Introduction to the Teachings of Friedrich Nietzche

The manuscript is an incomplete nineteen-page handwritten document. The document is the first of twenty-one in Folio Volume Box 97 of miscellaneous materials.1 The intended topic was neither a critique nor a defense, but a clarification of Nietzsche's philosophical Weltanschauung in outline. Yet, Royce offers only a brief biographical sketch and a few tentative remarks before the manuscript terminates. The first reference to Nietzsche in Royce's writings occurs in The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, a series of lectures delivered between 1889 and 1892, and eventually published in book-form.2 Royce therein mentions Nietzsche by name but postpones an evaluation of his philosophy until a later date. The next reference occurs in the second series of The World and the Individual, the second part of the Gifford Lectures delivered in 1898 and published in 1901 after the 1899 publication of the first series. Royce, in the first footnote of the seventh lecture, which concerns the realist conception of the self, mentions Nietzsche by name ― along with his notorious predecessor Max Stirner ― but again postpones an analysis because of the idealistic element in Nietzsche's conception of the self.3 Hence, Royce was at least aware of Nietzsche as early as 1889 and presumably had some knowledge of his philosophy by 1901. Royce would finally fulfill his promise to address Nietzsche's philosophy ― in what will be his most mature statement on philosophical pessimism ― in a 1917 posthumous publication. Given that Royce cites Nietzsche's mental collapse in 1899 without any reference to his death in 1900, the composition of the present manuscript must have been sometime in the early 1900s prior to Royce's learning of the philosopher's untimely demise and death.