I am very grateful to the many supportive friends, colleagues, and family members who helped me in various ways toward completing this book. I want to offer special thanks here to Patricia Cox Miller for the hours of fruitful conversation, and to Catherine Keller, David Miller, and Charles Winquist for their encouragement at crucial moments. And I thank Fred Paddock, who gave me my first books by Nietzsche and Heidegger and started me thinking along these paths.
I would like to acknowledge the previous publication by Philosophy Today of a slightly different version of Chapter IV, under the title “Nietzsche’s Riddle.”
Not even Tom Parker, collaborator and co-luder, can know how central and indispensable his many contributions have been.