Nietzsche praised Kant for having annihilated Socratism, for exhibiting all ideals as essentially unattainable, and for having exposed himself to the despair of truthall essential traits Nietzsche claimed for his own thinking. At the same time, the existentialist philosopher remained highly critical of Kant.

This volume of Reiner Schürmanns lectures unpacks Nietzsches ambivalence towards Kant, in particular positioning Nietzsches claim to have brought an end to German idealism against the backdrop of the Kantian transcendental-critical tradition. Rather than simply compare the two philosophers, Schürmanns lectures help us to understand the consequences Nietzsche derived from Kantian concepts, as well as the wider horizon within which Nietzsches ideas arose and can best be shown to apply. According to Schürmanns trenchant reading: if Nietzsche was indeed fatal to Western philosophy, as he claimed, he was so in large part because of the Kantian transcendental thinking from which he inherited the very elements and tools of his criticism.