Nietzsche's Life Research Articles

Dark Riddle: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Jews (review)

168 SHOFAR Fa112000 Vol. 19, No.1 Nietzsche's thought. Those already acquainted with Nietzsche's life and thought are likely to be intrigued with Mandel's psychological and biographical analyses and convinced ofthe importance of continuing detailed study of the book's central theme. The Nietzsche specialist will find that Mandel's and Santaniello's books together provide complementary and comprehensive coverage of the current state ofNietzsche scholarship on these issues. Mandel's book offers the reader a learned and detailed look at the psychological and situational forces which shapedNietzsche's approaches to Jews and Judaism, and that is an excellent gift. Michael F. Duffy Theology Department Hanover College Dark Riddle: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Jews, by Yirrniyahu Yovel. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. 235 pp. $45.00 (c); $18.95 (p). Yirrniyahu Yovel has written a balanced and informed assessment ofa topic that lends itself to self-righteous denunciations and ill-informed sophistry. In Dark Riddle he examines the role that the Jews and the Jewish religion played in the life and writings of two eminent German philosophers: G. F. W. Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche. There is no compelling reason for the choice of these two particular philosophers, but there can be little doubt that both exerted an enormous influence on subsequent thinkers. Their impact, however, had little to do with their occasional comments on Jews; neither Hegel nor Nietzsche wrote at length about either contemporary Jewry or historical Judaism. Nonetheless, Yovel succeeds in demonstrating that the Jews occupy a pivotal position in both men's thought, and that each, from very different, and often opposed, perspectives, conceived of the Jewish religion as crucial for a radical change in the history ofmankind. Yovel also argues that antisemitic sentiments are not neutralized by the rationality of a given philosopher's approach, and that anti-Jewish biases are not necessarily the consequence of a stance that denies reason and views the world as a struggle based on power. The strength ofthe book, however, does not lie in this rather dubious conclusion, but inthe differentiatedmanner inwhich Yovelproceeds. Sensitive to context in both the historical and the philosophical realm, Yovel weighs the evidence judiciously, providing insights rather than invectives, while at the same time rarely slipping into apology or prevarication. Yovel begins his examination with a bit of prehistory that sketches the views of Spinoza, Mendelssohn, and Kant on historical Judaism. Quite obviously the historical enlightenment did not always advocate a favorable attitude toward the Jews: Kant displays occasional anti-Jewish remarks in his private correspondence, as well as a coolness toward the Jewish religion in his writings. In fairness to Kant, of course, we should note that many enlightened Jews-in particular those Jews who were either Book Reviews 169 assimilated or in theprocess ofassimilation-were themselves hostile to various aspects of their own religion and its history; in some cases Kant was simply repeating views emanating from the enlightened Jewish community. After these sketches, Yovel turns to Hegel, who is accorded strict historical treatment. In general, Judaism was an enigma for Hegel-the title of this monograph comes from a comment by Hegel's early biographer, Karl Rosenkranz-but Yovel's claim is that Hegel's initial disparaging attitude gradually transforms itself into something more favorable. The Spirit ofChristianity and Its Fate (1798-1800) is "the fiercest anti-Jewish text ever written by Hegel" (p. 24), since it contains several deprecatory references to Judaism and treats the Jewish religion, in contrast to the Hellenic spirit, as a break with love and nature. By the time Hegel writes the Phenomenology (1800) Judaism has already been upgraded, and in his mature writings it is even valued as a religion ofsublimity. For Hegel Judaism is the first time that God is not seen as/in nature, but as spirit, and the religion of the Jews therefore represents an essential advance, although it, like all steps on the path to the Absolute, is one-sided and abstract. Yovel detects vestiges ofearlier anti-Jewish bias in Hegel's later works, but he does commend Hegel for his support of Jewish emancipation in his own times. Ultimately the reader has difficulty discerning whether Yovel...

The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche

Part I. Introduction to Nietzsche's Works: 1. Nietzsche's works and their themes Bernd Magnus and Kathleen M. Higgins Part II. The Use and Abuse of Nietzsche's Life and Works: 2. The hero as outsider R. J. Hollingdale 3. Nietzsche and the Judaeo-Christian tradition Jorg Salaquarda 4. Nietzsche's political misappropriation Tracy B. Strong Part III. Nietzsche as Philosopher: 5. Nietzsche's kind of philosophy Richard Schacht 6. Nietzsche's Ad Hominem arguments: perspectivism, slave morality and ressentiment revisited Robert C. Solomon 7. Nietzsche, modernity, aestheticism Alexander Nehamas 8. Nietzsche's alleged farewell: the premodern, modern, and postmodern Nietzsche Robert B. Pippin Part IV. Nietzsche's Influence: 9. Nietzsche in the twentieth century Ernst Behler 10. Nietzsche's French legacy Alan D. Schrift 11. Nietzsche and East Asian thought: influences, impacts, and resonances Graham Parkes.

Composing the soul: reaches of Nietzsche's psychology

Nietzsche wrote in Ecce Homo (1888) `that a psychologist without equal speaks from my writings - this is perhaps the first insight gained by a good reader...Who among the philosophers before me was in any way a psychologist? Before me there simply was no psychology'. This study focuses on this pronouncement, examining the contours of Nietzsche's psychology in the context of his life and psychological make-up. Beginning with essays from Nietzsche's youth, the author shows the influence of such figures as Goethe, Byron and Emerson on Nietzsche's development. He goes on to chart the development of Nietzsche's psychological ideas in terms of the imagery, drawn from the dialogues of Plato as well as from Nietzsche's own quasi-mystical experiences of nature, in which he spoke of the soul. Finally, Parkes analyzes one of Nietzsche's most revolutionary ideas - that the soul is composed of multiple drives, or persons, within the psyche. The task for Nietzsche's psychology, then, was to identify and order these multiple persons within the individual. Featuring new translations of quotations from Nietzsche's writings, this book reveals the profundity of Nietzsche's lifelong personal and intellectual struggles to come to grips with the soul. Its aim is to make Nietzsche's life and ideas accessible to any reader interested in this complex thinker.

An introduction to Nietzsche as political thinker: the perfect nihilist

This is a lively and engaging introduction to the contentious topic of Nietzsche's political thought. It traces the development of Nietzsche's thinking on politics from his earliest writings to the mature work in which he advocates aristocratic radicalism as opposed to 'petty' European nationalism. The key ideas of the will to power, eternal return and the overman are discussed and all Nietzsche's major works analysed in detail, such as Beyond Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals, within the context of the concerns of modern political theory. The book concludes with an assessment of Nietzsche's enduring relevance and of the insights afforded by contemporary liberal and feminist readings. This textbook will be essential for all students of Nietzsche and of the history of political ideas. It includes a chronology of Nietzsche's life and works and a guide to further reading.

Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870s (review)

BOOK REVIEWS i47 served by Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy. It veers with unnerving speed between the assumption that the reader knows nothing--it is explained at length that Hamburg is an important port 09)--and the assumption that the reader knows a great deal--as when it is flatly stated in a single sentence that there exists a connection between Romanticism and the origins of the term 'nihilism' 029). Inasmuch as the latter is a matter of some considerable import for a nuanced understanding of Schopenhauer , it is a pity to see it mentioned only in passing. With respect to the translation, a certain sympathy with the task Ewald Osers must have faced is unavoidable; indeed, Safranski's style is at once so passionate and so idiosyncratic as to remind one of Hegel's comment about Hamann: "he does not have a style, he /s style." Safranski's besetting sin is an apparently incurable fondness for cumberson metaphorical castles in the air, as when he repeatedly compares Kant's categories of the understanding to a rococo music-box, or when he speaks of "Kant's rococo-like eye-winking epicureanism" (lo5). In fairness it must be remarked that more passion than idiosyncrasy comes through, which is surely to Osers's credit. The most glaring omission in Safranski's book is any mention (either in the text or in the bibliography) of Arthur Hiibscher's Denker gegen den Strom (recently translated as Thinker Against the T/de).4 And with respect to the important philosophical issues, such as the understanding of Romanticism, an appreciation of the philosophical significance of Schopenhauer's contemporaries, especially Fichte and Schelling, and the knowledge of Schopenhauer's philosophical evolution, Hiibscher is indisputably superior. JAMEs SNOW Millsaps College DALE SNOW Loyola Collegein Baltimore Daniel Breazeale, ed. and trans. Philosophyand Truth: Selectionsfrom Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 187os. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, Inc., 199o. Pp. lxv + x65. Paper, $15.oo. In view of the fact that Nietzsche's "non-book," The Will to Power, has for a long time been the only easily accessible version of Nietzsche's Nachlass in English translation, the issuing in paperback of these notes from the early 187os is a welcome event. The translation is excellent, and the translator's introduction and explanatory notes intelligent and informative. In particular, Professor Breazeale relates the selected notes to the circumstances of Nietzsche's life and thinking at the time in a way that will be very helpful for readers unfamiliar with the relevant biographical details. His philological skill in dealing with the problems attending the editing of Nietzsche's notes is as effective as it is impressive. The translator's introduction characterizes the selections of Nietzsche's Nachlass that follow as pertaifiing primarily to issues in epistemology, as well as giving us a good idea of Nietzsche's early thinking about the relation of the philosopher to culture--to 4 Trans. J. T. Baer and D. E. Cartwright (Lewistown, NY, 1989). 148 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 30: I JANUARY i99~ art in particular--and to the ancient Greek thinkers. It thus provides a perfect orientation for the sometimes cryptic notes that form the main body of the volume, and is marred only by a few typographical errors that are unexpected in a revised edition. Malwida yon Meysenbug, for example, whose surname often gains an additional "r," in this case loses the "n"; and through inheriting a cedilla, Foucault's name as printed makes him sound--with unfortunate irony--both mad and idiotic. Of the six major sections in the volume, the one that comes closest to being a finished essay is the best known: "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" (personally I'd prefer to retain the singular of the German "lie"). Aside from the shorter "On the Pathos of Truth," which Nietzsche dedicated to Cosima Wagner, the other main sections are collections of disjointed notes. Even though "On Truth and Lies" has been" so gushed over by would-be deconstructionists and DeManiacs in recent years that it threatens to "disappear under the interpretations," it is still a thought-provoking essay and contains some vintage...

Nietzsche: Life as Literature (review)

Nietzsche: Life as Literature, by Alexander Nehamas ; ? & 261 pp. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985, $17.50. Discussed by Peter Fenves Alexander Nehamas's recent book never loses its way in the maze of interpretative avenues that plague studies of Nietzsche. He sets out a single problem to which all of Nietzsche's writings offer a programmatic solution. The scope of Nehamas's claim should not be underestimated : "Nietzsche's problem is that he wants to attack the tradition to which he belongs and also escape it" (p. 137). Once this dilemma is brought into the open — and it is the point of the book to do so — Nehamas explains how Nietzsche chose to solve it: "His unparalleled solution to this problem is to try consciously to fashion a literary character out of himself and a literary work out of his life," hence the subtitle, "Life as Literature." "Vet Nehamas never points to any statement in Nietzsche's writing that would substantiate this claim, nor does he ever specify precisely when Nietzsche discovered that there was such a problem or at what point he decided to offer his own solution. Nehamas never relates the circumstances that led up to this momentous decision; it seems as if Nietzsche were fated to encounter this problem and to offer his peculiar solution. Yet Nehamas still claims that Nietzsche made a conscious decision to fashion his life into literature , even though none of the standard indices of consciousness — meaningful sentences, in other words — are called upon to support this contention. Now one often finds in works that bear such titles as "The Lives of Saints" a moment marked off as a turning point; suddenly, the solution dawns upon the saint and the rest of his life is devoted to drawing out its consequences. Nehamas does not emphasize this moment but its presence permeates the book: it is the very substance of the claim that 163 164Philosophy and Literature Nietzsche conceived his life as literature. It is only because Nehamas fails to identify a specific time in which Nietzsche came to his solution that the book avoids the more obvious manifestations of hagiography. Nietzsche's life is quite literally the outcome of a conversion: "To be, then, a comedian of the ascetic ideal [to work out, in other words, Nietzsche's solution] is to give up the very idea of trying to determine in general terms the value of life and the world. It is to turn to oneself in order to make one's life valuable ..." (p. 136). The hagiographie aspect of this book—the conviction that however difficult, messy and ambiguous the life of the saint may be, a momentous decision underlies and underwrites every turn— comes out most clearly in the final chapter where Nehamas sketches a brief and quite moving portrait of Nietzsche's life: by turning his life into literature, by making himself into a literary character, his life becomes, Nehamas says, "deeply admirable " (p. 233). When is it appropriate to do hagiography? When the saint is no longer a prophet and yet his image seems to inspire, his words no longer carry conviction and yet his life still seems worthwhile, when his life is no longer to be imitated but justly admired. Nehamas, who is both adamant about dismissing the notion of Nietzsche as prophet and adept at doing so, still wants him to say something to us. In terms of Nietzsche scholarship, one could arrive at the formula: Nietzsche as saint follows upon Nietzsche as prophet or profligate. Nehamas's mode of presentation and his thesis that Nietzsche had a single problem and an overarching solution are intimately connected. Philosophical interpretations of Nietzsche have often been baffled by the profusion of positions he seems to take on the same issue and the equally variegated manner in which he presents them. Jaspers, for instance, responded to this situation by condemning Nietzsche to incoherence , Heidegger by developing an elaborate Seinsgeschichte while also insisting that the key to Nietzsche's thought is still buried in the Nachlass . The philosopher thus asks how to provide a set of theses that are not merely depreciations of previous philosophers but also positive proposals of Nietzsche's...

Nietzsche: A Critical Life (review)

98 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY laus of Autrecourt. He made no effort to trace how Islamic occasionalism was known and discussed in the seventeenth and eighteenth century and how it was presented in editions of Maimonides in Latin, and in discussions throughout Bayle's Dictionary. Bayle is not mentioned as a source although current scholarship indicates that he was the major source of Hume's views about previous metaphysical theories and the major inspiration of his skepticism. The critique of induction stated by Francisco Sanches and by Pierre Gassendi is ignored while various medieval ones are compared with Hume's. The development of a view like Hume's on causality worked out by the Occasionalists is alluded to, but not actually discussed. To assess Hume's novelty vis-~t-vis his immediate predecessors, one would have to go into much detail about various seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century authors. If one wished to assess his novelty compared with only the Islamic occasionalists and the medieval Christian nominalists, one could skip the developments in early modern thought. Weinberg seemed to want his most interesting comparison of Hume's analyses with those of the medievals to amount to an "evaluation of Hume's contribution to these subjects.., in terms of what went before" (p. 134). Of course, what went before includes an enormous variety of views that are not considered. From Weinberg's loci of interest, he made an exciting and interesting case, but one that needs supplementation if it is to be placed along with other modern studies of Hume's contributions. This posthumous work is an excellent collection of Weinberg's historical and analytic studies. We should be grateful to the editors for making these essays available to us. We now have a greater debt to Julius Weinberg for his efforts to enlighten us about the history of philosophy, and to show us how historical materials are most relevant to systematic discussions of philosophical issues. Julius Weinberg was one of the most learned men in America. He inspired many to study history carefully and to relate their findings to present philosophical concerns. (He was also one of those who first sought to found this journal.) These essays will help to keep his stimulating mind and great erudition with us. RICHARD H. POPKIN Washington University Ronald Hayman. Nietzsche: A Critical Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 198o. Pp. xxiii + 4~4. $19.95. "I have gradually come to understand," Nietzsche wrote in Section 6 of Beyond Good and Evil, "what every great philosophy until now has been: the confession of its author and a kind of involuntary, unconscious memoir." Ronald Hayman uses this famous passage as one of the epigraphs of his major new biography of Nietzsche. It provides him with a central thesis and a guiding principle, with a philosophical justification of his book: this is the view that Nietzsche's life provides substantial clues to his thought. Hayman's painstaking and in some ways definitive work is accordingly composed on three levels. It contains, first, a detailed investigation into the facts of Nietzsche's life; secondly, a discussion of his literary and philosophical work; thirdly, BOOK REVIEWS 99 an elaboration of what Hayman considers as the interrelations between the topics discussed on the first two levels. Hayman's reporting of the main events in Nietzsche's life is, in my opinion, excellent; it constitutes by far the best part of the book. Naturally, and unfortunately, there is no way in which his achievement in this domain can be summarized here. In elegant, lucid and occasionally witty prose Hayman incorporates a vast amount of material relating to all the stages of Nietzsche's life, from his birth in R0cken in 1844 to his breakdown in 1889 and his death in Weimar in 19oo. An unforgettable moment comes when Nietzsche, enlisted in the Prussian artillery, would hide himself under his horse's belly and mutter, "Schopenhauer, help!" All in all, Hayman leaves his readers with a rich yet uncluttered diagram of Nietzsche's life, a diagram unlikely to be superseded for some time to come. The most moving and disturbing part of this level is the painfully clear picture Hayman has drawn...

The Autobiographical Textuality of Nietzsche's Ecce Homo

An autobiography is one's own life as written. Autobiographizing is writing one's own life. An autobiographical text is a particular written version, fragment, or account of one's own life. Autobiographical textuality is the feature of a text (autobiographical or otherwise) which characterizes the writing of a version, fragment, or account of one's own life. Although I am concerned with the autobiographical textuality of Nietzsche's Ecce Homo, I defer determination as to whether the text is, in fact, an autobiography since it has been argued that Ecce Homo is unsuccessful as autobiography. This latter exclusion is occasioned by the introductory remarks of R. J. Hollingdale, the English translator for the Penguin edition: It matters how you approach this book. If, under the guidance of the literature on the subject, you approach it as 'Nietzsche's autobiography' you will get very little out of it and probably won't even finish it, short though it is. As autobiography it is a plain failure. You cannot reconstruct Nietzsche's life even in its broad outlines from his 'autobiography'; it is in no way a narrative; it is not in the least 'objective.' 1 Hollingdale is perhaps right: Ecce Homo is hardly Nietzsche's own life as written in any comprehensive sense. Of course, an autobiography need not provide a full account of