Deleuze writes that the reception of Nietzsche's thought has involved two key issues, those of whether it helped to prepare the way for fascism, and whether it deserves to be considered philosophy.

Deleuze also discusses the views of the philosophers Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Martin Heidegger, and subjects such as dialectic.

Rorty noted that the book received "considerable acclaim", and suggested that Deleuze's Anti-Oedipus (1972), written with the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari, represented a continuation of the work.

He credited Deleuze with being one of the first commentators to discuss the concepts of the will to power and the eternal return carefully, and wrote that he raised questions that became central to Nietzsche studies and to French post-structuralism.

[11] The philosopher Peter Dews wrote that Nietzsche and Philosophy was central to the post-structuralist texts of the decade that followed its publication, including Anti-Oedipus.

[12] Che-ming Yang described the book as a masterpiece, maintaining that it shows that the reading of Nietzsche is central to Deleuze's philosophical project.