The Untimely as ‘Intempestivum Tempus’. A Philological Reconstruction and a Critical Interpretation of the Nietzschean ‘Unzeitgemäss’

This essay will be articulated in four parts. In the first,we will investigate the reasons why Nietzschean criticism has paid substantially ‘little’ attention to the theme of the Untimely. In the second and third sections we will look at the etymological and historical origins of Nietzsche’s choice (invention?) of this concept. Finally, we will follow a trail that links the term Unzeitgemäss to the Latin ‘intempestivus’ and we will ask what scenarios this hypothesis (coupled with the others) presents, both on the level of translational yield and on that of scenarios of interpretation.