The Impossible Preface: Nietzsche, Derrida, and the Instability of the Beginning
The preface appears to occupy a stable position. It is the first thing one reads; it introduces, frames, and justifies the work that follows. It functions as a gateway, an opening gesture that prepares the reader for what is to come. Yet a simple paradox unsettles this apparent stability: the preface is often written last. In order to announce what the book will say, the author must already know what the book has said.
This observation, made explicit by Jacques Derrida, is not a minor editorial curiosity but a structural fissure. If the text that appears first is in fact composed afterward, then the distinction between beginning and supplement, inside and outside, becomes unstable.
Long before this logic was conceptually elaborated, Friedrich Nietzsche had enacted it in his own writing. His Fünf Vorreden zu fünf ungeschriebenen Büchern (1872–73) and the Versuch einer Selbstkritik added in 1886 to The Birth of Tragedy form a constellation in which the beginning shifts, doubles, and becomes retroactive. The preface ceases to be a simple liminal space; it becomes the site where origin itself is called into question.
The Preface as an Internalized Outside: Derrida
In Of Grammatology, Derrida reflects on the peculiar status of the preface. It stands outside the main body of the text and yet plays a decisive role in shaping its meaning. It promises, situates, and anticipates; it establishes the horizon within which the work will be read. But such anticipation is only possible once the work is complete. The preface that appears first is structurally written last.
This paradox is not merely chronological. Derrida inscribes it within a broader critique of classical oppositions: inside/outside, before/after, primary/secondary. The “frame” is not a simple addition; it produces constitutive effects. In this sense, the preface participates in the logic of the supplement—what appears to be added on proves to be a condition of possibility.
It is telling that even Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, in the Vorrede to the Phenomenology of Spirit, warns against the philosophical preface. Philosophy, he suggests, cannot be summarized from the outside as though its truth could be presented in advance. The preface thus becomes a problematic space: a place where the beginning reveals itself as retrospectively constructed rather than self-grounding.
Nietzsche I: Prefaces Without Books
In 1872–73, the young Nietzsche composed the Fünf Vorreden zu fünf ungeschriebenen Büchern—five prefaces to books that were never written. The gesture is radical in its simplicity: the frame precedes a work that does not exist.
Here the preface loses its conventional function. It introduces nothing; it legitimizes no completed text. Instead, it remains suspended as a promise without fulfillment. The reader encounters a threshold that leads nowhere. The beginning does not inaugurate a finished work but opens a space of possibility.
These texts sketch themes central to Nietzsche’s early period—Greek culture, agonistic competition, spiritual formation, and a critique of modern knowledge. Yet what matters most is not their thematic content but their formal structure. Nietzsche allows the preface to stand on its own. The threshold detaches itself from any architectural interior.
If, as Derrida argues, the preface is structurally posterior to the book it precedes, Nietzsche introduces a further inversion: a preface without an inside at all. The beginning appears as projection rather than foundation. Origin no longer signals a full presence; it marks an anticipation that may never be realized.
Nietzsche II: The Retrospective Preface
The paradox reaches a more intricate form with the Versuch einer Selbstkritik, written in 1886 and placed at the beginning of The Birth of Tragedy. Fourteen years after the book’s initial publication, Nietzsche added a text that appears at the front but was composed much later.
In this “attempt at self-criticism,” Nietzsche revisits his youthful work, questioning its tone, vocabulary, and intellectual allegiances—especially its proximity to Arthur Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner. The 1872 book is reinterpreted from the standpoint of a different philosophical orientation. As a result, the work acquires a doubled beginning: it now commences not only in 1872 but also in 1886.
Meaning is altered retroactively. The later preface reshapes the earlier text’s origin. What once seemed fixed becomes open to revision. The beginning is no longer a stable inaugural point but a site of reinscription.
Nietzsche’s hesitation over how to name this addition—preface, prologue, self-critique—signals that the traditional category is inadequate. The text does not simply introduce; it rewrites.
Structural Convergence: Gesture and Conceptualization
Nietzsche does not offer a systematic theory of the preface. Nowhere does he develop a sustained reflection on the ontological status of textual framing. Yet his practice enacts the instability that Derrida later articulates philosophically.
One might put it this way: Nietzsche performs what Derrida theorizes. In the Fünf Vorreden, the beginning functions as an unguaranteed projection. In the Versuch einer Selbstkritik, it becomes a retroactive reinterpretation that transforms the past. In both instances, origin loses its purity.
Derrida demonstrates that the boundary between inside and outside is porous, that what appears supplementary participates in the constitution of what it supplements. Nietzsche, for his part, stages this logic within the very form of his works. The preface ceases to be a marginal space and becomes a decisive site in which the work’s meaning is negotiated.
This is not a matter of doctrinal equivalence but of structural affinity. The instability of the beginning is not merely a theoretical problem; it is also a textual practice.
Conclusion: Beginning as Rewriting
Traditionally conceived as a preliminary and external text, the preface emerges in Nietzsche and Derrida as a locus of instability. In one case, the frame precedes a non-existent work; in the other, a later frame reshapes a completed one. In both, the beginning loses its simplicity.
A work no longer possesses a single, uncontaminated origin. Its opening may take the form of projection, supplement, or retrospective reinterpretation. The preface does not simply introduce the book; it participates in producing it, sometimes after the fact.
What becomes visible in this constellation is that beginnings are never entirely original. They are effects of framing, inscription, and rereading. The “impossible preface” is not an editorial anomaly but the manifestation of a deeper truth: every work begins more than once.
Bibliography
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Phenomenology of Spirit. 1807.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Fünf Vorreden zu fünf ungeschriebenen Büchern. 1872–73.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. 1872. With “Versuch einer Selbstkritik” (1886).
Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Representation. 1818.
Wagner, Richard. Selected writings.
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