and yet attracted such vulgarity." "Nietzsche Apostle," drawn from a speech Slo
terdijk gave in 2000 on the hundredth anniversary of Nietzsche's death, looks at
the ways in which Nietzsche has been branded over the years through selective c
ompilation, and at the ways in which Nietzsche turned himself into a brand -- a
brand announced by his proclaimed "fifth Gospel," "Thus Spoke Zarathustra."
