Since the 1970s, Nietzsche and rhetoric has been a hotly debated topic, not only in philosophy but also in aesthetics, comparative literature and philology. For the most part, studies in the subject have been more representative of deconstructive methods than of the historical Nietzsche. And even if source criticism, especially German Nietzsche studies, has corrected the worst excesses in the debate, there are still very few studies offering historically faithful and comprehensive accounts of the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy in Nietzsche's thought. This project aims at providing such a comprehensive account, tying Nietzsche's view of rhetoric to his siding with the Sophists against Plato and Socrates. This is a highly interesting subject, yet it has received little scholarly attention. In the words of Hans Blumenberg, a noted expert on mythology: "Nietzsche's later excesses have been connected in far too small degree to his early antipathy toward Socrates, which must be seen in every respect as a siding with the Sophists and an incorporation of their speech culture." (Höhlenausgänge 1989). The project will also pay attention to the debt that Nietzsche's positive re-evaluation of the Sophists, and the corresponding devaluation of "the metaphysician" Plato, owes to post-Kantian philosophy, in particular the work of F. A. Lange, but also to the philological work of the period.