• The scorn with which Nietzsche begins is no doubt directed at some of the things you have read—e.g., Hegel’s conviction that reality comes to self-realization through human thought—but it is also worth thinking about Nietzsche’s positive claims, in particular, the idea of metaphor that he uses. Metaphors and other figures of speech are often thought of as extensions or transformations of conventional meaning of language, and Nietzsche will employ something like this idea in the second part; but, in the first part of the paper, he is speaking of the origin of meaning, so he seems to have something else in mind. What do you think it is?

• After ¶1.7, Nietzsche shifts attention from individual meanings or concepts to their relations, speaking of them together as a columbarium, a grand structure providing a system of pigeon-holes for dead metaphors, but as insubstantial as a cobweb. Paragraph 1.9 makes some of the most explicit references to art in the first part, so you should certainly think about that; but you should also think about Nietzsche’s arguments at the end of ¶1.8 and in ¶1.10 against assigning too much independent significance to the system of thought humans have come up with.

• The range of concerns in the second part is analogous to those of Schopenhauer and The Birth of Tragedy, but the spirit is different from both. Think especially about the idea of the intellect being freed from its normal service (as slaves were in the Roman Saturnalia festival) and about the contrast in ¶2.4 between the rational and the intuitive man.