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Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist
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.
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.
552 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1950
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About the author
Walter Kaufmann
107 books556 followersWalter Arnold Kaufmann was a German-American philosopher, translator, and poet. A prolific author, he wrote extensively on a broad range of subjects, such as authenticity and death, moral philosophy and existentialism, theism and atheism, Christianity and Judaism, as well as philosophy and literature. He served for over 30 years as a Professor at Princeton University.
He is renowned as a scholar and translator of Nietzsche. He also wrote a 1965 book on Hegel, and a translation of most of Goethe's Faust.
He is renowned as a scholar and translator of Nietzsche. He also wrote a 1965 book on Hegel, and a translation of most of Goethe's Faust.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 164 reviews
December 17, 2016
I have not read this book completely. In fact as far as I am certain, I have only read one chapter, that quite recently: chapter 6, “The Discovery of the Will to Power”.
Despite this, I have no doubt that the book deserves the rating I’ve given it, with no qualifications.
I will admit that I don’t know if Kaufmann has been superseded by someone else in the “Nietzsche scholarship” field over the last couple decades. This book first appeared in 1950, so it’s not recent by any means. But with three other editions appearing (1956, 1968 and 1974) there’s no doubt about the popularity of the book, which extends to both students and the reading public I’m sure. The fourth edition is still in print.
I’m going to do something that better reviewers than I would never stoop to, and that’s quote “publicity” for the book. The first quote is from the publisher (presumably) as it appears on Amazom no less.
And more publicity, some of the blurbs from the back cover (chosen to impress Goodreaders).
Thomas Mann: “A work of great superiority over everything previously achieved in Nietzsche criticism and interpretation.”
A.J.P. Taylor: “This is the most sensible exposition of Nietzsche’s philosophy ever made”
Jacques Maritain: “An important historical and philosophical contribution. Mr. Kaufmann’s analysis of Nietzsche’s life, thought, and influence is extremely well-informed, thorough, and searching, and rids us of many interpretations due to popularized Nietzscheanism. Indispensable for anyone concerned with Nietzsche.”
All right, why have I done this? I’m not trying to sell the book. I am suggesting that unless there’s some reason to doubt the veracity or honesty of these “blurbs”, they are worth thinking about. (The publisher, by the way, is Princeton U.P.)
Okay, let’s hear from the author
Kaufmann’s Preface to the First Edition (1950) could be quoted in its entirety, it’s that interesting. But it’s four pages long, so I won’t do that. Instead I’ve decided to just quote the first paragraph, and something from near the end.
And what about the reviewer?
The reason I took this off the shelf and read part of it was that I read, in another book, something else about Nietzsche’s views on the will to power that disturbed me. I didn’t remember what was being claimed about this from my own reading of Nietzsche 40-50 years ago.
The chapter I read is a study of the development of the idea of power in Nietzsche’s thinking (Nietzsche used the concept of power long before ever using the term will to power, which Kaufmann tells us first appears in Also Sprach Zarathustra. In Kaufmann’s translation of Zarathustra (in The Portable Nietzsche), the phrase is introduced in I.15 (On the Thousand and One Goals), appears seven times in II.12 (On Self-Overcoming), and “once more” without being specified by Kaufmann (the reviewed book, p. 200). These are the only places Kaufmann finds the phrase up to and including Zarathustra. In the latter work, Kaufmann characterizes the phrase as meaning “the will to overcome oneself”.
ASIDE
It is only in the next section of the book (Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Power) that Kaufmann delves deeply into the further development of this idea in Nietzsche’s later writings, and attempts to explicate it as it relates to other themes in Nietzsche’s works. (The titles of the chapters in this section include “Morality and Sublimation”, “Sublimation, Geist, and Eros”, “Power versus Pleasure”, “The Master Race”, and “Overman and Eternal Recurrence”.) However, since I haven’t read this material, and am not going to right now, I can’t comment further.
To summarize what I took away from the part of this book that I’ve looked at, it is easy to take away facile and incorrect impressions of Nietzsche’s thoughts from a casual reading of bits and pieces of his works. But Kaufmann values Nietzsche very highly, and obviously thinks he is one of the great thinkers of nineteenth century philosophy.
For anyone with a deep interest in Nietzsche I would recommend this book very highly. You may come away with disagreements about some of Kaufmann’s conclusions, but your understanding of Nietzsche’s views will almost certainly, on balance, be deepened.
Despite this, I have no doubt that the book deserves the rating I’ve given it, with no qualifications.
I will admit that I don’t know if Kaufmann has been superseded by someone else in the “Nietzsche scholarship” field over the last couple decades. This book first appeared in 1950, so it’s not recent by any means. But with three other editions appearing (1956, 1968 and 1974) there’s no doubt about the popularity of the book, which extends to both students and the reading public I’m sure. The fourth edition is still in print.
I’m going to do something that better reviewers than I would never stoop to, and that’s quote “publicity” for the book. The first quote is from the publisher (presumably) as it appears on Amazom no less.
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.
And more publicity, some of the blurbs from the back cover (chosen to impress Goodreaders).
Thomas Mann: “A work of great superiority over everything previously achieved in Nietzsche criticism and interpretation.”
A.J.P. Taylor: “This is the most sensible exposition of Nietzsche’s philosophy ever made”
Jacques Maritain: “An important historical and philosophical contribution. Mr. Kaufmann’s analysis of Nietzsche’s life, thought, and influence is extremely well-informed, thorough, and searching, and rids us of many interpretations due to popularized Nietzscheanism. Indispensable for anyone concerned with Nietzsche.”
All right, why have I done this? I’m not trying to sell the book. I am suggesting that unless there’s some reason to doubt the veracity or honesty of these “blurbs”, they are worth thinking about. (The publisher, by the way, is Princeton U.P.)
Okay, let’s hear from the author
Kaufmann’s Preface to the First Edition (1950) could be quoted in its entirety, it’s that interesting. But it’s four pages long, so I won’t do that. Instead I’ve decided to just quote the first paragraph, and something from near the end.
Nietzsche, more than any other philosopher of the past hundred years, represents a major historical event. His ideas are of concern not only to the members of one nation or community, nor alone to philosophers, but to men everywhere, and they have had repercussions in recent history and literature as well as in psychology and religious thought. Yet Nietzsche’s way of writing – his reputation as a great stylist notwithstanding – and the excessive freedom of most translations of his work make it difficult for the contemporary reader to find out what Nietzsche himself stood for. One knows of his anticipation of psychoanalysis, of his decisive influence on Spengler and existentialism, and of the problem posed by his relations to the Nazis; but the details remain something of a mystery, and Nietzsche’s thought has been obscured rather than revealed by its impact.
and
… one is bound to be asked what prompted the choice of the man to whom one devotes such a study … First, there is the scholar’s interest in correcting what he takes to be misapprehensions. Then certain aspects of Nietzsche’s critique of modern man deserve serious consideration: ever more people seem to realize that their pleasures do not add up to happiness and that their ends do not give their lives any lasting meaning. Properly understood, Nietzsche’s conception of power may represent one of the few great philosophic ideas of all time … (and) what is admirable is his deprecation of the importance of agreement and his Socratic renunciation of any effort to stifle independent thinking. Without acceding to his philosophy, one may respect his overruling passion for intellectual integrity; and his protestant perspectives are often suggestive and fruitful even when they are unacceptable.
And what about the reviewer?
The reason I took this off the shelf and read part of it was that I read, in another book, something else about Nietzsche’s views on the will to power that disturbed me. I didn’t remember what was being claimed about this from my own reading of Nietzsche 40-50 years ago.
The chapter I read is a study of the development of the idea of power in Nietzsche’s thinking (Nietzsche used the concept of power long before ever using the term will to power, which Kaufmann tells us first appears in Also Sprach Zarathustra. In Kaufmann’s translation of Zarathustra (in The Portable Nietzsche), the phrase is introduced in I.15 (On the Thousand and One Goals), appears seven times in II.12 (On Self-Overcoming), and “once more” without being specified by Kaufmann (the reviewed book, p. 200). These are the only places Kaufmann finds the phrase up to and including Zarathustra. In the latter work, Kaufmann characterizes the phrase as meaning “the will to overcome oneself”.
ASIDE
It is only in the next section of the book (Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Power) that Kaufmann delves deeply into the further development of this idea in Nietzsche’s later writings, and attempts to explicate it as it relates to other themes in Nietzsche’s works. (The titles of the chapters in this section include “Morality and Sublimation”, “Sublimation, Geist, and Eros”, “Power versus Pleasure”, “The Master Race”, and “Overman and Eternal Recurrence”.) However, since I haven’t read this material, and am not going to right now, I can’t comment further.
To summarize what I took away from the part of this book that I’ve looked at, it is easy to take away facile and incorrect impressions of Nietzsche’s thoughts from a casual reading of bits and pieces of his works. But Kaufmann values Nietzsche very highly, and obviously thinks he is one of the great thinkers of nineteenth century philosophy.
For anyone with a deep interest in Nietzsche I would recommend this book very highly. You may come away with disagreements about some of Kaufmann’s conclusions, but your understanding of Nietzsche’s views will almost certainly, on balance, be deepened.
November 19, 2016
Stellar.
November 27, 2012
Walter Kaufmann is one of the great popularists of philosophy, the Will Durant of his generation. If you are intimidated by the subject and the big names in the history of philosophy, Kaufmann is for you.
If you liked this book, a positive appropriation of the oft-maligned, but ever-popular Nietzsche, then you ought look into his book on Hegel.
I originally purchased this volume in paperback during a Nietzsche phase in college, then obtained a hardcover version years later.
If you liked this book, a positive appropriation of the oft-maligned, but ever-popular Nietzsche, then you ought look into his book on Hegel.
I originally purchased this volume in paperback during a Nietzsche phase in college, then obtained a hardcover version years later.
Read
March 14, 2017This, I suppose, was the first step in the philosophical world's large-scale cleanup and renovation of Nietzsche's reputation in the wake of World War II. I can't argue with Kaufmann's well-written explanation of Nietzsche's ideas, and I can't argue with most of his analysis. However, he does a lot of whitewashing, and tries to posit Nietzsche as a more democratic figure than he actually was, by framing his arguments as "antipolitical," and spends a bit too much time trying to separate out Nietzsche's ideas from national socialism. While Nietzsche was far from a Nazi, and while I've long been familiar with his horror at anti-Semitism and German nationalism, it's hard not to see that this makes an appalling basis for any kind of broad-scale social thinking, even if it's powerful when you're just trying to make sense of things.
Well, then there's the question of "who is this for?" Serious Nietzsche readers will see it as simplistic, and a reiteration of things they mostly already knew. Novices might be put off by the fact that this is a 500-page explication of a philosopher they don't know well, and might be better served by simply picking up a copy of Beyond Good and Evil. But I do know that I liked arguing with Kaufmann as I wrote it, and I do know that I liked Kaufmann's writing, so there is that.
Well, then there's the question of "who is this for?" Serious Nietzsche readers will see it as simplistic, and a reiteration of things they mostly already knew. Novices might be put off by the fact that this is a 500-page explication of a philosopher they don't know well, and might be better served by simply picking up a copy of Beyond Good and Evil. But I do know that I liked arguing with Kaufmann as I wrote it, and I do know that I liked Kaufmann's writing, so there is that.
June 13, 2022
I like Nietzsche, it’s hard not to respect him and his mission. Intellectual integrity is important to him, he refuses to let any assumption go unquestioned, no matter how difficult or harsh the truth is.
Also, the book corrects a lot of misconceptions about Nietzsche without putting him on a pedestal. Nietzsche values power above everything else, so a lot of people assume this means political or economic power, which is untrue. I was surprised to learn how opposed to nationalism, militarism and racism Nietzsche was. His idea of power is more complicated, it’s closer to freedom, or endurance.
One thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot is the eternal recurrence. It’s this semi- religious idea that Nietzsche has, that when you die, your memory is wiped, and your life repeats, exactly as it happened, over and over again for all of eternity. It’s meant as a rebuttal to all the other ideas of afterlife that Nietzsche thinks cheapens or devalues our life on earth (heaven/hell, reincarnation, or even the materialist belief that death is just nothingness). By having our lives become eternal, we’re forced to affirm everything that has ever happened, and everything that will happen, which is really difficult; Nietzsche thinks only the strong would be able to celebrate it, most people would view the eternal recurrence as a curse. It’s challenging, I’m not sure if I could accept something like that now; all the other views on the afterlife are a lot more comforting, but the eternal recurrence is such a powerful way of affirming life, so who knows.
Quotes
“Not to question, not to tremble with the craving and the joy of questioning… that is what I feel to be contemptible, and this feeling is the first thing I seek in everyone”
“To those human beings in whom I have a stake, I wish suffering, being forsaken, sickness, maltreatment, humiliation—I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, and the misery of the vanquished: I have no pity for them because I wish them the only thing which can prove today whether one is worth anything or not—that one endures.”
“Such a spirit who has become free stands amid the cosmos with a joyous and trusting fatalism, in the faith that only the particular is loathsome, and that all is redeemed and affirmed in the whole—he does not negate any more. Such a faith, however, is the highest of all possible faiths: I have baptized it with the name of Dionysus.”
Also, the book corrects a lot of misconceptions about Nietzsche without putting him on a pedestal. Nietzsche values power above everything else, so a lot of people assume this means political or economic power, which is untrue. I was surprised to learn how opposed to nationalism, militarism and racism Nietzsche was. His idea of power is more complicated, it’s closer to freedom, or endurance.
One thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot is the eternal recurrence. It’s this semi- religious idea that Nietzsche has, that when you die, your memory is wiped, and your life repeats, exactly as it happened, over and over again for all of eternity. It’s meant as a rebuttal to all the other ideas of afterlife that Nietzsche thinks cheapens or devalues our life on earth (heaven/hell, reincarnation, or even the materialist belief that death is just nothingness). By having our lives become eternal, we’re forced to affirm everything that has ever happened, and everything that will happen, which is really difficult; Nietzsche thinks only the strong would be able to celebrate it, most people would view the eternal recurrence as a curse. It’s challenging, I’m not sure if I could accept something like that now; all the other views on the afterlife are a lot more comforting, but the eternal recurrence is such a powerful way of affirming life, so who knows.
Quotes
“Not to question, not to tremble with the craving and the joy of questioning… that is what I feel to be contemptible, and this feeling is the first thing I seek in everyone”
“To those human beings in whom I have a stake, I wish suffering, being forsaken, sickness, maltreatment, humiliation—I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, and the misery of the vanquished: I have no pity for them because I wish them the only thing which can prove today whether one is worth anything or not—that one endures.”
“Such a spirit who has become free stands amid the cosmos with a joyous and trusting fatalism, in the faith that only the particular is loathsome, and that all is redeemed and affirmed in the whole—he does not negate any more. Such a faith, however, is the highest of all possible faiths: I have baptized it with the name of Dionysus.”
December 10, 2015
Growing up in evangelical Christianity in America, all we knew about the German philosopher Nietszche was that he had declared "God is dead". We even had shirts (thankfully I never owned one) that stated Nietzsche said God is dead, but God says Nietzsche is dead. I doubt that anyone who made those shirts, or even very few who attacked Nietzsche's anti-Christian philosophy read any of his actual writings, or even the best books about his writings.
I have read very few of his writings, maybe two books. But I was lucky enough to realize early on there was more to Nietzsche then what many Christians said about him. Perhaps the scary part is that in much of his criticism of Christianity, he may be on to something. It was jarring to read Kaufmann's book on Nietzsche the same day I saw people on social media saying things like, "I am a Christian, but times have changed..." before justifying all sorts of views that Jesus himself would certainly find abhorrent. Nietzsche did say that there was only one true Christian and he died on the cross. He may have been right.
Kaufmann's book on Nietzsche is a must-read for pastors, or anyone who wants to know more about Nietzsche. If you are going to make comments about what Nietzsche said and thought and you are not going to take the time to read his own works, this is probably the book to read. I assume there are many people like me - we want to have a basic grasp of big ideas and the works of movers and shakers like Nietzsche, but do not have the time to wade through all his books. Hey, in a perfect world with tons of time it would be great to read lots of philosophy. But I assume many people, like me, do not have the time or patience for that. Between taking care of kids and working, we barely have time to read much of anything. I mean, I'd love to read Nietzsche, but I just started a great biography of Johnny Cash. People like Kaufmann do a great service then.
That said, this book does make me want to give some of Nietzshce's works a shot. We'll see...time will tell.
I have read very few of his writings, maybe two books. But I was lucky enough to realize early on there was more to Nietzsche then what many Christians said about him. Perhaps the scary part is that in much of his criticism of Christianity, he may be on to something. It was jarring to read Kaufmann's book on Nietzsche the same day I saw people on social media saying things like, "I am a Christian, but times have changed..." before justifying all sorts of views that Jesus himself would certainly find abhorrent. Nietzsche did say that there was only one true Christian and he died on the cross. He may have been right.
Kaufmann's book on Nietzsche is a must-read for pastors, or anyone who wants to know more about Nietzsche. If you are going to make comments about what Nietzsche said and thought and you are not going to take the time to read his own works, this is probably the book to read. I assume there are many people like me - we want to have a basic grasp of big ideas and the works of movers and shakers like Nietzsche, but do not have the time to wade through all his books. Hey, in a perfect world with tons of time it would be great to read lots of philosophy. But I assume many people, like me, do not have the time or patience for that. Between taking care of kids and working, we barely have time to read much of anything. I mean, I'd love to read Nietzsche, but I just started a great biography of Johnny Cash. People like Kaufmann do a great service then.
That said, this book does make me want to give some of Nietzshce's works a shot. We'll see...time will tell.
Read
May 20, 2018This book is for anyone who reads Nietzsche and loves it, but doesn't really see a coherent philosophy. Kaufmann looks at Nietzsche's entire legacy and puts together a pretty straight-forward, compelling presentation of his thought. Kaufmann's writing is everything that Nietzsche's isn't, which is a blessing when it comes to clarity but kind of a downer in every other department.
The title is a little sensationalist and misleading — this book is basically a very dense, very competent CliffsNotes.
The lingering question is: if you have to take all the fun and humanity out of Nietzsche's writing to extract his thought, then are you getting the essence of Nietzsche, or just an isolated component? I don't think Kaufmann would argue he's presenting the "complete Nietzsche," just a component that in the 1950s had been sorely overlooked — his actual philosophy.
The title is a little sensationalist and misleading — this book is basically a very dense, very competent CliffsNotes.
The lingering question is: if you have to take all the fun and humanity out of Nietzsche's writing to extract his thought, then are you getting the essence of Nietzsche, or just an isolated component? I don't think Kaufmann would argue he's presenting the "complete Nietzsche," just a component that in the 1950s had been sorely overlooked — his actual philosophy.
Currently reading
June 16, 2023https://www.eurozine.com/nietzsches-a...
European by birth, Walter Kaufman, a German-American philosopher and poet, tried to rehabilitate Nietzsche in America, after WWII. And yet, he says, he is no Nietzschean.
It seems Einstein once asked him what was he working on. Kaufman spoke of Nietzsche. Einstein replied: "how horrible for you".
European by birth, Walter Kaufman, a German-American philosopher and poet, tried to rehabilitate Nietzsche in America, after WWII. And yet, he says, he is no Nietzschean.
It seems Einstein once asked him what was he working on. Kaufman spoke of Nietzsche. Einstein replied: "how horrible for you".
February 27, 2018
Excellent. Kaufman was instrumental in reevaluating Nietzsche to Americans post WWII, and this text still stands on its own. A tome in its own right yet super readable and accessable if you have read and studied Nietzsche's corpus at any length. Would highly recommend if you are a reader of N and haven't read through this yet!
May 24, 2013
While Kaufmann did a lot for translating Nietzsche to English, he's too full of himself and anything he translates is at least 50 liner notes of him masturbating at how he knows Nietzsche better than you. This book is essentially a glorification of that.
December 31, 2024
An indispensable, for me at least, introduction to the life and thought of Nietzsche. I understand that Kaufmann is ‘famous’ for being one of the first scholars to bring Nietzsche and his thought out of the wastebin and to treat his writings with a certain level of objectivity. His key way of doing this, according to his own testimony in this volume, centered on looking at Nietzsche’s work as a whole (even though it was not, as Nietzsche himself would have been the first to admit, systematic) instead of simply cherry-picking bon mots and specific statements and presenting them (likely out of context) in a “Nietzsche says…” manner. This is especially difficult given the aphoristic mode of much of Nietzsche’s writings.
In a sense then, Kaufmann was an iconoclast, working to destroy ‘false’ perceptions of Nietzsche, especially those that wished to prop him up as a peddler of a specific political ideology (esp. Nazism), or those who failed to see the nuances of his writings or to look at statements in their context when they proclaimed the afore noted “Nietzsche says…” On the other hand, it could be argued that he was simply the founder of his own ‘school of thought’ on Nietzsche, one with its own foibles and preconceptions, which more modern scholars now contest.
There’s so much covered in this volume that I am incapable of unpacking in any coherent kind of way that I think the best I can say is that this book is an excellent introduction to the life and thought of Nietzsche. It addresses relevant concerns with the somewhat caricatured images of this thinker that early scholarship led to, while emphasizing that he is not an ‘easy’ thinker to approach and that much care must be taken in the analysis of his works. Kaufmann isn’t a magic bullet for understanding Nietzsche, and he is open to criticism as much as any of the early scholars he takes to task himself, but he definitely sheds some well-needed light on a philosopher whose works, given their idiosyncratic style and controversial history, require some level of guidance when approached for the first time.
In a sense then, Kaufmann was an iconoclast, working to destroy ‘false’ perceptions of Nietzsche, especially those that wished to prop him up as a peddler of a specific political ideology (esp. Nazism), or those who failed to see the nuances of his writings or to look at statements in their context when they proclaimed the afore noted “Nietzsche says…” On the other hand, it could be argued that he was simply the founder of his own ‘school of thought’ on Nietzsche, one with its own foibles and preconceptions, which more modern scholars now contest.
There’s so much covered in this volume that I am incapable of unpacking in any coherent kind of way that I think the best I can say is that this book is an excellent introduction to the life and thought of Nietzsche. It addresses relevant concerns with the somewhat caricatured images of this thinker that early scholarship led to, while emphasizing that he is not an ‘easy’ thinker to approach and that much care must be taken in the analysis of his works. Kaufmann isn’t a magic bullet for understanding Nietzsche, and he is open to criticism as much as any of the early scholars he takes to task himself, but he definitely sheds some well-needed light on a philosopher whose works, given their idiosyncratic style and controversial history, require some level of guidance when approached for the first time.
April 8, 2023
Forget everything you think you know about Nietzsche and read this book.
Kaufmann does a spectacular job of fighting against the common misconceptions of Nietzsche: while thankfully, these misconceptions today do not include considering him the ideologue of Nazism, the picture of Nietzsche in pop culture today continues to be of the atheist-realist who preaches the gospel of power and desire. I think Nietzsche is better characterised as an agnostic critic of the hypocrisy underlying Christian morality and the psychological weakness of the religious in ignoring this world in surrendering to the otherworldly, and his will to power is closer to an impetus for self-overcoming (in "being yourself", in both body and spirit - with the body actually being an extension of the spirit) rather than an amoral defence of egoism and brutality. Given that this book was published in the 1950s, one would think that it should have changed his image by now beyond the obviously dubious equation with Nazism.
I hope to discuss Nietzsche's philosophy in greater detail as I read his major works over the next few months.
Kaufmann does a spectacular job of fighting against the common misconceptions of Nietzsche: while thankfully, these misconceptions today do not include considering him the ideologue of Nazism, the picture of Nietzsche in pop culture today continues to be of the atheist-realist who preaches the gospel of power and desire. I think Nietzsche is better characterised as an agnostic critic of the hypocrisy underlying Christian morality and the psychological weakness of the religious in ignoring this world in surrendering to the otherworldly, and his will to power is closer to an impetus for self-overcoming (in "being yourself", in both body and spirit - with the body actually being an extension of the spirit) rather than an amoral defence of egoism and brutality. Given that this book was published in the 1950s, one would think that it should have changed his image by now beyond the obviously dubious equation with Nazism.
I hope to discuss Nietzsche's philosophy in greater detail as I read his major works over the next few months.
October 4, 2015
Absolutely great insight into Nietzsche's ideas. Kaufmann thoroughly debunks all the misreadings of Nietzsche throughout the years in a clear and straightforward way. We're left with a final evaluation of Nietzsche as an "antipolitical" thinker fully against all the racist garbage his sister tried to tie to him.
June 25, 2020
4.5/5, due for a future update since some of the points were lost to me (not because they were poorly argued but because I am not knowledgeable enough to fully appreciate them).
A nice introduction into the philosophies of Nietzsche. Kaufmann presents Nietzsche's philosophy as revolving around a central question that is still very relevant: how does one construct meaning in life?
Kaufmann argues that Nietzsche's thoughts are shaped by a time period where society experiences great material and scientific progress, and is slowly moving away from religion (hence the "death of God"). This was a worrying thought: the loss of religious faith is the loss of the dominant value system up to that point in history, without which we are "threatened .. with a complete loss of all significance" - nihilism. This is Nietzsche's ultimate concern: how does one escape nihilism, and create meaning, when there are no externally given (e.g. God given) values?
The same questions feel ever-present in contemporary life. While religious values are still available, modernity presents one with many new value systems: fame, wealth, success, etc. How can one decide which one is the right one to subscribe to? What even should be the method for which one can engage in these type of thinking? These are the same questions examined by Nietzsche. His ideas of the Will to Power, Eternal Recurrence, and Self-Overcoming are proposals to answer the question of nihilism. I don't think I came away from this book with the ultimate answer to nihilism (at least not from a first read), though I gained a useful perspective, and perhaps a bit more nuance in the way I will continue to try to find answers to this question (and to further explore Nietzsche and related philosophers - this being my first philosophy book!).
Overall, it seems that Nietzsche's philosophy is one that is focused almost entirely on the individual: on self-overcoming, self perfection, all with the intent to answer the question of how to live a good and meaningful life. A worthwhile read for anyone with an interest in the same existential questions.
-----
PS: some misconceptions I had about Nietzsche prior to reading the book:
- Despite having a book called "The Antichrist", he seems pretty cool with Jesus (go figure.. though he does criticize Jesus' followers)? And "God is dead" was not an attack on religion, but a description of his time.
- Nietzsche was never a proponent of nihilism, but devoted his entire philosophy to try to escape it.
- He is apolitical, rejected nationalism and later Nazism, and condemns abusing power over other people.
- The "master" and "slave" are also social commentaries, and Nietzsche doesn't advocate one to be a "master". Somewhat confusingly, the "Ubermensch" (overman) has nothing to do with master or slave (in fact it is at a "higher" existence than both), but is instead a goal for one to strive towards via "self-overcoming".
A nice introduction into the philosophies of Nietzsche. Kaufmann presents Nietzsche's philosophy as revolving around a central question that is still very relevant: how does one construct meaning in life?
Kaufmann argues that Nietzsche's thoughts are shaped by a time period where society experiences great material and scientific progress, and is slowly moving away from religion (hence the "death of God"). This was a worrying thought: the loss of religious faith is the loss of the dominant value system up to that point in history, without which we are "threatened .. with a complete loss of all significance" - nihilism. This is Nietzsche's ultimate concern: how does one escape nihilism, and create meaning, when there are no externally given (e.g. God given) values?
The same questions feel ever-present in contemporary life. While religious values are still available, modernity presents one with many new value systems: fame, wealth, success, etc. How can one decide which one is the right one to subscribe to? What even should be the method for which one can engage in these type of thinking? These are the same questions examined by Nietzsche. His ideas of the Will to Power, Eternal Recurrence, and Self-Overcoming are proposals to answer the question of nihilism. I don't think I came away from this book with the ultimate answer to nihilism (at least not from a first read), though I gained a useful perspective, and perhaps a bit more nuance in the way I will continue to try to find answers to this question (and to further explore Nietzsche and related philosophers - this being my first philosophy book!).
Overall, it seems that Nietzsche's philosophy is one that is focused almost entirely on the individual: on self-overcoming, self perfection, all with the intent to answer the question of how to live a good and meaningful life. A worthwhile read for anyone with an interest in the same existential questions.
-----
PS: some misconceptions I had about Nietzsche prior to reading the book:
- Despite having a book called "The Antichrist", he seems pretty cool with Jesus (go figure.. though he does criticize Jesus' followers)? And "God is dead" was not an attack on religion, but a description of his time.
- Nietzsche was never a proponent of nihilism, but devoted his entire philosophy to try to escape it.
- He is apolitical, rejected nationalism and later Nazism, and condemns abusing power over other people.
- The "master" and "slave" are also social commentaries, and Nietzsche doesn't advocate one to be a "master". Somewhat confusingly, the "Ubermensch" (overman) has nothing to do with master or slave (in fact it is at a "higher" existence than both), but is instead a goal for one to strive towards via "self-overcoming".
November 7, 2020
Utterly transformed my (admittedly rather simplistic) previous reading of Nietzsche.
Bit of a heavy read towards the middle, but infinitely rewarding! Wonderful book.
Kaufman had a difficult job ahead of him, rehabilitating Nietzsche's reputation from his Nazi interpreters, and making him a forerunner of existentialism. The depiction of Nietzsche as a rationalist and not someone advocating 'Dionysian frenzy and chaos' was compelling.
'Perhaps no one has tried as much as he to imbibe the spirit of Socrates and his disciples'.
A few points about Nietzsche's doctrines:
1. Nietzsche was a 'great miniaturist' whose opposition to grand philosophical systems should be understood as a philosophy in its own right. Systems are based on primitives and that is intolerable. He conceived of himself as an experimenter, a conductor of 'Versuchen' on certain defined metaphysical and ethical problems. Philosophy and science should be a way of life.
2. Nietzsche's supreme value was probably his intellectual integrity and honesty never giving in to 'gross and indelicate' ideas like God, noumena or a transcendental world. His naturalism is expressed in his creating immanent values and not transcendental ones which merely justify instinct. Nietzsche was by no means an irrationalist as Kaufman amply shows. Reason in fact should be the guiding principle of life, but we should recognise it's limited grasp. But it's still a very powerful tool and 'leaps of faith' are unjustifiable cowardice. The Will to Truth is the most spiritual Will to Power and it tolerates no concessions.
3. He fought against the prevailing tendency to nihilism arguing that since progress is an illusion and history is not characterised by progress, the only worth of history is in it's great individuals. Man should critique his contemporary morality and create new values as Artists and Philosophers do. Darwin awoke him from his dogmatic slumbers and his was a concerted attempt to make sense of the world now that we no longer were eternal intellects, but evolved ones.
4. 'Beauty is the monument of Apollo's Triumph over Dionysus'; the meaning of the term 'Dionysian' evolved throughout his life. The Dionysian frenzy is not what leads to artistic creation, but the artist's Apollonian mastery of the frenzy, Order he gives to Chaos.
5. HISTORY: The 'historical man' has faith in the future and what it will bring. The 'supra-historical perspective' however is the 'one who does not envisage salvation in the process, but for whom the world is finished in every moment and it's goal (Ende) attained'. The great artists and individuals are 'intensified into symbols' and thus function as our Educators.
5. INTROSPECTION: Laziness and Cowardice are the methods by which man avoids introspection. Man's true purpose is to attain true knowledge of himself; and not get distracted by altruism, wars or the demands of common morality.
6. WILL TO POWER: The fundamental principle of human life; and also can be extrapolated to the cosmos. This metaphysical monism arose out of individual psychological observations, the Greek culture, then finally nature as a whole. The development is traced in chapter 6. The will to power is characterised by a constant self-overcoming. The W2P is also characteristic of all world moralities. It is also dialectical (which accounts for diversity of phenomena) and apparently similar to Hegel's 'aufheben'- it involves a simultaneous preserving, cancelling and lifting-up (acorn to oak tree example). W2P constantly manifests itself under different guises.
7. SUBLIMATION: important concept by which the passions are not extirpated as Christian and ascetic morality would expect us to do; but employed for creative purposes. The great soul is the passionate man who masters his passions, not the one who doesn't have any passions in the first place. Self-overcoming necessarily involves suffering. Denial of some impulses for greater power naturally occurs.
8. AMOR FATI: The secret to greatness is the one wishes nothing in history to have been different. Everything was necessary in the whole. One should not merely tolerate the vagaries of fate, but come to LOVE it.
9. Power is the standard of human psychology; not pleasure. Men willingly sacrifice, just for much power. Pleasure is but the consciousness of Power.
'Man does not strive for pleasure, only the Englishman does'
10. Nietzsche's Physics is also very interesting: His denial of the Subject, there is only a succession of moments and predictability, not causality; there is only a rearrangement of forces and relations, every power derives its last consequence at every moment. He also denies free will. Everything we 'know' through science and philosophy is but a human imputation on the cosmos. Absolute Truth does not exist. 'All our consciousness is but a fantastic commentary on an unknown, unknowable text'
11. THE OVERMAN: 'your true self does not lie deeply concealed within you, but immeasurably high above you'. The overman creates his own values. He is conscious of the power of the eternal recurrence.
12. THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE: By far the most powerful idea, Kaufman completely changed my understanding of this. I had superficially interpreted it similar to the Kantian Categorical Imperative: 'Before doing something, think that you'll have to do it infinite times more and then decide'.
Kaufman interprets it differently: This is the extreme exultation of the moment and not the future/other-worlds. It's more of: 'What would your reaction to this be if the Demon said this was true? Would you weep? Would you be joyful? Cultivate Amor Fati, love your whole fate.'
The ER is thus an incentive for man to improve his state of being and indeed, the concept of the Overman is the only thing that justifies this gruesome doctrine. It is Nietzsche's answer to Nihilism.
13. He respected Jesus for his ethical action; but despised Christianity starting with Paul all the way till Luther for substituing Faith for Action. This encourages complacency in life and 'other-worldly hopes' stymies ethical action.
He also disliked 'leaps of faith' and advocated Reason.
Nietzsche's account is certainly very compelling and one can admire his devotion to truth and melding of the creative and critical temperament. It also got me rather curious about Hegel whose doctrines seem to be reflections of Spinoza and Nietzsche (woe betide future me). Nietzsche's ethical views, and exhortations for artistic creativity, and intellectual integrity are very inspiring!
Bit of a heavy read towards the middle, but infinitely rewarding! Wonderful book.
Kaufman had a difficult job ahead of him, rehabilitating Nietzsche's reputation from his Nazi interpreters, and making him a forerunner of existentialism. The depiction of Nietzsche as a rationalist and not someone advocating 'Dionysian frenzy and chaos' was compelling.
'Perhaps no one has tried as much as he to imbibe the spirit of Socrates and his disciples'.
A few points about Nietzsche's doctrines:
1. Nietzsche was a 'great miniaturist' whose opposition to grand philosophical systems should be understood as a philosophy in its own right. Systems are based on primitives and that is intolerable. He conceived of himself as an experimenter, a conductor of 'Versuchen' on certain defined metaphysical and ethical problems. Philosophy and science should be a way of life.
2. Nietzsche's supreme value was probably his intellectual integrity and honesty never giving in to 'gross and indelicate' ideas like God, noumena or a transcendental world. His naturalism is expressed in his creating immanent values and not transcendental ones which merely justify instinct. Nietzsche was by no means an irrationalist as Kaufman amply shows. Reason in fact should be the guiding principle of life, but we should recognise it's limited grasp. But it's still a very powerful tool and 'leaps of faith' are unjustifiable cowardice. The Will to Truth is the most spiritual Will to Power and it tolerates no concessions.
3. He fought against the prevailing tendency to nihilism arguing that since progress is an illusion and history is not characterised by progress, the only worth of history is in it's great individuals. Man should critique his contemporary morality and create new values as Artists and Philosophers do. Darwin awoke him from his dogmatic slumbers and his was a concerted attempt to make sense of the world now that we no longer were eternal intellects, but evolved ones.
4. 'Beauty is the monument of Apollo's Triumph over Dionysus'; the meaning of the term 'Dionysian' evolved throughout his life. The Dionysian frenzy is not what leads to artistic creation, but the artist's Apollonian mastery of the frenzy, Order he gives to Chaos.
5. HISTORY: The 'historical man' has faith in the future and what it will bring. The 'supra-historical perspective' however is the 'one who does not envisage salvation in the process, but for whom the world is finished in every moment and it's goal (Ende) attained'. The great artists and individuals are 'intensified into symbols' and thus function as our Educators.
5. INTROSPECTION: Laziness and Cowardice are the methods by which man avoids introspection. Man's true purpose is to attain true knowledge of himself; and not get distracted by altruism, wars or the demands of common morality.
6. WILL TO POWER: The fundamental principle of human life; and also can be extrapolated to the cosmos. This metaphysical monism arose out of individual psychological observations, the Greek culture, then finally nature as a whole. The development is traced in chapter 6. The will to power is characterised by a constant self-overcoming. The W2P is also characteristic of all world moralities. It is also dialectical (which accounts for diversity of phenomena) and apparently similar to Hegel's 'aufheben'- it involves a simultaneous preserving, cancelling and lifting-up (acorn to oak tree example). W2P constantly manifests itself under different guises.
7. SUBLIMATION: important concept by which the passions are not extirpated as Christian and ascetic morality would expect us to do; but employed for creative purposes. The great soul is the passionate man who masters his passions, not the one who doesn't have any passions in the first place. Self-overcoming necessarily involves suffering. Denial of some impulses for greater power naturally occurs.
8. AMOR FATI: The secret to greatness is the one wishes nothing in history to have been different. Everything was necessary in the whole. One should not merely tolerate the vagaries of fate, but come to LOVE it.
9. Power is the standard of human psychology; not pleasure. Men willingly sacrifice, just for much power. Pleasure is but the consciousness of Power.
'Man does not strive for pleasure, only the Englishman does'
10. Nietzsche's Physics is also very interesting: His denial of the Subject, there is only a succession of moments and predictability, not causality; there is only a rearrangement of forces and relations, every power derives its last consequence at every moment. He also denies free will. Everything we 'know' through science and philosophy is but a human imputation on the cosmos. Absolute Truth does not exist. 'All our consciousness is but a fantastic commentary on an unknown, unknowable text'
11. THE OVERMAN: 'your true self does not lie deeply concealed within you, but immeasurably high above you'. The overman creates his own values. He is conscious of the power of the eternal recurrence.
12. THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE: By far the most powerful idea, Kaufman completely changed my understanding of this. I had superficially interpreted it similar to the Kantian Categorical Imperative: 'Before doing something, think that you'll have to do it infinite times more and then decide'.
Kaufman interprets it differently: This is the extreme exultation of the moment and not the future/other-worlds. It's more of: 'What would your reaction to this be if the Demon said this was true? Would you weep? Would you be joyful? Cultivate Amor Fati, love your whole fate.'
The ER is thus an incentive for man to improve his state of being and indeed, the concept of the Overman is the only thing that justifies this gruesome doctrine. It is Nietzsche's answer to Nihilism.
13. He respected Jesus for his ethical action; but despised Christianity starting with Paul all the way till Luther for substituing Faith for Action. This encourages complacency in life and 'other-worldly hopes' stymies ethical action.
He also disliked 'leaps of faith' and advocated Reason.
Nietzsche's account is certainly very compelling and one can admire his devotion to truth and melding of the creative and critical temperament. It also got me rather curious about Hegel whose doctrines seem to be reflections of Spinoza and Nietzsche (woe betide future me). Nietzsche's ethical views, and exhortations for artistic creativity, and intellectual integrity are very inspiring!
November 29, 2023
A thoroughly captivating exposition of Nietzsche’s ideas about the will to power, eternal recurrence and the incongruity between Jesus’s message and the modern church. By showing how Nietzsche’s philosophy evolved over three phases, Kaufmann dispels the myths of Nietzsche being a proto-Nazi, cruel amoralist or an anti-Socratic. Instead, Nietzsche’s work is shown to have been a new, experimental approach to philosophical thought that champions individual creativity, by challenging us to channel, rather than repress, our passions towards self-actualisation.
January 30, 2013
An important and thought-provoking book for anyone wishing to get to grips with Nietzsche’s writings. Kaufmann does a good job of combating the various misleading interpretations which have dogged Nietzsche’s reputation over the years: that he was a proto-Nazi; a nihilist; a Social Darwinist; an irrationalist; someone who gloried in war and brutality; and so on. Indeed, whilst there are certainly many harsh (perhaps even shrill) comments in Nietzsche’s books, even a half-attentive reader will be struck by other, much warmer, remarks eulogising generosity, self-restraint and – perhaps above all – friendship. Making sense of these seemingly contradictory passages is one of the problems Nietzsche set his readers and Kaufmann’s book is substantially concerned with showing how they can be brought together in a coherent whole. His arguments are carefully constructed, backed up by quotes from the entire range of Nietzsche’s output (including notebooks and personal letters) and fleshed-out with an impressive range of scholarship.
All the same, while the book certainly increased my understanding of Nietzsche I can’t help thinking something was lost in the process. Nietzsche was a self-consciously enigmatic writer. He loved to shock, question and confound expectations. And he purposely chose to express himself in teasing aphorisms and ultra-brief essays rather than via weighty, system-expounding tomes. This (for me, at least) is undoubtedly part of his appeal. But the more Kaufmann arranges Nietzsche’s thought into a linear argument the more the magic seems to disappear. Nietzsche is robbed of mystery and emerges as just another philosopher – and not a particularly convincing one, either.
This is especially true of the extended discussion of Will to Power. As a metaphorical or “poetic” concept, Will to Power is intriguing and perhaps enlightening – it can certainly act as a useful corrective to sentimental clap-trap about the noble virtuousness of mankind. But when it’s arranged into a carefully constructed system which attempts to express the literal truth about the world then it strikes me as a patently implausible fantasy. Taken either as a metaphysical argument or a scientific theory (and it seems to wander uneasily between the two) it has nothing to recommend it other than the personal preferences of the author. (And the less said about eternal recurrence the better.)
I admire Nietzsche hugely for his style, courage, wit, contrariness, honesty, cheerfulness and psychological insight. But insofar as he was a philosopher at all, he was an anti-philosopher. To represent him as someone in the tradition of Kant or Hegel or even Socrates (who he undoubtedly admired) does him no favours.
All the same, while the book certainly increased my understanding of Nietzsche I can’t help thinking something was lost in the process. Nietzsche was a self-consciously enigmatic writer. He loved to shock, question and confound expectations. And he purposely chose to express himself in teasing aphorisms and ultra-brief essays rather than via weighty, system-expounding tomes. This (for me, at least) is undoubtedly part of his appeal. But the more Kaufmann arranges Nietzsche’s thought into a linear argument the more the magic seems to disappear. Nietzsche is robbed of mystery and emerges as just another philosopher – and not a particularly convincing one, either.
This is especially true of the extended discussion of Will to Power. As a metaphorical or “poetic” concept, Will to Power is intriguing and perhaps enlightening – it can certainly act as a useful corrective to sentimental clap-trap about the noble virtuousness of mankind. But when it’s arranged into a carefully constructed system which attempts to express the literal truth about the world then it strikes me as a patently implausible fantasy. Taken either as a metaphysical argument or a scientific theory (and it seems to wander uneasily between the two) it has nothing to recommend it other than the personal preferences of the author. (And the less said about eternal recurrence the better.)
I admire Nietzsche hugely for his style, courage, wit, contrariness, honesty, cheerfulness and psychological insight. But insofar as he was a philosopher at all, he was an anti-philosopher. To represent him as someone in the tradition of Kant or Hegel or even Socrates (who he undoubtedly admired) does him no favours.
April 30, 2015
I was attracted to this book by Kaufmann's lively and helpful footnotes in his Basic Writings of Nietzsche and I am not only a complete fan now of Nietzsche but also of Kaufmann. It is worth adding that Kaufmann is one writer where it is worth the effort of reading footnotes, some of which are gems in their own right. I have already taken the advice from a review by Erik Graff (here) and purchased several other Kaufmann books, starting with a book on Hegel. (Why would I want to study Hegel? I am not yet sure! Probably just because now I can.)
The book has a modest amount of biographical information so that we can relate Nietzsche's books to his life, but it is primarily a systematic review of his philosophical ideas. Kaufmann gives a deeply sympathetic reading without neglecting to cover both his own objections to some of what Nietzsche said and also reviewing criticisms from other sources, though here he can be very dismissive of other commentators, arguing that the quality of their Nietzsche scholarship is unacceptably poor. What I find impressive is the extent to which Kaufmann can present Nietzsche's thought as coherent, accessible and relevant. While there are some big limitations, his thought is in many respects also very attractive.
If some of the issues addressed in this book appear dated, then a sharp correction can be found by what is said about Nietzsche on YouTube; when I quote Nietzsche in internet debates, some of the responses are clearly informed by the same prejudiced misrepresentations to which Kaufmann devotes attention. So they remain relevant because the errors and misrepresentations have not gone away and have been taken up with energy and repeated widely because they clearly suit some modern agendas, not least that of fundamentalist evangelical Christians, who are understandably bothered when Nietzsche is quoted against them by tiresome people like me- so one is still likely to be called on to refute them by citing evidence from this book.
I read a decent amount of Nietzsche's writing before reading Kaufmann and I think that was helpful in fact, because I wanted to get my own impressions before being told what to think by an academic, but I do not think I was going to penetrate very far without help and I am inclined to plough on reading more Nietzsche now that I have a trustworthy guide in hand.
The book has a modest amount of biographical information so that we can relate Nietzsche's books to his life, but it is primarily a systematic review of his philosophical ideas. Kaufmann gives a deeply sympathetic reading without neglecting to cover both his own objections to some of what Nietzsche said and also reviewing criticisms from other sources, though here he can be very dismissive of other commentators, arguing that the quality of their Nietzsche scholarship is unacceptably poor. What I find impressive is the extent to which Kaufmann can present Nietzsche's thought as coherent, accessible and relevant. While there are some big limitations, his thought is in many respects also very attractive.
If some of the issues addressed in this book appear dated, then a sharp correction can be found by what is said about Nietzsche on YouTube; when I quote Nietzsche in internet debates, some of the responses are clearly informed by the same prejudiced misrepresentations to which Kaufmann devotes attention. So they remain relevant because the errors and misrepresentations have not gone away and have been taken up with energy and repeated widely because they clearly suit some modern agendas, not least that of fundamentalist evangelical Christians, who are understandably bothered when Nietzsche is quoted against them by tiresome people like me- so one is still likely to be called on to refute them by citing evidence from this book.
I read a decent amount of Nietzsche's writing before reading Kaufmann and I think that was helpful in fact, because I wanted to get my own impressions before being told what to think by an academic, but I do not think I was going to penetrate very far without help and I am inclined to plough on reading more Nietzsche now that I have a trustworthy guide in hand.
July 10, 2025
این کتاب را باید یکی از تأثیرگذارترین آثاری دانست که پس از جنگ جهانی دوم در احیای چهرهی حقیقی نیچه نوشته شد. والتر کوفمان با دقت، وسواس و اشتیاقی بیپایان تلاش کرده تا فلسفهی نیچه را از زیر آوار تحریفهای نازیستی بیرون بکشد و نشان دهد که نیچه نه یک فیلسوف اقتدارگرا، که متفکری عمیق، شاعرانه و منتقد تمامعیار هر نوع دگماتیسم بود.
تحلیلهای کوفمان از آثار نیچه دقیق، چندوجهی و اغلب روشنکنندهاند. او با مهارتی ستودنی مفاهیمی چون «بازگشت ابدی»، «اراده قدرت» و «ابر انسان» را در بستر تاریخی و فلسفیشان بررسی میکند، و خواننده را با نیچهای آشنا میسازد که هم فیلسوف است، هم روانشناس، و هم هنرمند.
در کنار این تحلیلها، روایتهایی از زندگی نیچه در این کتاب آمده که در منابع دیگر کمتر دیده میشود؛ روایتهایی که تصویر شخصیتری از نیچه ارائه میدهند و به درک عمیقتری از زندگی و رنجهایش کمک میکنند.
با این حال، نمیتوان نادیده گرفت که کوفمان تا حدی جانبدارانه و با شور بیش از حد از نیچه دفاع میکند. گاهی بهنظر میرسد که او هرگونه نقد را به نوعی بدفهمی تعبیر میکند، و اینجاست که نگاه ارسطویی به حقیقت اهمیت پیدا میکند:
«من افلاطون را دوست دارم، اما حقیقت را بیشتر دوست دارم.»
با وجود اینکه خود من شیفتهی نیچه و فلسفهش هستم، اما گاهی از خوانندهی جدی انتظار میرود که در برابر فیلسوف محبوبش هم نگاه نقادانهاش را حفظ کند. از این نظر، همچنان به نظرم کتاب جولیان یانگ، اثری جامعتر و بیطرفانهتر است. البته باید کتاب یاسپرس را هم بخوانم تا بتوانم قضاوت نهاییام را داشته باشم.
تحلیلهای کوفمان از آثار نیچه دقیق، چندوجهی و اغلب روشنکنندهاند. او با مهارتی ستودنی مفاهیمی چون «بازگشت ابدی»، «اراده قدرت» و «ابر انسان» را در بستر تاریخی و فلسفیشان بررسی میکند، و خواننده را با نیچهای آشنا میسازد که هم فیلسوف است، هم روانشناس، و هم هنرمند.
در کنار این تحلیلها، روایتهایی از زندگی نیچه در این کتاب آمده که در منابع دیگر کمتر دیده میشود؛ روایتهایی که تصویر شخصیتری از نیچه ارائه میدهند و به درک عمیقتری از زندگی و رنجهایش کمک میکنند.
با این حال، نمیتوان نادیده گرفت که کوفمان تا حدی جانبدارانه و با شور بیش از حد از نیچه دفاع میکند. گاهی بهنظر میرسد که او هرگونه نقد را به نوعی بدفهمی تعبیر میکند، و اینجاست که نگاه ارسطویی به حقیقت اهمیت پیدا میکند:
«من افلاطون را دوست دارم، اما حقیقت را بیشتر دوست دارم.»
با وجود اینکه خود من شیفتهی نیچه و فلسفهش هستم، اما گاهی از خوانندهی جدی انتظار میرود که در برابر فیلسوف محبوبش هم نگاه نقادانهاش را حفظ کند. از این نظر، همچنان به نظرم کتاب جولیان یانگ، اثری جامعتر و بیطرفانهتر است. البته باید کتاب یاسپرس را هم بخوانم تا بتوانم قضاوت نهاییام را داشته باشم.
May 14, 2020
Heroic - a great re-evaluation of the great re-evaluator. So much is owed to it. And sobering as an exposé of how respected and established scholars, academics, professors, and philosophers can be so wrong. If that is, you agree with Kaufmann; in my opinion, he makes it all so obvious. Amazing clarity and insight - what he did here is nothing short of monumental.
Don’t be fooled by my rating - this is definitely a 5 star book. It gets 4 from me personally because I feel I’ve only just scratched the surface, there’s so much for me still to gain from it. I read it too slowly and sporadically, and should definitely have been taking notes. But I did read the last quarter of it quicker and far more focused, and caught a glimpse of its gifts - after which, I could barely put it down. This is a massive, beautiful book.
Don’t be fooled by my rating - this is definitely a 5 star book. It gets 4 from me personally because I feel I’ve only just scratched the surface, there’s so much for me still to gain from it. I read it too slowly and sporadically, and should definitely have been taking notes. But I did read the last quarter of it quicker and far more focused, and caught a glimpse of its gifts - after which, I could barely put it down. This is a massive, beautiful book.
February 26, 2014
This book has the reputation of being the "gold standard" of Nietzsche scholarship and after reading this book, that reputation has been rightfully earned. Kaufmann has done a couple of big things in this book. One, his sympathetic analysis is superb however, he does not let his sympathies cloud his objectivity as there are passages that find Kaufmann being very critical of Nietzsche. I find that to be the mark of a true academic. Secondly, the scope of his research is immense yet, he conveys this research in a very concise fashion. Kaufmann's work on Nietzsche is amazing. If you want to see an example of how to write a good, academic book, this book is for you.
October 21, 2015
Somebody once called Kaufmann's version of Nietzsche "a mildly dyspeptic liberal." Catchy quip, not entirely inaccurate, but this is still informative.
December 21, 2023
Over the past 10+ years I have read all of Nietzsche's books, many of them several times. I intentionally avoided this book by Kaufmann until now, as I've heard he had a specific interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy, and I wanted to first form my own opinion of it.
Kaufmann managed to change some of my opinions, misconceptions, and misunderstandings about Nietzsche. Though he indeed has a specific view, Kaufmann repeatedly supports his claims with strong evidence and clear arguments.
I have learned a lot from this book. It is well written and brilliantly researched. A must for anyone who wishes to understand Nietzsche.
Kaufmann managed to change some of my opinions, misconceptions, and misunderstandings about Nietzsche. Though he indeed has a specific view, Kaufmann repeatedly supports his claims with strong evidence and clear arguments.
I have learned a lot from this book. It is well written and brilliantly researched. A must for anyone who wishes to understand Nietzsche.
December 3, 2015
Walter Kaufmann seemed to have known Nietzsche probably better than Nietzsche knew himself. Having read nearly all of Nietzsche's books, I still found Kaufmann's books on Nietzsche extraordinarily insightful and believe that anyone would be hard pressed to find a more interesting and knowledgeable biographer of this historical phenomenon.
Although Nietzsche certainly had his faults, it would be difficult to find a more brilliant and erudite figure in history with the possible exception (but far less interesting) of Oswald Spengler. Nietzsche truly had a massive intelligence and an incredible command of cultures, languages, origins of language and history. It always amazed me how one human could have been so gifted. Yet, many of his pronouncements did not rest completely on solid ground such as his views that women were inferior to men and were born to "serve" and "obey" rather than lead. He would have had a difficult time today in Europe trying to get any dates with women, no doubt.
Nietzsche, the great philologist of the 19th Century, wrote many great treatises including On the Geneology of Morals, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, The Antichrist, The Will to Power, The Gay Science, Ecce Homo, Human, All Too Human, and The Birth of Tragedy. The latter is the best analysis of the nature of tragedy that I have read and, in my opinion, superior to Aristotle's theory of tragedy but of course Nietzsche had the benefit of many more centuries of human development including the tremendous advances of the Enlightenment.
Prior to Nietzsche, I had read dozens of the great philosophers - classical and modern - but I really never felt the need nor the desire to read any more philosophy after him. Kaufman was invaluable to me in understanding Nietzsche and I strongly recommend that students, especially, have one of the Kaufmann books on Nietzsche handy while reading any of Nietzsche's work.
Caution: Nietzsche was, in my opinion, the great realist and cynic of the modern world. Be prepared to lose much of your cherished beliefs if you undertake a serious study here. Not really recommended for those who prefer to enjoy life rather than 'think too much.'
It's unfortunate that many people today associate Nietzsche with Nazism - this is totally erroneous and Nietzsche would have had total contempt for the Nazis regimes that existed all over Europe. He had large respect for the Jews, their culture, their tenacious will and genius at survival in a hostile world as well as for their cohesiveness down through centuries of hatred that fueled the massacres, pogroms and exterminations. He would have been aghast at the slaughter of the Jews during the Nazis era. He was not an anti-Semite but quite the opposite.
The Nazis used his theory of the superman to cast him as a fascist like themselves and, although there are similarities, Nietzsche would have had been horrified to have seen his name connected with such a twisted ideology. The superman as Nietzsche conceived him, would be a highly-evolved human - a rarity among humans, so rare that his existence would be constantly in danger. But it would be a superman that might guide humanity into a bright and great future. His tremendous 'will to power' would help him (Nietzsche would not have seen this being as female) to forcibly overcome the "herd" and the instinct of the "many" or the "herd instinct" toward mediocrity rather than toward greatness. Hitler or Mussulini would not have qualified. Despite their ability to shake up the world and cause vast slaughter, Nietzsche would have seen them as contemptible mean criminals who stood not for life as the superman would but for destruction even though they tried to create - in Hitler case it would have been the 1000-year Reich while Mussolini tried, pathetically, to recreate the Roman Empire.
More than anything, I believe that Nietzsche wanted to see the human race rise far beyond the mediocrity that he saw everywhere in modern life. He seemed to have longed for the great cultures of old - those of ancient Greece and Rome but many others. He saw Christianity as the catalyst for the demise of human greatness and viewed it as a weak religion that encouraged mediocrity - a religion of the weak and the poor.
In contrast he saw Jesus as a strong leader but believed the apostles and subsequently the Catholic Church and its offshoots had little to do with Jesus whom he said was the first and only Christian. For Nietzsche, I believe, the anti-Christ was the historical force - atheism as it pertained to the christian interpretation of "God"- that opposed the church. It wasn't opposition to Jesus, according to Nietzsche, as the church already had been in opposition to him in many ways and to such a degree that the two were irreconcilable. Christians would no doubt disagree. This is not to say that Nietzsche did not believe in a god - he believed in the majesty and power of nature but that man ultimately stood alone, unguided by, and unknown to any god. He believed that "God" did not create man - just the opposite, that man created "God."
For me, Kaufmann's books on Nietzsche are essential guides for anyone wanting to study Nietzsche although these days Nietzsche has become far more popular among intellectuals and, as a result, there is a wealth of commentary out there about this central figure in history.
Although Nietzsche certainly had his faults, it would be difficult to find a more brilliant and erudite figure in history with the possible exception (but far less interesting) of Oswald Spengler. Nietzsche truly had a massive intelligence and an incredible command of cultures, languages, origins of language and history. It always amazed me how one human could have been so gifted. Yet, many of his pronouncements did not rest completely on solid ground such as his views that women were inferior to men and were born to "serve" and "obey" rather than lead. He would have had a difficult time today in Europe trying to get any dates with women, no doubt.
Nietzsche, the great philologist of the 19th Century, wrote many great treatises including On the Geneology of Morals, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, The Antichrist, The Will to Power, The Gay Science, Ecce Homo, Human, All Too Human, and The Birth of Tragedy. The latter is the best analysis of the nature of tragedy that I have read and, in my opinion, superior to Aristotle's theory of tragedy but of course Nietzsche had the benefit of many more centuries of human development including the tremendous advances of the Enlightenment.
Prior to Nietzsche, I had read dozens of the great philosophers - classical and modern - but I really never felt the need nor the desire to read any more philosophy after him. Kaufman was invaluable to me in understanding Nietzsche and I strongly recommend that students, especially, have one of the Kaufmann books on Nietzsche handy while reading any of Nietzsche's work.
Caution: Nietzsche was, in my opinion, the great realist and cynic of the modern world. Be prepared to lose much of your cherished beliefs if you undertake a serious study here. Not really recommended for those who prefer to enjoy life rather than 'think too much.'
It's unfortunate that many people today associate Nietzsche with Nazism - this is totally erroneous and Nietzsche would have had total contempt for the Nazis regimes that existed all over Europe. He had large respect for the Jews, their culture, their tenacious will and genius at survival in a hostile world as well as for their cohesiveness down through centuries of hatred that fueled the massacres, pogroms and exterminations. He would have been aghast at the slaughter of the Jews during the Nazis era. He was not an anti-Semite but quite the opposite.
The Nazis used his theory of the superman to cast him as a fascist like themselves and, although there are similarities, Nietzsche would have had been horrified to have seen his name connected with such a twisted ideology. The superman as Nietzsche conceived him, would be a highly-evolved human - a rarity among humans, so rare that his existence would be constantly in danger. But it would be a superman that might guide humanity into a bright and great future. His tremendous 'will to power' would help him (Nietzsche would not have seen this being as female) to forcibly overcome the "herd" and the instinct of the "many" or the "herd instinct" toward mediocrity rather than toward greatness. Hitler or Mussulini would not have qualified. Despite their ability to shake up the world and cause vast slaughter, Nietzsche would have seen them as contemptible mean criminals who stood not for life as the superman would but for destruction even though they tried to create - in Hitler case it would have been the 1000-year Reich while Mussolini tried, pathetically, to recreate the Roman Empire.
More than anything, I believe that Nietzsche wanted to see the human race rise far beyond the mediocrity that he saw everywhere in modern life. He seemed to have longed for the great cultures of old - those of ancient Greece and Rome but many others. He saw Christianity as the catalyst for the demise of human greatness and viewed it as a weak religion that encouraged mediocrity - a religion of the weak and the poor.
In contrast he saw Jesus as a strong leader but believed the apostles and subsequently the Catholic Church and its offshoots had little to do with Jesus whom he said was the first and only Christian. For Nietzsche, I believe, the anti-Christ was the historical force - atheism as it pertained to the christian interpretation of "God"- that opposed the church. It wasn't opposition to Jesus, according to Nietzsche, as the church already had been in opposition to him in many ways and to such a degree that the two were irreconcilable. Christians would no doubt disagree. This is not to say that Nietzsche did not believe in a god - he believed in the majesty and power of nature but that man ultimately stood alone, unguided by, and unknown to any god. He believed that "God" did not create man - just the opposite, that man created "God."
For me, Kaufmann's books on Nietzsche are essential guides for anyone wanting to study Nietzsche although these days Nietzsche has become far more popular among intellectuals and, as a result, there is a wealth of commentary out there about this central figure in history.
October 24, 2009
In grappling with Nietzsche's ideas, Kaufmann appreciates fully his experimental style. He writes:
Despite Kaufmann's appreciation of this "pluralistic" style, he wants to piece together Nietzsche's aphorisms and show his thinking is coherent and systematic. This program goes against not only his style but also Nietzsche's criticism of philosophic systems as a way of stopping thought. Kaufmann sees Nietzsche's perspectivism as a method by which he arrived at his positive doctrines (such as the will to power and eternal recurrence), and not as a more radical critique of philosophical thinking. So the experience of reading Kaufman on Nietzsche is very strange. You are grateful for his clear exposition of Nietzsche's ideas, but keep feeling he is missing the point.
On Nietzsche's perspectivism, S turns me on to Alexander Nehamas' Nietzsche: Life as Literature. I hope to read that soon because its aestheticist thesis sounds instinctively right to me. As Hazlitt has it, the language of poetry is closely aligned to the language of power. Nietzsche's will to power is directly related to the will to create, or re-create. Max Cavitch, in his American Elegy: The poetry to mourning from the puritans to Whitman, makes a passing reference to Nietzsche's debt to Emerson's Over-Soul for his idea of the Over-Man. Nietzsche did make a reference to Emerson somewhere in his writings; I should try to find it. The connection between Nietzsche and Emerson, Nietzsche and Goethe, points towards Nietzsche's Romantic precedents, though he is heavily critical of the German Romantics such as Schiller.
Besides its Romanticism, the Protestantism of Nietzsche's self-overcoming also appeals to me. S calls it, perhaps unintentionally derogatorily, self-help. That label minimizes the abyss we all face after the death of God: nihilism. Or to put the problem positively, what should we live by. Eternal recurrence may or may not be a cosmological doctrine in Nietzsche's book, but it seems to me a noble ethical ideal. Amor fait. To love one's fate enough to desire the recurrence of one's exact circumstances. I can't desire that at the moment (what a waste my twenties appear to me), and that gives me ethical, and creative, work to do. "You shall become who you are" is how Nietzsche put it in The Gay Science.
At the end of his chapter "Morality and Sublimation," Kaufmann summarizes beautifully Nietzsche's ethical views:
The will to power also offers an alternative to the Darwinian will to survive, which has always struck me as too minimalist an explanation. The will to survive may explain why we have a thumb, but I would rather know why Shakespeare wrote the works he did, and not Ben Jonson. It's a stretch to claim that the writing of The Tempest is fundamentally a matter of survival. More likely, as Prospero reminds us, it is a matter of power, and its surrender.
As Nietzsche himself wrote in The Genealogy of Morals of the will to power:
The elusive quality of this style, which is so characteristic of Nietzsche's way of thinking and writing, might be called monadologic to crystallize the tendency of each aphorism to be self-sufficient while yet throwing light on almost every other aphorism. We are confronted with a "pluralistic universe" in which each aphorism is itself a microcosm. Almost as often as not, a single passage is equally relevant to ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of history, theory of value, psychology, and perhaps half a dozen other fields.
Despite Kaufmann's appreciation of this "pluralistic" style, he wants to piece together Nietzsche's aphorisms and show his thinking is coherent and systematic. This program goes against not only his style but also Nietzsche's criticism of philosophic systems as a way of stopping thought. Kaufmann sees Nietzsche's perspectivism as a method by which he arrived at his positive doctrines (such as the will to power and eternal recurrence), and not as a more radical critique of philosophical thinking. So the experience of reading Kaufman on Nietzsche is very strange. You are grateful for his clear exposition of Nietzsche's ideas, but keep feeling he is missing the point.
On Nietzsche's perspectivism, S turns me on to Alexander Nehamas' Nietzsche: Life as Literature. I hope to read that soon because its aestheticist thesis sounds instinctively right to me. As Hazlitt has it, the language of poetry is closely aligned to the language of power. Nietzsche's will to power is directly related to the will to create, or re-create. Max Cavitch, in his American Elegy: The poetry to mourning from the puritans to Whitman, makes a passing reference to Nietzsche's debt to Emerson's Over-Soul for his idea of the Over-Man. Nietzsche did make a reference to Emerson somewhere in his writings; I should try to find it. The connection between Nietzsche and Emerson, Nietzsche and Goethe, points towards Nietzsche's Romantic precedents, though he is heavily critical of the German Romantics such as Schiller.
Besides its Romanticism, the Protestantism of Nietzsche's self-overcoming also appeals to me. S calls it, perhaps unintentionally derogatorily, self-help. That label minimizes the abyss we all face after the death of God: nihilism. Or to put the problem positively, what should we live by. Eternal recurrence may or may not be a cosmological doctrine in Nietzsche's book, but it seems to me a noble ethical ideal. Amor fait. To love one's fate enough to desire the recurrence of one's exact circumstances. I can't desire that at the moment (what a waste my twenties appear to me), and that gives me ethical, and creative, work to do. "You shall become who you are" is how Nietzsche put it in The Gay Science.
At the end of his chapter "Morality and Sublimation," Kaufmann summarizes beautifully Nietzsche's ethical views:
Our impulses are in a state of chaos. We would do this now, and another thing the next moment--and even a great number of things at the same time. We think one way and live another; we want one thing and do another. No man can live without bringing some order into this chaos. This may be done by thoroughly weakening the whole organism or by repudiating and repressing many of the impulses: but the result in that case is not a "harmony," and the physis is castrated, not "improved." Yet there is another way--namely, to "organize the chaos": sublimation allow for the achievement of an organic harmony and leads to that culture which is truly a "transfigured physis."
The will to power also offers an alternative to the Darwinian will to survive, which has always struck me as too minimalist an explanation. The will to survive may explain why we have a thumb, but I would rather know why Shakespeare wrote the works he did, and not Ben Jonson. It's a stretch to claim that the writing of The Tempest is fundamentally a matter of survival. More likely, as Prospero reminds us, it is a matter of power, and its surrender.
As Nietzsche himself wrote in The Genealogy of Morals of the will to power:
. . . the material upon which the form-giving and ravishing nature of this force vents itself is man himself, his . . . animalic . . . self--and not . . . other men. This secret self-ravishment, this artists' cruelty, this pleasure in giving form to oneself as a hard, recalcitrant, suffering material--burning into it a will, a critique, a contradiction, a contempt, a No--this . . . work of a soul that is willingly divided against itself and makes itself suffer--this whole activistic "bad conscience" has . . . been the real womb of all ideal and imaginative events and has this brought to light an abundance of strange new beauty and affirmation--and perhaps beauty itself.--What would be "beautiful" is contradiction had not first become self-conscious, if the ugly had not first said to itself: "I am ugly"?
March 23, 2025
"Become who you are!"
Fantastic resource before diving into Nietzsche's body of work. Kaufmann proves his diligence in understanding Nietzsche's life and thought through historical context, citations, and overall knowledge of various philosophies.
Fantastic resource before diving into Nietzsche's body of work. Kaufmann proves his diligence in understanding Nietzsche's life and thought through historical context, citations, and overall knowledge of various philosophies.
December 2, 2024
Kaufmann does away with various common myths about Nietzsche: that he was an anti-Semite, that he was more poetic than philosophical, that he was an anti-rationalist, that he advocated the crude pursuit of power by means of force.
Probably my least favourite myth, that Nietzsche’s thought can be split into three periods, the earliest of which can be discarded as juvenile Wagner-worship, and the latest of which can be disregarded as the egoistic ramblings of a madman, is also dealt with forcefully.
It’s remarkable to me that so much secondary literature on Nietzsche was based on what looks like no reading of him at all.
It’s true that Kaufmann defangs Nietzsche somewhat, and he doesn’t focus on Nietzsche’s concern with the body and nature as much as is merited, but I can put this down to a necessary choice in Kaufmann’s context. People already thought at the time that Nietzsche was a chauvinistic militarist that glorified the body over the mind, this therefore needed to be challenged.
One of Kaufmann’s crucial innovations is to correct the idea that Nietzsche was completely opposed to Socrates - an idea that I had fallen for after a first reading of the Birth of Tragedy.
Weirdly, the latest canard against Nietzsche comes from people who haven’t read him, aimed at a hypothetical group of other people who also haven’t read him.
The new Nietzsche legend is that there are hordes of ‘dudes’ who have misunderstood him. This is of course partly true, as this book demonstrates. However, it is an axiom among those who wish that Nietzsche’s thought would go away so that they could get back to bloviating about ‘ethics’ and theology that “the point of Nietzsche is to surpass Nietzsche”.
This is a twisting of an actually Nietzschean sentiment that hides a command to not take Nietzsche seriously or, even better, ignore him completely. Whilst it is true that Nietzsche expressly did not want disciples it is also true that he has a cohesive philosophical outlook that is thought of by its author as important. Nietzsche would hardly have bothered writing his many books if he did not think so, after all. We should not be surprised then that likeminded readers come to love Nietzsche as a deep thinker, a thrilling writer, and a companion in a world that frankly alienates the typical reader of his or indeed of any philosophy. Really this sort of rhetoric represents a wider trend of treating deep interest in anything beyond the allotted ‘wholesome’ pastures with a mixture of suspicion and mockery. This is not a wise call to temperance and moderation, but a penning in of energy by the barbed wire fences of irony that have preemptively snagged the minds of any of those unfortunate enough to trust that such sniping is for their own good.
Probably my least favourite myth, that Nietzsche’s thought can be split into three periods, the earliest of which can be discarded as juvenile Wagner-worship, and the latest of which can be disregarded as the egoistic ramblings of a madman, is also dealt with forcefully.
It’s remarkable to me that so much secondary literature on Nietzsche was based on what looks like no reading of him at all.
It’s true that Kaufmann defangs Nietzsche somewhat, and he doesn’t focus on Nietzsche’s concern with the body and nature as much as is merited, but I can put this down to a necessary choice in Kaufmann’s context. People already thought at the time that Nietzsche was a chauvinistic militarist that glorified the body over the mind, this therefore needed to be challenged.
One of Kaufmann’s crucial innovations is to correct the idea that Nietzsche was completely opposed to Socrates - an idea that I had fallen for after a first reading of the Birth of Tragedy.
Weirdly, the latest canard against Nietzsche comes from people who haven’t read him, aimed at a hypothetical group of other people who also haven’t read him.
The new Nietzsche legend is that there are hordes of ‘dudes’ who have misunderstood him. This is of course partly true, as this book demonstrates. However, it is an axiom among those who wish that Nietzsche’s thought would go away so that they could get back to bloviating about ‘ethics’ and theology that “the point of Nietzsche is to surpass Nietzsche”.
This is a twisting of an actually Nietzschean sentiment that hides a command to not take Nietzsche seriously or, even better, ignore him completely. Whilst it is true that Nietzsche expressly did not want disciples it is also true that he has a cohesive philosophical outlook that is thought of by its author as important. Nietzsche would hardly have bothered writing his many books if he did not think so, after all. We should not be surprised then that likeminded readers come to love Nietzsche as a deep thinker, a thrilling writer, and a companion in a world that frankly alienates the typical reader of his or indeed of any philosophy. Really this sort of rhetoric represents a wider trend of treating deep interest in anything beyond the allotted ‘wholesome’ pastures with a mixture of suspicion and mockery. This is not a wise call to temperance and moderation, but a penning in of energy by the barbed wire fences of irony that have preemptively snagged the minds of any of those unfortunate enough to trust that such sniping is for their own good.
May 23, 2018
Walter Kaufmann’s Nietzsche conquered a massive hurdle; take the misunderstood philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and renew his image into that of a genius before his time. Kaufmann had a great deal against him; Nietzsche’s sister had controlled his image, and she was a horrible racist twit who didn’t understand his works. Compounding the issue was the fact that most people that who wrote about him didn’t understand his works either. When the Nazis took advantage of his writings and letters, they heavily edited what was printed or took his writings out of context. Is it any surprise then that he was accused of being a racist proto-nazi? It didn’t help that he spent the last years of his life insane.
Kaufmann’s book took Nietzsche and reexamined him under a different perspective, taking into account his early upbringing and all of the other events that produced him. The book goes through his philosophy point by point with a thorough and scholarly air while being divided into four parts. The first covers Nietzsche’s background, the second covers the development of his philosophy, the third covers his philosophy of power and the last section contains a synopsis of all of this. Kaufmann’s commentary on the meaning of God is Dead was especially enlightening and interesting.
As I said in a previous review, Nietzsche is someone that I had first heard of in school. I don’t remember exactly when or how that occurred. I was not aware that this book was the catalyst for Nietzsche being an acceptable figure to study again or that the first edition of this book is already almost seventy years old as of this review. I also thought that the book would be more of a biography than what it turned out to be. It certainly covers a bit of his life, but most of the book focuses on his Philosophy.
All in all, this book is fantastic. If you have read Nietzsche and came away confused, this book is an excellent remedy for that.
Kaufmann’s book took Nietzsche and reexamined him under a different perspective, taking into account his early upbringing and all of the other events that produced him. The book goes through his philosophy point by point with a thorough and scholarly air while being divided into four parts. The first covers Nietzsche’s background, the second covers the development of his philosophy, the third covers his philosophy of power and the last section contains a synopsis of all of this. Kaufmann’s commentary on the meaning of God is Dead was especially enlightening and interesting.
As I said in a previous review, Nietzsche is someone that I had first heard of in school. I don’t remember exactly when or how that occurred. I was not aware that this book was the catalyst for Nietzsche being an acceptable figure to study again or that the first edition of this book is already almost seventy years old as of this review. I also thought that the book would be more of a biography than what it turned out to be. It certainly covers a bit of his life, but most of the book focuses on his Philosophy.
All in all, this book is fantastic. If you have read Nietzsche and came away confused, this book is an excellent remedy for that.
June 10, 2021
I had attempted to read Nietzsche's primary texts multiple times, but my attempts always ended in failure - I could enjoy the rhythm of Nietzsche's lyrical sentences, but I could rarely decode their meaning. This book solves that problem and provides a highly understandable examination of the core concepts of Nietzsche's thought.
The downside is that even though half the chapters are fascinating - especially the ones on the will to power, ubermensch, and eternal recurrence - I found the other half extremely dull. Moreover, the whole book is filled with the author's intellectual jerk off about how he really gets Nietzsche while all the other cited authors don't. This often made it hard to go through too many pages at one go, and it was the main reason why it took me more than a year to finish the book. 5/10
The downside is that even though half the chapters are fascinating - especially the ones on the will to power, ubermensch, and eternal recurrence - I found the other half extremely dull. Moreover, the whole book is filled with the author's intellectual jerk off about how he really gets Nietzsche while all the other cited authors don't. This often made it hard to go through too many pages at one go, and it was the main reason why it took me more than a year to finish the book. 5/10
October 1, 2013
Doesn't get to the heart of Nietzsche's transvaluation paradox, i.e. Nietzsche as a moral philosopher is descriptive rather than prescriptive. He used a psychological determinist theory for the rise of one, or other, type of moral tendency, either indulgent or ascetic, but still offers moral prescriptions in open contradiction to the fact that such prescriptions are only spontaneous actions psychologically determined. His prescriptions against 'pity' are therefore paradoxical given his purely descriptive moral philosophy.
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