Selbstbespiegelungen. Ethik und Poetik des Briefes bei Nietzsches

Nietzsche's correspondence raises research-relevant questions beyond biographical interest, because the letters seem to have been partially spared his radical scepticism of language. The most urgent desideratum in this still largely unexplored field of study is to clarify what functions the letter was able to assume for Nietzsche, who was extremely experimental with literary-philosophical forms of representation. In this essay, Nietzsche's sparse metapoetological reflections on the letter are therefore first compiled in order to then test a first model of interpretation on the basis of a few examples. It will be shown that Nietzsche's concept of addressee-oriented self-reflection pluralises the Romantic concept of aesthetic self-formation in the prism of his letters. Nietzsche's letters, moreover, do not want to be "signs of the times", but revive an outmoded, even antique ethic of noble manners.