ABSTRACT
The omnipresent referenees to both the processes and produets of interpretation make it tempting to view Nietzsehe as aprecursor of modem hermeneutics. 1 However, the difficulties involved in a systematic exposition of Nietzsche's conception of interpretation are considerable, insofar as he refrained from providing anything even approximating a set of methodologie al guidelines for judging between competing interpretations. In an effort to organize his varied remarks on interpretation, we shall focus on two themes articulated in various ways throughout the entirety of his writings. These themes are perspectivism and philology and, as our examination unfolds, each will appear to place certain demands on the process of interpretation. These demands give rise to differing conceptions of "truth," and Nietzsche's apparent inconsistency regarding the status of "truth"
will emerge in part as a consequence of the methodological antinomy of perspectivism and philology. Moreover, the tension between these two interpretive themes will be shown to anticipate the competing tendencies toward relativism and dogmatism that plague modern hermeneutics. In examining these two themes, we will question whether we must view the opposition between perspectivism and philology as one that confronts the interpreter with the task of reducing or subordinating one theme to the other in order to remove the apparent contradiction within Nietzsche's thinking which their mutual affirmation seems to entail.
