Verhexung

Twilight of the Idols: or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer.
Götzen-Dämmerung, oder, Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert.

In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche says that Twilight of the Idols took him so few days to write that he “hesitate[s] to say how many” (EH III: TI 1).  Nietzsche wrote Twilight of the Idols in twenty days, beginning on August 18th and ending on September 7th, 1888.  He considered it to be ‘a complete introduction to my philosophy’; he calls it a ‘summary of my essential heterodoxies’ (Young 2010: 498).  

Nietzsche originally planned to title the book, Idleness of a Psychologist, but his friend and literary editor, Peter Gast (birthname: Heinrich Köselitz), suggested the title Twilight of the Idols (Götzen-Dämmerung), which was a play on words on Wagner’s Twilight of the Gods (Götterdämmerung).

The Wagner opera is based on Ragnarök, a series of future events in Norse mythology in which even gods, who are normally considered immortal, face their death.  After the death of several gods, and the submersion of the world in water, the world would be reborn from a few survivors.  

The play on words in the title of Nietzsche’s book indicates that the impending twilight is of ‘idols’ or ‘false gods’ (the diminutive götzen is used as opposed to götter in Wagner’s title).  The subtitle to his book is ‘How to Philosophize with a Hammer’.  As he indicates in the preface, Nietzsche plans to use his hammer as a tuning fork to sound out whether these ‘eternal idols’ are actually hollow.  

The image of a hammer might make us think of the powerful, destructive powers of Mjöllnir, that is, Thor’s destructive hammer that was capable of leveling mountains.  However, the irony is that Nietzsche is using the subtle hammer of his capacities as a critical philosopher, and yet his hammer too is capable of leveling mountains.