Nietzsche and Individuality

In Schopenhauer's System, individuality is an illusion. In Nietzsche's Dionysianism, an individual is an ephemeral fragment of nature. Out the outset of The Gay Science, as Nietzsche introduces Zarathustra and Eternal Recurrence, 'Morality' is the comic effort to treat that fragment of the species as substantive and meaningful. However, in Nietzsche's later work, 'Morality' is the suppression of individuality by the species, which would seem to imply an overturning of not merely Schopenhauerism and Christianity, but of own his earlier phase, as well. And, yet, to the end, he adheres to his Dionysianism, according to which an indictment of such suppression is comic in its vanity. That he continues to struggle with the unsettled status of Individuality in his doctrine of Will to Power is occasionally evident in his entertainment of a version of the thesis that has become better known as 'Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny'. On that thesis, each individual is an embodiment of the entire past of the species, which would also amount to a generalization of his own concept of 'complementary' man that he does officially endorse, but only as a specialized phenomenon. Such a thesis does offer a potentially non-illusory conceptual reconciliation of Individual and Species, but Nietzsche never fully develops it. Otherwise, the status of Individuality in his System remains unclear, as, therefore, do his concept of Morality, and his diagnosis of Nihilism, both of which depend on it.