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Nietzsche's writings continue to inform contemporary thinking about morality, psychology, art, culture, and politics. He started out as a daring scholar of Greek antiquity, went on first to advocate and then to repudiate a grand project of cultural renewal, and eventually transformed his authorial persona into the site of an unprecedented thoretical experiment in which the most cherished ideals of Western culture were turned against themselves. In discussing his works we will focus on such themes as the struggle to affirm life in the face of the challenge of nihilism, modernity, cultural decadence, selfhood and individualism, the status of nature, and the effort to overcome metaphysical thinking. Close attention will be paid to the strategies of writing through which Nietzsche negotiates the conflict between intellectual integrity and aesthetic appeal, truth and illusion.