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Aesthetic Transformations: Taking Nietzsche at His Word
In this provocative work, Thomas Jovanovski presents a contrasting interpretation to the postmodernist and feminist reading of Nietzsche. As Jovanovski maintains, Nietzsche’s written thought is above all a sustained endeavor aimed at negating and superseding the (primarily) Socratic principles of Western ontology with a new table of aesthetic ethics – ethics that originate from the Dionysian insight of Aeschylean tragedy. Just as the Platonic Socrates perceived a pressing need for, and succeeded in establishing, a new world-historical ethic and aesthetic direction grounded in reason, science, and optimism, so does Nietzsche regard the rebirth of an old tragic mythos as the vehicle toward a cultural, political, and religious metamorphosis of the West. However, Jovanovski contends that Nietzsche does not advocate such a radical social turning as an end in itself, but as only the most consequential prerequisite to realizing the culminating object of his «historical philosophizing» – the phenomenal appearance of the Übermensch.
202 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2005
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March 20, 2017
Jovanovski offers a very compelling argument for why the (now dominant) postmodernist reading of Nietzsche is highly flawed. Like Nietzsche, Jovanovski's trenchant stylization makes for an enjoyable read. Jovanovski dedicates an entire chapter to exposes all the various ways that Walter Kaufmann distorted Nietzsche's writings. In addition, he outlines how many of the leading Nietzschean scholars of the last four or so decades have distorted Nietzsche's texts (scholars include Derrida, Foucault, Schacht, Danto, Nehamas, Burgard, Conway, Solomon, Higgins, et al.)
July 12, 2024
This is a deeply researched and well-written study, albeit at times uneven. The book demands a good deal of knowledge of Nietzsche’s philosophy and psychology. In addition, it would be helpful if readers were also familiar with secondary Nietzsche scholarship, for large sections of the book are focused on the critical confrontation with what the author pejoratively refers to as “Post-Kaufmann” Nietzsche studies, e.g., in addition to Kaufmann, such scholars as Nehamas, Solomon, Higgins, Schacht, and Magnus (to name but a few) are taken to task for what the author claims are “mis-readings” of key elements of Nietzsche’s thought; Jovanovski’s book is not for the casual or merely curious reader of Nietzsche.
Heidegger infamously dubbed Nietzsche the “last metaphysician,” and through interpretation, he offered and attached to Nietzsche a coherent metaphysical project. Heidegger read Nietzsche as if he were a “hedgehog” (a thinker of one, consistent and great idea) as opposed to a “fox,” as we encounter in Young’s recent scholarship, where Nietzsche is portrayed as protean philosophical shapeshifter. Jovanovski, like Heidegger, reads Nietzsche as a philosopher concerned with one plenary overarching concern: The “transvaluation of all values,” which culminates in the emergence of the Übermensch within a radically transformed political, social, cultural, and aesthetic milieu. The author argues for this line of thought, buttressing his claims in defense of his thesis, by tracing and elucidating this idea from early (Birth of Tragedy) through later Nietzsche (Will to Power) - a daunting and radical project, to be sure. Undeniably, this book embraces Nietzsche, in the purest sense, as the self-described “cultural physician” (Der Philosoph als Arzt der Kultur) that Nietzsche believed represented the authentic philosopher, which later became the aesthetic-Dionysian tragic-philosopher, and this view is traceable to his notebooks as early as 1872.
Jovanovski: “Nietzsche is urging us to initiate an epistemic and artistic transformation […] applying art to the existing social and cultural state of affairs” (p. 30), and “Let us understand [Nietzsche] for what he was from beginning to end - the greatest social revolutionist whose ultimate aim continues to influence aesthetics and normative ethics” (p. 139).
The central thread of the author’s argument is really contained in chapters one and four, which are focused on Nietzsche’s programmatic aesthetics and the potential for the emergence of the Übermensch on the political-social-cultural scene. Chapter two and three (which serves as an extension of the longish “preface”) deal with, respectively, Kaufmann’s misreading of Socrates and, as I address below, postmodernism’s misappropriation of Nietzsche. Chapter three also takes on the secondary literature, which the author quite rightly points out, appears to discount Nietzsche’ s philosophizing (and prophesizing) of the Übermensch, along with the concomitant efforts to reduce this “yes-saying dragonslayer” to a mere will-o-the-wisp (corpse candle) idea, or at best, an “ideal” from which inspiration is drawn for the futural improvement of a faltering or waning culture. Jovanovski makes the convincing case that the nascent image of the Übermensch is already present to Nietzsche’s early aesthetics when he is discussing the higher “Dionysian” (Hellenic) type (“the beautiful soul”), which he sets apart from the lower Socratic individual, the “optimistic, rational, humanistic” individual (“The ugly soul”). In Nietzsche’s later philosophy, Socratic optimism, in one way, is linked to “humanism,” representing the deification of the human and the belief in social progress grounded in rational and technical modes of “human, all too human,” ingenuity and machination. The values of the “last man,” as represented with the “death of God,” are the precise (nihilistic) value system that requires “overturning” or “overcoming” (transvaluating!), and this represents for Jovanovski, the “philosophical-aesthetic” preparation of the rich political-social-cultural soil from out of which the Übermensch might grow and come to full blossom. However, we must note, this path toward the Übermensch is fraught with peril and uncertainty.
The analysis begins with a metaphysical reading of Nietzsche’s “aesthetic-cultural project” - the artistic “transvaluation of all values” - and concludes with the analysis of the Übermensch, which appears to represent, in line with such readings of Nietzsche by Tanner and Dienstag, a superior psychological type, which might be aligned (in my personal view) with the “Dionysian Man.” If we can trust that Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols is expressive of his philosophical project up to that historical moment (1888), then the “Dionysus” that Nietzsche is discussing clearly had its metaphysical wings clipped! It has been argued, and quite convincingly, that Nietzsche changed his position after the Birth of Tragedy, and late in his philosophical life, in an “anti-metaphysical” maneuver, came to conceive the “Dionysian man,” the tragic philosopher, in terms of a psychological archetype, a persona, even a type of personality – “the highest psychological type” (read: the Übermensch)!
Perhaps the most interesting, if not controversial, aspect of the interpretation is the author’s discussion of the emergence of the Übermensch. This discussion of the Übermensch, as stated, is a response, a corrective, to the collective “forgetting or obscuring of the Übermensch” in Nietzsche scholarship. What is required for the emergence of the Übermensch is outlined in terms of the process of (1) self-overcoming (finite human transcendence), (2) selective breeding (eugenics), and (3) the rise of the aristocracy, and (4) the establishment of a superior system of education and curricula. As one can see, based on these four stages, the author’s interpretation is not without problems and issues. I’ll discuss each briefly:
1. The human must display or acquire the drive (freedom, asceticism, expression, selectivity, acuteness) to mold the self through a rigorous form of self-assessment and action. To, in a sense, possess the strength and ability to continuously organize and reorganize the drives and affects in service of the ascending life – to become who one will be.
2. This is the breeding of what will be determined to be “higher types” based in great part on the character traits of (1) & (3) but would also include the neglected “body,” for what is also required is a strong and healthy body (the very opposite of Nietzsche’s physicality). More on this controversial issue below.
3. Presumably, for this is not properly explicated by the author, this refers to a superior caste of reflective and introspective “philosophical types” who are brave enough to engage in the precarious and dangerous process of self-overcoming – not merely challenging or questioning values, but “with a hammer” dismantling the luminous edifice of values that are keeping the “last man” subservient, again, see (1). It seems possible to link the aristocracy with Nietzsche’s sense of virtue ethics.
4. Education would in a sense, although the curriculum contents must be inferred from Nietzsche’s writings, teach and instill such qualities of character expressed in (1) & (3).
NB: All four of these stages or requirements were hallmarks of the Führerprinzip in the Third Reich’s national educational program - see for a stark example, Heidegger’s Rectoral Address, The Self-Assertion of the German University, 1933. For Nietzsche, if we follow Jovanovski’s line of argumentation, education will ultimately serve the state, a superior philosophically and aesthetically conceived state, granted, but the state, nonetheless.
The author distances Nietzsche’s views from “Darwinism,” or the survival-of-the-fittest, because in nature the superior types do not always win the day. For Nietzsche evolution is always the operation of random chance and happenstance at a molecular level, and this will not do for the Übermensch, who must be understood in terms of “breeding-of-the-fittest” - both physically and spiritually (intellectually). Admittedly, the eugenics discussed, while no doubt doing little to twist Nietzsche free from his continued association with Nazism, can be somewhat tempered when understood through analogy to Plato’s notion of breeding “Philosopher Kings and Queens” (Republic IV). In truth, a philosophically naïve idea in theory (while no doubt sinister, heinous, and monumentally unethical if applied and realized in praxis). The author’s response, in succinct terms: We can’t really blame Nietzsche for Nazism any more than we can Marx for the manifestation and implementation of type of communism that nearly destroyed the planet! Here, on cannot help to consider Heidegger, but that’s a heady-and-thorny issue far beyond the purview of this review. I note, however, the comparison between Nietzsche and Marx appears something of a logical-and-philosophical “dis-analogy” - this for the reader’s consideration.
Despite what Nietzsche believed and hoped for, such a project would be impossible. To the credit of Jovanovski, he lays out a myriad of material (political-social-cultural) conditions that would stifle such an “idealistic” aesthetic-philosophical program (but he does not address the ethical issues, these are skirted). Not the least of which is the very character of the human being - call these spiritual or intellectual shortcomings - or as the author observes, “the West’s penchant for embracing and even accentuating the superficiality, anti-intellectualism, and political correctness that has plagued preceding generation of Americans” (p. 122). Ultimately, the author concludes that the Übermensch must live – or perhaps die – as an ideal, but this is not what Nietzsche had intended, that is, if we attend to Nietzsche’s “own words.” Here, while moving beyond what other scholars have said about the Übermensch, in offering a detailed interpretation of Nietzsche “real” plan for the program of the Übermensch, grounded in an interpretation that takes Nietzsche “at his word,” he inevitably is forced to return to the notion of Übermensch as ideal.
Typically, Nietzsche studies are focused on rescuing Nietzsche from the sinister grip of Nazism, but Jovanovski treads a new and unique path, and this move represents another valuable aspect of this study. The author levels a devastating critique against “post-modernism” and its misappropriation of Nietzsche for its own agenda. One area of post-modernism, as connected to critical theory, is the focus on hyper-political correctness, which the author argues skews readings of Nietzsche, this because many of the more difficult issues we encounter in Nietzsche – such as his controversial view of women - are either glossed or sanitized to the point of absurdity. Postmodernity de-claws and de-fangs Nietzsche. In essence, postmodernism is a self-defeating view, and if we follow the author’s argument, since it wrongly embraces Nietzsche as a fellow-traveler in the field of “radical hermeneutics” (based ironically on their dogmatic reading of “perspectivism”) their readings, their interpretations of Nietzsche, are by very definition, rendered meaningless, devoid of any sense of truth and potential value - and this, by extension, amounts to a radical and disingenuous “de-valuation” of Nietzsche’s writings.
Jovanovski: “[Postmodernists] have convinced themselves they are actually correcting entrenched misconceptions by undermining andro-Euro-logocentric inclinations in all academic fields- and particularly those found in philosophy” (p. 73), and “Hard-core postmodernists, as it were, will surely persist in speaking about ‘Nietzsche’ and in disregarding Nietzsche’s clearly state intents” (p. 97).
I highly recommend this unique book. It offers a much needed and close-reading of the Übermensch, which contributes to, and beyond, challenges ongoing discussions occurring in secondary Nietzsche literature, which is continually - with almost monotonous regularity - produced by academics and non-academics. I read a review of this book wherein the reviewer referred to some of Jovanovski’s interpretations as “silly” and “outlandish”. In the spirit of Auseinanderzetsung, the critical confrontation with Jovanovski’s Nietzsche, when seeking to draw out the positive power of the work as opposed to only censuring the negative, I’ll say that some of the interpretations are questionable, but there is still much to learn about Nietzsche’s Übermensch from this short book, which as stated, does contribute to the literature - and the author is correct, the Übermensch typically gets short shrift, is given little serious attention, in the existing Nietzsche scholarship.
One crucial issue with the book concerns the structuring of the chapters, because their organization does not contribute to enhancing the flow of the rigorous and consistent argumentation (especially for readers who are not experts in the field). Chapter 3 (Variations on Nietzsche) should have opened the book (because it expands and develops issues from the preface). Chapter 2 (Critique of Kaufmann’s Nietzsche’s Attitudes Toward Socrates), although well-conceived and solidly argued, reads like a stand-alone journal article - yes, the discussion of the “antinomies,” the clearly presented/charted differences between Nietzsche (ascending pessimism/active nihilism) and Socrates (rational optimism/inactive nihilism), is helpful and valuable, but it seems as if the content of this chapter could have been edited, revised, and interwoven throughout the other chapters, e.g., the discussion and critique of Kaufmann would have been perfect to include, in a truncated version, in the chapter, The Chiaroscuro of Nietzsche’s Aesthetics.
I close this review by offering three brief observations:
First, curiously, all publication dates are provided for the “works cited” by the author, save for the dates of his own journal articles cited. A quick Google search informs us that some of these articles incorporated into the chapters of Jovanovski’s book were published in the late 1980s. This indicates that the author has been studying/living with these ideas for quite some time…again, just an observation.
Second, if we do, as the author demands, “take Nietzsche at his word,” it is obvious that Nietzsche’s interpretations of both Socrates and Plato are antiquated and even naïve, especially when compared to the radical and expansive “new” (Third Way) readings of Plato’s Socrates that are available, where Plato is read in terms of a “non-doctrinal” anti-systematic philosopher who, in his dialectical pursuit of the virtues, demonstrates elements of a “proto-phenomenological” view, adopting a view of knowledge and philosophical understating that consistently runs up against the “cage of language,” i.e., the ontological limits of finitude (see: Gonzalez, Kirkland, Hyland, Fried, Sallis, Scott, et al).
Third, the admonition, to “take Nietzsche at his word,” presupposes that we can trust what Nietzsche tells us he’s “all about” – this requires, I think, putting too must trust in Nietzsche’s claims to self-knowledge (as found, for example, in Ecce Homo). At the risk of behaving like the “plundering reader” Nietzsche so despised, I move to offer but one quotation: “Does not man live by means of a continual process of deception […] He is locked within [his] consciousness and nature threw away the key. Oh, the fatal curiosity of the philosopher who longs […] to peer out and down through a crack in the chamber of consciousness…” (Nietzsche ~ “On the Pathos of Truth” 1872)
Dr. James M. Magrini
Former: Philosophy & Ethics/ College of Dupage
For a reading of Nietzsche’s Übermensch through the lens of Heidegger’s metaphysical ontology, see my: “Übermensch as Supreme Metaphysical Artist”
https://www.academia.edu/38269710/_Th...
Heidegger infamously dubbed Nietzsche the “last metaphysician,” and through interpretation, he offered and attached to Nietzsche a coherent metaphysical project. Heidegger read Nietzsche as if he were a “hedgehog” (a thinker of one, consistent and great idea) as opposed to a “fox,” as we encounter in Young’s recent scholarship, where Nietzsche is portrayed as protean philosophical shapeshifter. Jovanovski, like Heidegger, reads Nietzsche as a philosopher concerned with one plenary overarching concern: The “transvaluation of all values,” which culminates in the emergence of the Übermensch within a radically transformed political, social, cultural, and aesthetic milieu. The author argues for this line of thought, buttressing his claims in defense of his thesis, by tracing and elucidating this idea from early (Birth of Tragedy) through later Nietzsche (Will to Power) - a daunting and radical project, to be sure. Undeniably, this book embraces Nietzsche, in the purest sense, as the self-described “cultural physician” (Der Philosoph als Arzt der Kultur) that Nietzsche believed represented the authentic philosopher, which later became the aesthetic-Dionysian tragic-philosopher, and this view is traceable to his notebooks as early as 1872.
Jovanovski: “Nietzsche is urging us to initiate an epistemic and artistic transformation […] applying art to the existing social and cultural state of affairs” (p. 30), and “Let us understand [Nietzsche] for what he was from beginning to end - the greatest social revolutionist whose ultimate aim continues to influence aesthetics and normative ethics” (p. 139).
The central thread of the author’s argument is really contained in chapters one and four, which are focused on Nietzsche’s programmatic aesthetics and the potential for the emergence of the Übermensch on the political-social-cultural scene. Chapter two and three (which serves as an extension of the longish “preface”) deal with, respectively, Kaufmann’s misreading of Socrates and, as I address below, postmodernism’s misappropriation of Nietzsche. Chapter three also takes on the secondary literature, which the author quite rightly points out, appears to discount Nietzsche’ s philosophizing (and prophesizing) of the Übermensch, along with the concomitant efforts to reduce this “yes-saying dragonslayer” to a mere will-o-the-wisp (corpse candle) idea, or at best, an “ideal” from which inspiration is drawn for the futural improvement of a faltering or waning culture. Jovanovski makes the convincing case that the nascent image of the Übermensch is already present to Nietzsche’s early aesthetics when he is discussing the higher “Dionysian” (Hellenic) type (“the beautiful soul”), which he sets apart from the lower Socratic individual, the “optimistic, rational, humanistic” individual (“The ugly soul”). In Nietzsche’s later philosophy, Socratic optimism, in one way, is linked to “humanism,” representing the deification of the human and the belief in social progress grounded in rational and technical modes of “human, all too human,” ingenuity and machination. The values of the “last man,” as represented with the “death of God,” are the precise (nihilistic) value system that requires “overturning” or “overcoming” (transvaluating!), and this represents for Jovanovski, the “philosophical-aesthetic” preparation of the rich political-social-cultural soil from out of which the Übermensch might grow and come to full blossom. However, we must note, this path toward the Übermensch is fraught with peril and uncertainty.
The analysis begins with a metaphysical reading of Nietzsche’s “aesthetic-cultural project” - the artistic “transvaluation of all values” - and concludes with the analysis of the Übermensch, which appears to represent, in line with such readings of Nietzsche by Tanner and Dienstag, a superior psychological type, which might be aligned (in my personal view) with the “Dionysian Man.” If we can trust that Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols is expressive of his philosophical project up to that historical moment (1888), then the “Dionysus” that Nietzsche is discussing clearly had its metaphysical wings clipped! It has been argued, and quite convincingly, that Nietzsche changed his position after the Birth of Tragedy, and late in his philosophical life, in an “anti-metaphysical” maneuver, came to conceive the “Dionysian man,” the tragic philosopher, in terms of a psychological archetype, a persona, even a type of personality – “the highest psychological type” (read: the Übermensch)!
Perhaps the most interesting, if not controversial, aspect of the interpretation is the author’s discussion of the emergence of the Übermensch. This discussion of the Übermensch, as stated, is a response, a corrective, to the collective “forgetting or obscuring of the Übermensch” in Nietzsche scholarship. What is required for the emergence of the Übermensch is outlined in terms of the process of (1) self-overcoming (finite human transcendence), (2) selective breeding (eugenics), and (3) the rise of the aristocracy, and (4) the establishment of a superior system of education and curricula. As one can see, based on these four stages, the author’s interpretation is not without problems and issues. I’ll discuss each briefly:
1. The human must display or acquire the drive (freedom, asceticism, expression, selectivity, acuteness) to mold the self through a rigorous form of self-assessment and action. To, in a sense, possess the strength and ability to continuously organize and reorganize the drives and affects in service of the ascending life – to become who one will be.
2. This is the breeding of what will be determined to be “higher types” based in great part on the character traits of (1) & (3) but would also include the neglected “body,” for what is also required is a strong and healthy body (the very opposite of Nietzsche’s physicality). More on this controversial issue below.
3. Presumably, for this is not properly explicated by the author, this refers to a superior caste of reflective and introspective “philosophical types” who are brave enough to engage in the precarious and dangerous process of self-overcoming – not merely challenging or questioning values, but “with a hammer” dismantling the luminous edifice of values that are keeping the “last man” subservient, again, see (1). It seems possible to link the aristocracy with Nietzsche’s sense of virtue ethics.
4. Education would in a sense, although the curriculum contents must be inferred from Nietzsche’s writings, teach and instill such qualities of character expressed in (1) & (3).
NB: All four of these stages or requirements were hallmarks of the Führerprinzip in the Third Reich’s national educational program - see for a stark example, Heidegger’s Rectoral Address, The Self-Assertion of the German University, 1933. For Nietzsche, if we follow Jovanovski’s line of argumentation, education will ultimately serve the state, a superior philosophically and aesthetically conceived state, granted, but the state, nonetheless.
The author distances Nietzsche’s views from “Darwinism,” or the survival-of-the-fittest, because in nature the superior types do not always win the day. For Nietzsche evolution is always the operation of random chance and happenstance at a molecular level, and this will not do for the Übermensch, who must be understood in terms of “breeding-of-the-fittest” - both physically and spiritually (intellectually). Admittedly, the eugenics discussed, while no doubt doing little to twist Nietzsche free from his continued association with Nazism, can be somewhat tempered when understood through analogy to Plato’s notion of breeding “Philosopher Kings and Queens” (Republic IV). In truth, a philosophically naïve idea in theory (while no doubt sinister, heinous, and monumentally unethical if applied and realized in praxis). The author’s response, in succinct terms: We can’t really blame Nietzsche for Nazism any more than we can Marx for the manifestation and implementation of type of communism that nearly destroyed the planet! Here, on cannot help to consider Heidegger, but that’s a heady-and-thorny issue far beyond the purview of this review. I note, however, the comparison between Nietzsche and Marx appears something of a logical-and-philosophical “dis-analogy” - this for the reader’s consideration.
Despite what Nietzsche believed and hoped for, such a project would be impossible. To the credit of Jovanovski, he lays out a myriad of material (political-social-cultural) conditions that would stifle such an “idealistic” aesthetic-philosophical program (but he does not address the ethical issues, these are skirted). Not the least of which is the very character of the human being - call these spiritual or intellectual shortcomings - or as the author observes, “the West’s penchant for embracing and even accentuating the superficiality, anti-intellectualism, and political correctness that has plagued preceding generation of Americans” (p. 122). Ultimately, the author concludes that the Übermensch must live – or perhaps die – as an ideal, but this is not what Nietzsche had intended, that is, if we attend to Nietzsche’s “own words.” Here, while moving beyond what other scholars have said about the Übermensch, in offering a detailed interpretation of Nietzsche “real” plan for the program of the Übermensch, grounded in an interpretation that takes Nietzsche “at his word,” he inevitably is forced to return to the notion of Übermensch as ideal.
Typically, Nietzsche studies are focused on rescuing Nietzsche from the sinister grip of Nazism, but Jovanovski treads a new and unique path, and this move represents another valuable aspect of this study. The author levels a devastating critique against “post-modernism” and its misappropriation of Nietzsche for its own agenda. One area of post-modernism, as connected to critical theory, is the focus on hyper-political correctness, which the author argues skews readings of Nietzsche, this because many of the more difficult issues we encounter in Nietzsche – such as his controversial view of women - are either glossed or sanitized to the point of absurdity. Postmodernity de-claws and de-fangs Nietzsche. In essence, postmodernism is a self-defeating view, and if we follow the author’s argument, since it wrongly embraces Nietzsche as a fellow-traveler in the field of “radical hermeneutics” (based ironically on their dogmatic reading of “perspectivism”) their readings, their interpretations of Nietzsche, are by very definition, rendered meaningless, devoid of any sense of truth and potential value - and this, by extension, amounts to a radical and disingenuous “de-valuation” of Nietzsche’s writings.
Jovanovski: “[Postmodernists] have convinced themselves they are actually correcting entrenched misconceptions by undermining andro-Euro-logocentric inclinations in all academic fields- and particularly those found in philosophy” (p. 73), and “Hard-core postmodernists, as it were, will surely persist in speaking about ‘Nietzsche’ and in disregarding Nietzsche’s clearly state intents” (p. 97).
I highly recommend this unique book. It offers a much needed and close-reading of the Übermensch, which contributes to, and beyond, challenges ongoing discussions occurring in secondary Nietzsche literature, which is continually - with almost monotonous regularity - produced by academics and non-academics. I read a review of this book wherein the reviewer referred to some of Jovanovski’s interpretations as “silly” and “outlandish”. In the spirit of Auseinanderzetsung, the critical confrontation with Jovanovski’s Nietzsche, when seeking to draw out the positive power of the work as opposed to only censuring the negative, I’ll say that some of the interpretations are questionable, but there is still much to learn about Nietzsche’s Übermensch from this short book, which as stated, does contribute to the literature - and the author is correct, the Übermensch typically gets short shrift, is given little serious attention, in the existing Nietzsche scholarship.
One crucial issue with the book concerns the structuring of the chapters, because their organization does not contribute to enhancing the flow of the rigorous and consistent argumentation (especially for readers who are not experts in the field). Chapter 3 (Variations on Nietzsche) should have opened the book (because it expands and develops issues from the preface). Chapter 2 (Critique of Kaufmann’s Nietzsche’s Attitudes Toward Socrates), although well-conceived and solidly argued, reads like a stand-alone journal article - yes, the discussion of the “antinomies,” the clearly presented/charted differences between Nietzsche (ascending pessimism/active nihilism) and Socrates (rational optimism/inactive nihilism), is helpful and valuable, but it seems as if the content of this chapter could have been edited, revised, and interwoven throughout the other chapters, e.g., the discussion and critique of Kaufmann would have been perfect to include, in a truncated version, in the chapter, The Chiaroscuro of Nietzsche’s Aesthetics.
I close this review by offering three brief observations:
First, curiously, all publication dates are provided for the “works cited” by the author, save for the dates of his own journal articles cited. A quick Google search informs us that some of these articles incorporated into the chapters of Jovanovski’s book were published in the late 1980s. This indicates that the author has been studying/living with these ideas for quite some time…again, just an observation.
Second, if we do, as the author demands, “take Nietzsche at his word,” it is obvious that Nietzsche’s interpretations of both Socrates and Plato are antiquated and even naïve, especially when compared to the radical and expansive “new” (Third Way) readings of Plato’s Socrates that are available, where Plato is read in terms of a “non-doctrinal” anti-systematic philosopher who, in his dialectical pursuit of the virtues, demonstrates elements of a “proto-phenomenological” view, adopting a view of knowledge and philosophical understating that consistently runs up against the “cage of language,” i.e., the ontological limits of finitude (see: Gonzalez, Kirkland, Hyland, Fried, Sallis, Scott, et al).
Third, the admonition, to “take Nietzsche at his word,” presupposes that we can trust what Nietzsche tells us he’s “all about” – this requires, I think, putting too must trust in Nietzsche’s claims to self-knowledge (as found, for example, in Ecce Homo). At the risk of behaving like the “plundering reader” Nietzsche so despised, I move to offer but one quotation: “Does not man live by means of a continual process of deception […] He is locked within [his] consciousness and nature threw away the key. Oh, the fatal curiosity of the philosopher who longs […] to peer out and down through a crack in the chamber of consciousness…” (Nietzsche ~ “On the Pathos of Truth” 1872)
Dr. James M. Magrini
Former: Philosophy & Ethics/ College of Dupage
For a reading of Nietzsche’s Übermensch through the lens of Heidegger’s metaphysical ontology, see my: “Übermensch as Supreme Metaphysical Artist”
https://www.academia.edu/38269710/_Th...
October 23, 2022
The book contains several essays, very loosely connected with the titular aesthetic transformations; the other part of the title, about taking Nietzsche at his word is also very dubious. First part of the book deals mostly with Nietzsche’s distinction of Apollonian and Dionysian, Birth of Tragedy and his view on Socrates, including a lengthy critique of Walter Kaufmann’s views on that subject. The text, especially in the first chapters, often jumps from one theme to another without making any particularly memorable point. Another essay contains some well-written, sardonic criticisms of postmodern interpretations of Nietzsche, commenting their political correctness and fanciful approach to some of his incidental remarks. A more detailed analysis is given for works of Richard Schacht and Alexander Nehamas.
Last essay, "Bringing Übermensch to life" is the most interesting. Jovanovski explains it as a eugenic project rather than an ideal for personal improvement. He notes Nietzsche’s opposition to Darwinism, but does not mention other biologists who shaped his views. In defending Nietzsche from accusations of Nazism he also ignores his views on caste system and European colonialism. He omits comments on past aristocratic societies and makes some ridiculous pronouncements about his politics. The essay ends in speculations whether Übermensch is supposed to emerge in hippie communes, "grounded in a Kantian form of ethical socialism", or Nietzsche actually presupposed Marxian socialism as the first phase in the overcoming of mankind, or maybe even a combination of different types of socialism. The author seems to be really taken by such ideas and the afterword turns into a comically eccentric manifesto, advocating some poorly defined Nietzschean politics based on concern for overpopulation. I don’t even know what to conclude about this book, it is really strange. Some parts are pointless ramblings, others serious scholarship, and there is also some unbelievable nonsense. It is kind of fun in its eccentricity and ridiculousness.
Last essay, "Bringing Übermensch to life" is the most interesting. Jovanovski explains it as a eugenic project rather than an ideal for personal improvement. He notes Nietzsche’s opposition to Darwinism, but does not mention other biologists who shaped his views. In defending Nietzsche from accusations of Nazism he also ignores his views on caste system and European colonialism. He omits comments on past aristocratic societies and makes some ridiculous pronouncements about his politics. The essay ends in speculations whether Übermensch is supposed to emerge in hippie communes, "grounded in a Kantian form of ethical socialism", or Nietzsche actually presupposed Marxian socialism as the first phase in the overcoming of mankind, or maybe even a combination of different types of socialism. The author seems to be really taken by such ideas and the afterword turns into a comically eccentric manifesto, advocating some poorly defined Nietzschean politics based on concern for overpopulation. I don’t even know what to conclude about this book, it is really strange. Some parts are pointless ramblings, others serious scholarship, and there is also some unbelievable nonsense. It is kind of fun in its eccentricity and ridiculousness.
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