What are the roles of human exemplars, moral perfectionism and noble ethics in our 'self-overcoming'? What place does laughter have in Nietzche's vision of the future? What contribution can Nietzsche make to the issue of humanity's relation to the natural world in an age of ecological crisis? This wide-ranging collection of essays explores various aspects of Nietzsche's thought, centred around the general issue of futurity. Contributors include such leading Nietzsche scholars as Keith Ansell Pearson, Daniel W. Conway, Kathleen Higgins, Laurence Lampert and Graham Parkes.

Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction; J.Lippitt
PART I: NOBLES AND EXEMPLARS
Nietzsche, Enlightenment and the Problem of Noble Ethics; D.Owen
Annunciation and Rebirth: The Prefaces of 1886; D.W.L.Conway
Stendhal's Ecstatic Embrace of History as the Antidote for Decadence; B.Domino
PART II: LAUGHTER AND COMEDY
Nietzsche's Best Jokes; L.Lampert
Waves of Uncountable Laughter; K.M.L.Higgins
Laughter: a Tool in Moral Perfectionism?; J.Lippitt
PART III: ART, NATURE AND THE TRANSHUMAN
A 'Pessimism of Strength': Nietzsche and the Tragic Sublime; J.Urpeth
Creating the Future: Legislation and Aesthetics; G.Banham
Staying Loyal to the Earth: Nietzsche as an Ecological Thinker; G.Parkes
Loving the Poison: on the 'Meaning' of the Transhuman Condition; K.Ansell Pearson
Index

JOHN LIPPITT is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire. He has published numerous articles on Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and theories of humour and laughter, and is currently working on two books on Kierkegaard: Kierkegaard and the Comic, and Kierkegaard and Fear and Trembling.