Nietzsche worked to comprehend the nature of the individual. Richard White shows how Nietzsche was inspired and guided by the question of personal sovereignty and how through his writings sought to provoke the very sovereignty he described.

White argues that Nietzsche is a philosopher our contemporary age must therefore come to understand if we are ever to secure a genuinely meaningful direction for the future. Profoundly relevant to our era, Nietzsche's philosophy addresses a version of individuality that allows us to move beyond the self-dispossession of mass society and the alternative of selfish individualism - to fully understand how one becomes what one is.

Nietzsche described himself as a godless anti-metaphysician. These writings encourage the student to question any reading that fails to address Nietzsche's sense of irony with respect to his own philosophical claims. The anthology includes the best recent writings on Nietzsche. It covers all the main themes of Nietzsche's philosophy and pays particular attention to Nietzsche's discussion of value and the need for a re-evaluation of values; his critique of metaphysics and the problem of knowledge; and his account of art and politics.