Nietzsche's metaphilosophy

It's fifteen years since I first read The Gay Science. I remember exactly where I was when I first read the preface to the 1887 edition, and how it felt to walk home afterwards.

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In some, it is their weaknesses that philosophize; in others, their riches and strengths. The former need their philosophy, be it as a prop, a sedative, medicine, redemption, elevation, or self-alienation; for the latter, it is only a beautiful luxury, in the best case the voluptuousness of a triumphant gratitude that eventually has to inscribe itself in cosmic capital letters on the heaven of concepts.

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All those bold lunacies of metaphysics, especially answers to the question about the value of existence, may always be considered first of all as symptoms of certain bodies […] what was at stake in all philosophizing hitherto was not at all 'truth' but rather something else - let us say health, future, growth, power, life…