Chapter 1 The Art of Limited Warfare: Nietzsche’s Hammer and the Need to Find a Limit in Negation

Abstract

A transvaluation of all values: this question mark, so dark and so monstrous that it casts a shadow over the one who poses it – a destiny of a task like this forces him to run out into the sunlight every moment to shake off a seriousness that has become heavy, all too heavy. All means are justified, every “case” is a case of luck. Above all war.War has always been a great kind of prudence for spirits who have become too inward and profound; even in wounding [in der Verwundung] there is healing power. I have had as my motto for a long time a maxim, whose source I withhold from scholarly curiosity: increscunt animi, virescit volnere virtus. [...] [The spirit grows, strength is restored in wounding] This work too [...] is above all a recuperation, a sunspot, an escapade into the idle hours of a psychologist. And perhaps also a new war? And will new idols be sounded out? . . . This little work is a great declaration of war [...] (GD Vorwort, KSA 6.57 f.)