ABSTRACT
In this chapter author takes a circuitous route through Nietzsche's thought on philosophical questions. The author begins by setting him in conversation with some earlier thinkers he is not usually associated with, such as Francis Bacon and Robert Boyle. He sets in conversation with others they are not usually associated with, including Roger Bacon, Thomas Vaughan, and Gerber the alchemist. For Nietzsche, knowledge is both more and less than classical philosophy promised. Knowledge owes its value not to ontological truth but to its enhancement of human power to choose and act. Nietzsche hints darkly of a different figure, a tragic, Dionysian philosopher, free of optimism yet still motivated, cheerful, creative. Nietzsche's philosophy of knowledge is complex. He stands with the Enlightenment in crediting only what comes through experience, experiment, trial and error. Nietzsche expected a thorough elimination of the God-idea from Western thinking to impel a revolutionary reversal of metaphysical and ethical concepts.
