Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (Princeton Classics)
Language: English
Pages: 560
ISBN: 0691160260
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This classic is the benchmark against which all modern books about Nietzsche are measured. When Walter Kaufmann wrote it in the immediate aftermath of World War II, most scholars outside Germany viewed Nietzsche as part madman, part proto-Nazi, and almost wholly unphilosophical. Kaufmann rehabilitated Nietzsche nearly single-handedly, presenting his works as one of the great achievements of Western philosophy.
Responding to the powerful myths and countermyths that had sprung up around Nietzsche, Kaufmann offered a patient, evenhanded account of his life and works, and of the uses and abuses to which subsequent generations had put his ideas. Without ignoring or downplaying the ugliness of many of Nietzsche's proclamations, he set them in the context of his work as a whole and of the counterexamples yielded by a responsible reading of his books. More positively, he presented Nietzsche's ideas about power as one of the great accomplishments of modern philosophy, arguing that his conception of the "will to power" was not a crude apology for ruthless self-assertion but must be linked to Nietzsche's equally profound ideas about sublimation. He also presented Nietzsche as a pioneer of modern psychology and argued that a key to understanding his overall philosophy is to see it as a reaction against Christianity.
Many scholars in the past half century have taken issue with some of Kaufmann's interpretations, but the book ranks as one of the most influential accounts ever written of any major Western thinker. Featuring a new foreword by Alexander Nehamas, this Princeton Classics edition of Nietzsche introduces a new generation of readers to one the most influential accounts ever written of any major Western thinker.
Germany in the Modern World: A New History
Echo Nietzsche's words more than fourscore years later, but because, while doing this, they insist on remaining Christian theologians. It is plain what Nietzsche would have thought of that: as little as he would have thought of most movements that have sought the sanction of his name. By 1950 Nietzsche had been linked in turn with evolution, with depth psychology, and with the Nazis; but in the Englishspeaking world he had not come into his own as a philosopher. In the United States, my book.
As here suggested, is reminiscent of Hegel's dialectic. This, however, does not mean that his statements contradict each other or that he claims that reality is self-contradictory. Only unqualified judgments about reality involve us in superficial inconsistencies: may marvel how "pluralism" is abandoned so suddenly and how radically unempirical is the claim that there are only two philosophies to choose from: James' and Royce's. When Brinton, op. cit., adapts James' distinction and juxtaposes.
And that he "wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity" (EH II 10). The revaluation is not the accomplishment of the individual philosopher who enters the arena to tackle ancient valuations and to reverse them as a sport; rather, "the values we have had hitherto thus draw their final consequence" (WM-V 4); "the highest values devaluate themselves'' (WM 2). This Nietzsche can call the revaluation—in the same note in which he defines it as "a courageous becoming.
I.e., the lack of style or the chaotic confusion of all styles." This Art and History 135 bedlam, says Nietzsche, characterizes postwar Germany. At the same time, he is convinced that "culture" is the only end which can give meaning to our lives: To our scholars, strangely enough, even the most pressing question does not occur: to what end is their work . . . useful? Surely not to earn a living or hunt for positions of honor? No, truly not. . . . What good at all is science if it has no time.
Valuations or moral imperatives. In Nietzsche's early value theory the sanction is, unlike Kant's, naturalistic. No principles are invoked that are not subject to investigation by the natural sciences. Certain practices will lead to disaster without requiring the intervention of supernatural 24 It would seem that the analysis, had it been made, would have shown that Kant's conception of reason did not bear out his moral philosophy. Three references to the Grundlegung may suggest very briefly.