Abstract:
This dissertation investigates the philosophical question of human freedom. Broadly
speaking, ‘freedom’ is one of the most exhaustively treated questions in Western intellectual
history, and also one of the most controversially contested. I focus on one particular and often
neglected philosophical position: the peculiar positive freedom of Friedrich Nietzsche. This
introductory chapter will show that philosophical arguments about the meaning and nature of
human freedom have concrete implications for many significant elements of everyday human
life. These implications, far from being merely the objects of academic curiosity, continue to
shape the foundations of our contemporary socio-political context. It is my contention that
Nietzsche’s ideas on freedom, which have been largely dismissed within the established
historical debate, contain valuable resources for philosophical reflection on freedom and are
especially relevant in our contemporary intellectual context of growing globalisation, valuepluralism,
and scientific explanations of reality.
