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How to Read...
How to Read Nietzsche
Intent upon letting the reader experience the pleasure and intellectual stimulation in reading these classic authors, the How to Read series provides a context and an explanation that will facilitate and enrich your understanding of texts vital to the canon. Approaching the writing of major intellectuals, artists, and philosophers need no longer be daunting. How to Read is a new sort of introduction--a personal master class in reading--that brings you face to face with the work of some of the most influential and challenging writers in history. In lucid, accessible language, these books explain essential topics such as Nietzsche's thinking on beauty, truth, and memory.
Nietzsche's thinking revolves around a new and striking concept of humanity―a humanity that has come to terms with the death of God and practices the art and science of living well, free of the need for metaphysical certainties and moral absolutes. How, then, are we to live? And what do we love?
Keith Ansell Pearson introduces the reader to Nietzsche's distinctive philosophical style and to the development of his thought. Through a series of close readings of Nietzsche's aphorisms he illuminates some of his best-known but often ill-understood ideas, including eternal recurrence and the superman, and he brings to light the challenging nature of Nietzsche's thinking on key topics such as beauty, truth, and memory. Extracts are taken from a range of Nietzsche's work, including Human, All Too Human ; The Gay Science ; Thus Spoke Zarathustra ; and On the Genealogy of Morality .
Nietzsche's thinking revolves around a new and striking concept of humanity―a humanity that has come to terms with the death of God and practices the art and science of living well, free of the need for metaphysical certainties and moral absolutes. How, then, are we to live? And what do we love?
Keith Ansell Pearson introduces the reader to Nietzsche's distinctive philosophical style and to the development of his thought. Through a series of close readings of Nietzsche's aphorisms he illuminates some of his best-known but often ill-understood ideas, including eternal recurrence and the superman, and he brings to light the challenging nature of Nietzsche's thinking on key topics such as beauty, truth, and memory. Extracts are taken from a range of Nietzsche's work, including Human, All Too Human ; The Gay Science ; Thus Spoke Zarathustra ; and On the Genealogy of Morality .
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
144 pages, Paperback
First published February 7, 2005
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December 16, 2017
دوستانِ گرانقدر، پس از نوشتن ریویو و نقد کتابِ <چنین گفت زرتشت>، برخی از دوستان بر من خُرده گرفتند که وقتی من <نیچه> را نقد میکنم، این نقد سبب میشود که دوستانِ دیگری که اهل کتاب هستند، زین پس ارزشی برایِ فلسفهٔ <نیچه> قائل نباشند
اتفاقاً دوستانِ گرامی، باید بگویم که من هدفم از نقدِ <نیچه> همین است که فلسفه اش را در بین فرزندانِ هوشیارِ ایرانی از کار بیاندازم... تأکید میکنم که این بدین معنا نیست که <نیچه> نویسنده ای توانا نیست... اتفاقاً چون نویسندهٔ زبردست و هوشمندی است، سبب شده تا من احساسِ خطر کنم، و هرزگاهی در مورد آثارِ <نیچه> ریویو بنویسم، با آنکه دوستانی دارم که طرفدارهای <نیچه> هستند و حتی دوستِ صمیمی و خردمندِ من، از هوادارهای <نیچه> است، امّا باز هم ترجیح دادم تا این مطالب را بنویسم... و اندیشیدن در نوشته های من با خودِ خوانندگان باشعور باشد
دوستانِ خردگرا، آن دسته از دوستانی که از نقدِ <نیچه> ناراحت شدند، گویا نمیدانند و نخوانده اند که فلسفهٔ <نیچه> چه به روزگارِ مردمِ آلمان آورد! عزیزانی که بر تاریخ مسلط باشند، خوب میدانند که من چه میگویم، خوب میدانند که چه تعابیرِ نابودکننده و پرخطری از فلسفهٔ <نیچه> در دورانِ قدرتِ "رایش سوم" در آلمان، انجام شد... هموطنانِ <نیچه> فلسفه اش را نفهمیدند... حال انتظار دارید ایرانی جماعت که همزبانِ او نیستند و کتابِ ترجمه شده از زبانِ آلمانی را میخوانند، از این فلسفه سر در بیاورند؟ سخت است
نوشته هایِ <نیچه> بی رنگ تر و درهم تر از آن است که در متنش بتوان خطوط و رگه هایِ گوهرین را بازشناخت و بدتر از همه این است که ما انسانها با تمامِ پیشرفتی که داشته ایم، هنوز فاقدِ انظباطِ ذهنی در اندیشیدن و بطور خاص <فلسفی اندیشیدن> هستیم، و این مورد تأثیر فراوانی دارد که نوشته هایِ <نیچه> سببِ کژفهمیِ خواننده شود.. خوانندگان و اهل اندیشه، نمیدانند و نمیخواهند بدانند که فلسفه را نیز تلمذ و شاگردی نمودن لازم است... باید شاگرد بود و استاد خوب داشت تا بتوان ذهن را پرورش داد
بارها گفته ام و بازهم میگویم که سخنانِ <نیچه> در عین زیبایی و لذت بخش بودن، بسیار خطرناک است، چراکه تعابیر آن چندپهلو است و هرکس برداشت خودش را از آن دارد... و خردِ انسانی اینگونه به من و شما میگوید که اگر قرار است کتابی و سخنانی خوانده شود و پس از خواندن از سویِ مخاطب کژ و چندپهلو فهمیده شود، همان بهتر اصلاً فهمیده و خوانده نشود
عزیزانم، اگر آثارِ <نیچه> را خوانده باشید، به این حقیقت میرسید که: زبانِ <نیچه> به هیچ عنوان زبان فلسفی نیست... در هیچ یک از نوشته هایش نظم و نسقِ متعارف و لازم را نمیبینید. همین موضوع باعث میشود خواندنِ نوشته هایِ زنده یاد <نیچه> آسان و شیرین باشد، امّا فهم و درکِ آن برعکس است و بسیار سخت و نزدیک به غیرقابلِ فهم است. چراکه از هیچ روشِ معقولی در فلسفه، پیروی نمیکند
من جوانهای سرزمینم را میبینم که افسرده هستند و هیچ اثری از جوانی و شادابی در آنها دیده نمیشود. حال فکرش را بکنید فلسفهٔ <نیچه> نیز وارد زندگی این جوانها شود... این را باید بدانید که: هرگاه کسی در زندگی، بنا به هر دلیلی به سمتِ تنهایی و انزوا کشیده میشود، متأسفانه فلسفهٔ <نیچه> او را بیشتر به این تنهایی و انزوا میکشاند و سبب میشود تا این انسانی که به سمتِ انفراد و تنهاییِ شدید سوق پیدا کرده است، به دورِ خودش حصارِ انزوا بکشد... و بدتر این است که به جایی میرسد که تنهایی را نوعی ارزش تلقی کرده و شدیداً به تنهاییِ خود علاقه مند شده و حتی بطور جدی از آن دفاع میکند
دوستانِ فهیم، تنهایی به هر دلیلی، خوب نمیباشد و تخریب کننده است.. تنهایی همیشه آزار دهنده است و در انسان زمینهٔ بسیاری از مسائلِ مختلف را ایجاد میکند.. چیزی که خوب نیست، معلوم و واضح است که نباید قابلِ دفاع باشد.... من جوانهایی را دیده ام که به فلسفهٔ <نیچه> شدیداً علاقه و گرایش دارند، از تنهاییِ خود دفاع میکنند و تنهایی را خوب قلمداد میکنند و حاضر نیستند قبول کنند که تنهایی و انزوا چیز خوبی نیست
در پایان بازهم باید تأکید کنم که هیچ فلسفه ای به صورت بالقوه خطرناکتر از فلسفهٔ <نیچه> نیست و نوعِ این خطر بستگی به شرایط فرهنگی و اجتماعی و تاریخی و حتی روحیهٔ یک جامعه دارد... لذا از آنجایی که جامعهٔ کنونی ما بسیار مشکل دارد، پس این فلسفه میتواند سلامتِ فکری جوانانِ سرزمینم را به خطر بیاندازد.. مگر اینکه آثار <نیچه> را همچون شعر و داستان بخوانید. ولی در زندگی از آن پیروی نکنید
بدون تردید، من انتظار ندارم همهٔ کسانی که نوشته های من را می خوانند، سخنانم را قبول کنند... اگر حتی به تعداد انگشتانِ دست نیز آگاهی در بینِ دوستانِ اهل کتاب و خردگرا، ایجاد شود، برای من جای خوشحالی و خرسندی فراوان دارد، چراکه میدانم همان تعداد میتوانند این سخنان را به دیگران نیز انتقال داده و سبب شوند تا به موضوعات مختلف در این باره بیاندیشند و تفکر کنند
عزیزان و نورِ چشمانم، این اندیشیدن است که میتواند رشدِ اجتماعی و فردی را در بین شما ایرانیانِ باشعور و خرد، ایجاد کند
امیدوارم این ریویو برایِ فرزندانِ سرزمینم مفید بوده باشه
<پیروز باشید و ایرانی>
اتفاقاً دوستانِ گرامی، باید بگویم که من هدفم از نقدِ <نیچه> همین است که فلسفه اش را در بین فرزندانِ هوشیارِ ایرانی از کار بیاندازم... تأکید میکنم که این بدین معنا نیست که <نیچه> نویسنده ای توانا نیست... اتفاقاً چون نویسندهٔ زبردست و هوشمندی است، سبب شده تا من احساسِ خطر کنم، و هرزگاهی در مورد آثارِ <نیچه> ریویو بنویسم، با آنکه دوستانی دارم که طرفدارهای <نیچه> هستند و حتی دوستِ صمیمی و خردمندِ من، از هوادارهای <نیچه> است، امّا باز هم ترجیح دادم تا این مطالب را بنویسم... و اندیشیدن در نوشته های من با خودِ خوانندگان باشعور باشد
دوستانِ خردگرا، آن دسته از دوستانی که از نقدِ <نیچه> ناراحت شدند، گویا نمیدانند و نخوانده اند که فلسفهٔ <نیچه> چه به روزگارِ مردمِ آلمان آورد! عزیزانی که بر تاریخ مسلط باشند، خوب میدانند که من چه میگویم، خوب میدانند که چه تعابیرِ نابودکننده و پرخطری از فلسفهٔ <نیچه> در دورانِ قدرتِ "رایش سوم" در آلمان، انجام شد... هموطنانِ <نیچه> فلسفه اش را نفهمیدند... حال انتظار دارید ایرانی جماعت که همزبانِ او نیستند و کتابِ ترجمه شده از زبانِ آلمانی را میخوانند، از این فلسفه سر در بیاورند؟ سخت است
نوشته هایِ <نیچه> بی رنگ تر و درهم تر از آن است که در متنش بتوان خطوط و رگه هایِ گوهرین را بازشناخت و بدتر از همه این است که ما انسانها با تمامِ پیشرفتی که داشته ایم، هنوز فاقدِ انظباطِ ذهنی در اندیشیدن و بطور خاص <فلسفی اندیشیدن> هستیم، و این مورد تأثیر فراوانی دارد که نوشته هایِ <نیچه> سببِ کژفهمیِ خواننده شود.. خوانندگان و اهل اندیشه، نمیدانند و نمیخواهند بدانند که فلسفه را نیز تلمذ و شاگردی نمودن لازم است... باید شاگرد بود و استاد خوب داشت تا بتوان ذهن را پرورش داد
بارها گفته ام و بازهم میگویم که سخنانِ <نیچه> در عین زیبایی و لذت بخش بودن، بسیار خطرناک است، چراکه تعابیر آن چندپهلو است و هرکس برداشت خودش را از آن دارد... و خردِ انسانی اینگونه به من و شما میگوید که اگر قرار است کتابی و سخنانی خوانده شود و پس از خواندن از سویِ مخاطب کژ و چندپهلو فهمیده شود، همان بهتر اصلاً فهمیده و خوانده نشود
عزیزانم، اگر آثارِ <نیچه> را خوانده باشید، به این حقیقت میرسید که: زبانِ <نیچه> به هیچ عنوان زبان فلسفی نیست... در هیچ یک از نوشته هایش نظم و نسقِ متعارف و لازم را نمیبینید. همین موضوع باعث میشود خواندنِ نوشته هایِ زنده یاد <نیچه> آسان و شیرین باشد، امّا فهم و درکِ آن برعکس است و بسیار سخت و نزدیک به غیرقابلِ فهم است. چراکه از هیچ روشِ معقولی در فلسفه، پیروی نمیکند
من جوانهای سرزمینم را میبینم که افسرده هستند و هیچ اثری از جوانی و شادابی در آنها دیده نمیشود. حال فکرش را بکنید فلسفهٔ <نیچه> نیز وارد زندگی این جوانها شود... این را باید بدانید که: هرگاه کسی در زندگی، بنا به هر دلیلی به سمتِ تنهایی و انزوا کشیده میشود، متأسفانه فلسفهٔ <نیچه> او را بیشتر به این تنهایی و انزوا میکشاند و سبب میشود تا این انسانی که به سمتِ انفراد و تنهاییِ شدید سوق پیدا کرده است، به دورِ خودش حصارِ انزوا بکشد... و بدتر این است که به جایی میرسد که تنهایی را نوعی ارزش تلقی کرده و شدیداً به تنهاییِ خود علاقه مند شده و حتی بطور جدی از آن دفاع میکند
دوستانِ فهیم، تنهایی به هر دلیلی، خوب نمیباشد و تخریب کننده است.. تنهایی همیشه آزار دهنده است و در انسان زمینهٔ بسیاری از مسائلِ مختلف را ایجاد میکند.. چیزی که خوب نیست، معلوم و واضح است که نباید قابلِ دفاع باشد.... من جوانهایی را دیده ام که به فلسفهٔ <نیچه> شدیداً علاقه و گرایش دارند، از تنهاییِ خود دفاع میکنند و تنهایی را خوب قلمداد میکنند و حاضر نیستند قبول کنند که تنهایی و انزوا چیز خوبی نیست
در پایان بازهم باید تأکید کنم که هیچ فلسفه ای به صورت بالقوه خطرناکتر از فلسفهٔ <نیچه> نیست و نوعِ این خطر بستگی به شرایط فرهنگی و اجتماعی و تاریخی و حتی روحیهٔ یک جامعه دارد... لذا از آنجایی که جامعهٔ کنونی ما بسیار مشکل دارد، پس این فلسفه میتواند سلامتِ فکری جوانانِ سرزمینم را به خطر بیاندازد.. مگر اینکه آثار <نیچه> را همچون شعر و داستان بخوانید. ولی در زندگی از آن پیروی نکنید
بدون تردید، من انتظار ندارم همهٔ کسانی که نوشته های من را می خوانند، سخنانم را قبول کنند... اگر حتی به تعداد انگشتانِ دست نیز آگاهی در بینِ دوستانِ اهل کتاب و خردگرا، ایجاد شود، برای من جای خوشحالی و خرسندی فراوان دارد، چراکه میدانم همان تعداد میتوانند این سخنان را به دیگران نیز انتقال داده و سبب شوند تا به موضوعات مختلف در این باره بیاندیشند و تفکر کنند
عزیزان و نورِ چشمانم، این اندیشیدن است که میتواند رشدِ اجتماعی و فردی را در بین شما ایرانیانِ باشعور و خرد، ایجاد کند
امیدوارم این ریویو برایِ فرزندانِ سرزمینم مفید بوده باشه
<پیروز باشید و ایرانی>
May 12, 2018
نسبت به باقی کتاب های این مجموعه هیچ خوب نبود. مفاهیم رو به قدر کافی توضیح نمی داد و در هم و آشفته می‌گفت و رد میشد.
هر چند بخش های خوب داشت گه گاه.
همچنان بهترین کتابی که راجع به نیچه خوندم فریدریش نیچه است، از مجموعۀ متفکران انتقادی راتلج.
هر چند بخش های خوب داشت گه گاه.
همچنان بهترین کتابی که راجع به نیچه خوندم فریدریش نیچه است، از مجموعۀ متفکران انتقادی راتلج.
January 26, 2016
Some excellent reviews of this book have been posted on Goodreads so I will not retrace those arguments. I came to Nietzsche long ago. As an adolescent reader I was swept away by his vigorous pessimism and his colorful biography (the peripatetic existence, the boundless passion for music, the mysterious illnesses, the epic conflicts with the establishment, with Wagner, the fraught relationships with women, ...). Also puzzling was the contrast between his ruthless way of philosophizing and the striking kindness displayed in this everyday conduct (in Genova people called him 'il piccolo santo', the little saint). For me Nietzsche was truly the philosopher with the hammer. His thinking has reverberated deeply in me, and continues to do so. I found Prof. Ansell-Pearson's brisk tour of Nietzsche's thought very useful as a refresher. The ideas are clearly and accessibly laid out. The author's respect for the chronology - starting his survey with the early Birth of Tragedy and ending with the fateful Ecce Homo - makes it easy to keep track of the development of key concepts. Anyone looking for a first introduction to this philosopher could do worse than to peruse this slim volume. But I recommend to back it up with a good biography to get a more rounded picture of this elusive thinker. My only reservation is that the book's title promises perhaps more than it offers. Rather than a masterclass in reading it is a solid, broad-brush survey of Nietzsche's thought. Nothing less, but also nothing more.
September 25, 2021
مجموعه‌ی بی‌نظیرِ «چگونه... بخوانیم» این بار مرا در فهم بهتر نیچه یاری کرد. نثر روان، فصل‌بندی‌های درست و به‌جا و گاه‌شماری و زندگی‌نامه‌ی بی‌نظیری که هربار از سوژه‌هایش به‌دست می‌دهد، بی‌نهایت کاربردی‌اند. البته این مجلد، نسبت به «چگونه کیرکگارد بخوانیم» ضعیف‌تر بود. چراکه از دیدگاه من، این مجموعه نگاه و التفات کم‌تری نسبت به ابعاد اگزیستانسیال هر فیلسوف دارد (چه بسا که در جلد مربوط به کیرکگارد نیز این موضوع قابل تشخیص بود و برای واکاوی کیرکگارد از دیدگاه اگزیستانسیال، باید از خلال و ذیل همان سرفصل‌های اخلاق‌شناسی و معرفت‌شناسی کیرکگارد تلاش می‌کردم).
May 11, 2025
A pleasant enough guide for spiritual spelunking, I appreciated the lengthy citations, often an entire aphorism. The evolution of N’s thought is explored in these brief chapters, with little attention paid to posterity until the conclusion when Sloterdjik and Badiou are engaged. I think this approach would work better for Nietzsche than the A Very Short Introduction. The bibliography at the end is also helpful for the curious.
May 8, 2008
It is necessary to acknowledge that Nietzsche's complexities, both as an individual and as a philosopher, are difficult to contain within one volume. Indeed, scores of works have been written about each individual aphorism of his; to discuss in any depth or serious consideration in such a small volume is, fundamentally, laughable. But, one must start somewhere, and while 'How to Read Nietzsche' is not an ideal starting point for an individual, it is an excellent companion to Nietzsche's own works, or as a follow up to a more basic introductory text ('Introducing Nietzsche' is excellent for one's first Nietzsche reader).
That said, the effort and scope of this book is laudable, and even occasionally remarkable. Pearson divides 'How to Read Nietzsche' into an introduction (laying the most basic framework for Nietzsche's works, life, ideas) and ten chapters. The ten chapters deal (loosely in chronological order) with main philosophies and ideas propagated throughout Nietzsche's canon.
What makes this book excellent is the ability for each of Pearson's chapters to serve as stand-alone commentary on concepts from Nietzsche's works. The chapter on, say, eternal recurrence is an excellent introductory examination of Nietzsche's ideas. One could then read Nietzsche's writings on the subject, and then return to Pearson's commentary.
This is an excellent intermediate text for any individual looking to explore Nietzsche's major philosophical works, and the points contained therein. As a companion to Nietzsche's works, Pearson's commentary offers some straightforward insights and interpretations. Certainly after reading this, one could feel comfortable reading and discussing some of Nietzsche's works (ideally in the Kauffman translation, to be noted).
As with any philosophical (religious, political, etc,) commentary, it is necessary to approach the information contained therein with a mix of caution, interest, and apprehension. What Nietzsche's written and espoused has been necessarily interpreted through Pearson's own experience and knowledge. While the author doesn't come off as necessarily biased or particularly groundbreaking (his interpretations of Nietzsche's major ideas seem fairly straightforward and traditional, which is definitely preferred in an introductory or intermediate text), he does provide the sound basis for developing a deeper understanding of, and intellectual comfort with, Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy.
That said, the effort and scope of this book is laudable, and even occasionally remarkable. Pearson divides 'How to Read Nietzsche' into an introduction (laying the most basic framework for Nietzsche's works, life, ideas) and ten chapters. The ten chapters deal (loosely in chronological order) with main philosophies and ideas propagated throughout Nietzsche's canon.
What makes this book excellent is the ability for each of Pearson's chapters to serve as stand-alone commentary on concepts from Nietzsche's works. The chapter on, say, eternal recurrence is an excellent introductory examination of Nietzsche's ideas. One could then read Nietzsche's writings on the subject, and then return to Pearson's commentary.
This is an excellent intermediate text for any individual looking to explore Nietzsche's major philosophical works, and the points contained therein. As a companion to Nietzsche's works, Pearson's commentary offers some straightforward insights and interpretations. Certainly after reading this, one could feel comfortable reading and discussing some of Nietzsche's works (ideally in the Kauffman translation, to be noted).
As with any philosophical (religious, political, etc,) commentary, it is necessary to approach the information contained therein with a mix of caution, interest, and apprehension. What Nietzsche's written and espoused has been necessarily interpreted through Pearson's own experience and knowledge. While the author doesn't come off as necessarily biased or particularly groundbreaking (his interpretations of Nietzsche's major ideas seem fairly straightforward and traditional, which is definitely preferred in an introductory or intermediate text), he does provide the sound basis for developing a deeper understanding of, and intellectual comfort with, Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy.
December 16, 2017
متن کتاب خیلی ثقیل بود و به دل نمی نشست. اما نویسنده ی اصلی کتاب ایده های کلی و مناسبی را در باب نیچه مطرح کرده است.
August 20, 2019
عالی برای شروع و آشنایی با تفکرات و آثار نیچه، هرچند به نظر من می شد این گونه کتاب ساده تر هم نوشته میشد
December 16, 2017
مخاطب اصلی کتاب در واقع کسانی هستند که دنبال ذهنیتی ابتدایی در مورد آثار و افکار نیچه (فیلسوف قرن 19 ) میگردند، البته در پاره ای موارد برای خوانندگان حرفه ای تر آثار نیچه هم میتواند مفید باشد.
رویکرد نویسنده برای شناساندن نیچه، آوردن بخشی از آثار او در ابتدای هر فصل و در ادامه تفسیر و توضیح بیشتر آن قسمت و ذهنیت پشت آن است...
کتاب برای خواننده ی تازه کار نیچه-مثل من!- مفید است. از این لحاظ که به مثابه دریچه ای است به سوی تفکر او.
به هرحال نقصی که شاید کوچک هم نباشد این است که از منظر و دیدگاه شخص دیگری آثار تفسیر میشود و متاسفانه کمتر به نظر سایر منتقدین و اندیشمندان اشاره میشود.
رویکرد نویسنده برای شناساندن نیچه، آوردن بخشی از آثار او در ابتدای هر فصل و در ادامه تفسیر و توضیح بیشتر آن قسمت و ذهنیت پشت آن است...
کتاب برای خواننده ی تازه کار نیچه-مثل من!- مفید است. از این لحاظ که به مثابه دریچه ای است به سوی تفکر او.
به هرحال نقصی که شاید کوچک هم نباشد این است که از منظر و دیدگاه شخص دیگری آثار تفسیر میشود و متاسفانه کمتر به نظر سایر منتقدین و اندیشمندان اشاره میشود.
January 5, 2022
As Nietzsche is (probably) my favorite philosopher, it is a little difficult to separate my previous experience with him from this short (120 pgs) introduction to his ideas. That said, I think the author did a marvelous job finding and organizing the main thrust of Nietzsche’s thought during different points of his life.
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Stylistically Nietzsche wrote primarily in aphorisms - short kernels of ideas (sometimes a couple pages, sometimes a couple lines) that are meant to be reflected on, and, to use some of Nietzsche’s poetic license, digested. This style can often seem inconsistent or all over the place, which makes an introductory book such as this, which outlines the broad strokes, so useful. It also serves as a good basis for determining what of Nietzsche one ought to read, as there are some striking differences between a lot of his work.
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A little less discipline and I’d be inclined to spew a list of his ideas that are philosophically important. Instead I’ll just touch on one I think is accessible, thought provoking, and perhaps useful: Eternal recurrence, or the idea that one is doomed/fated to relieve the same lifetime for eternity.
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It’s less important (and not entirely clear) whether or not Nietzsche actually believed this in terms of his metaphysics, but he did think that this was a useful lens of sorts through which to examine how one lived their life. Ie, if you were forced to relive your life for eternity, what choices would you make, knowing that you would have to do it all again and again (a little Sisyphusian). He felt that this sort of lens would force us to lead more meaningful lives.
.
Stylistically Nietzsche wrote primarily in aphorisms - short kernels of ideas (sometimes a couple pages, sometimes a couple lines) that are meant to be reflected on, and, to use some of Nietzsche’s poetic license, digested. This style can often seem inconsistent or all over the place, which makes an introductory book such as this, which outlines the broad strokes, so useful. It also serves as a good basis for determining what of Nietzsche one ought to read, as there are some striking differences between a lot of his work.
.
A little less discipline and I’d be inclined to spew a list of his ideas that are philosophically important. Instead I’ll just touch on one I think is accessible, thought provoking, and perhaps useful: Eternal recurrence, or the idea that one is doomed/fated to relieve the same lifetime for eternity.
.
It’s less important (and not entirely clear) whether or not Nietzsche actually believed this in terms of his metaphysics, but he did think that this was a useful lens of sorts through which to examine how one lived their life. Ie, if you were forced to relive your life for eternity, what choices would you make, knowing that you would have to do it all again and again (a little Sisyphusian). He felt that this sort of lens would force us to lead more meaningful lives.
February 2, 2011
This was disappointing. I was hoping it would summarize for me the major ideas in Nietzsche's philosophy, which is what the author seemed to be attempting, but for me, he failed. It was difficult to stay focused; the author seemed to ramble, despite the book's brevity. I think it might have been more readable if the author would have approached it with some sort of discernible thesis. He restated what he evidently thought were Nietzsche's ideas, but he did not communicate them in any structured way. So, if you are interested in Nietzsche's philosophy, don't waste your time on this book. I read it because I thought I needed some sort of foundation to help me out in my reading of this enigmatic philosopher, but I started reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra and so far have not had trouble understanding it provided that I read each passage carefully.
June 3, 2025
I’m bewildered that this book is rated so low. I think of Nietzsche like the Aleph in Borges. He’s a paradox to most. An enigma that takes time to come to terms with if that’s even possible at all. A philosopher to read when you’re making big transitions in life. Nietzsche knew this about his work. And anyone carrying on his work like Keith Ansell-Pearson, must know it too.
It’s interesting when someone with this kind of style explains Nietzsche because there is going to be skepticism from the readers. Keith appears to be as Apollonian in style as Nietzsche strove to be Dionysian. I consider the way Peter Sloterdijk sounds critiquing Nietzsche at two different points in his own life and I realize how carried away Sloterdijk was as a younger philosopher. Carried away like the rest of us. This is not uncommon of brilliant folks who do “truly” understand Nietzsche, at first. There’s a dawning on you, and then the rest of the mourning process, if you really get it, again, and it shatters everything about your world, again…then. Well, then what? He’s a totally different philosopher.
So when Keith strolls in with his even keel demeanor, he appears, to the uninitiated, as a sham. Most of us still wear the death of our God on our sleeve, since we can’t just not believe in an ideal truth. We’re not ready to put all hopes aside to reinvest them in nihilism yet. Which might not be such a bad thing after all. Not everyone makes it past the whole drowning in nihilism thing. If you can’t swim the tide maybe you don’t risk crossing the river to begin with. It’s a good reminder of how Deleuze was similar in style to Keith, in Nietzsche and Philosophy.
Nietzsche himself never got to this more stable psychological place himself unfortunately. Nietszche could see the path, but never completed walking it. He shared his mourning with us and we are not necessarily in his debt for that. He was vulnerable, sure. But never got out of the briar patch to show us the way out. Maybe that’s where this anti-christ must end. A doppelgänger of Christ himself. No one really did help him out. And history like this attests to the kind of madness that can come from such misunderstanding…if not syphillis and dementia.
If Nietzsche’s tortured genius doesn’t continue on as the story of the postmodern century, then maybe Salome’s spurning him will. How far will a broken heart go to control its own philosophy? Or maybe more accurately, how far will a broken heart go to spurn its own resentment as useless? These are the stories that the Apollonians need to make sense of. While the Dionysians of us all, must feel everything...to of course become more aware of the mourning process we're emotionally trapped in...our resentful awareness of.
It’s interesting when someone with this kind of style explains Nietzsche because there is going to be skepticism from the readers. Keith appears to be as Apollonian in style as Nietzsche strove to be Dionysian. I consider the way Peter Sloterdijk sounds critiquing Nietzsche at two different points in his own life and I realize how carried away Sloterdijk was as a younger philosopher. Carried away like the rest of us. This is not uncommon of brilliant folks who do “truly” understand Nietzsche, at first. There’s a dawning on you, and then the rest of the mourning process, if you really get it, again, and it shatters everything about your world, again…then. Well, then what? He’s a totally different philosopher.
So when Keith strolls in with his even keel demeanor, he appears, to the uninitiated, as a sham. Most of us still wear the death of our God on our sleeve, since we can’t just not believe in an ideal truth. We’re not ready to put all hopes aside to reinvest them in nihilism yet. Which might not be such a bad thing after all. Not everyone makes it past the whole drowning in nihilism thing. If you can’t swim the tide maybe you don’t risk crossing the river to begin with. It’s a good reminder of how Deleuze was similar in style to Keith, in Nietzsche and Philosophy.
Nietzsche himself never got to this more stable psychological place himself unfortunately. Nietszche could see the path, but never completed walking it. He shared his mourning with us and we are not necessarily in his debt for that. He was vulnerable, sure. But never got out of the briar patch to show us the way out. Maybe that’s where this anti-christ must end. A doppelgänger of Christ himself. No one really did help him out. And history like this attests to the kind of madness that can come from such misunderstanding…if not syphillis and dementia.
If Nietzsche’s tortured genius doesn’t continue on as the story of the postmodern century, then maybe Salome’s spurning him will. How far will a broken heart go to control its own philosophy? Or maybe more accurately, how far will a broken heart go to spurn its own resentment as useless? These are the stories that the Apollonians need to make sense of. While the Dionysians of us all, must feel everything...to of course become more aware of the mourning process we're emotionally trapped in...our resentful awareness of.
April 14, 2020
من خیلی خوشم اومد.بسیار روان بود و مفاهیم اصلی فلسفه نیچه توش توضیح داده شده بود اما خیلی هم در هرکدام عمیق نشده بود که این از نظر من بد نبود و هماهنگی خاصی به کتاب میداد.
April 24, 2023
کتاب خوب بود ترجمه روان نبود ولی
May 6, 2019
My first introduction to Nietzsche. While I was disappointed that it didn't contain more subject matter followed by analysis, and was instead mostly summary, it still prompted a wealth of thought and topics to consider. While I didn't agree with everything, everything still gave me material to chew on and consider and allowed me to challenge paradigms (hence the multitude of quotes--I even ran out of characters). I look forward to reading more of the source material.
Quotes:
P. 2 “He presents himself in untimely or unfashionable terms as a friend of slowness (lento), the teacher of slow reading. The contemporary age is an age of quickness; it no longer values slowness but seeks to hurry everything. Philology can be viewed as a venerable art which demands that its practitioners take time so as to become still and slow. More than anything it is an art that teaches one how to read well, which consists in reading slowly and deeply, and with the aid of which one looks and sees in a certain and specific manner: cautiously, observantly, ‘with doors left open’ and ‘with delicate eyes and fingers.’ Nietzsche believes that reading should be an art, for which rumination is required. He stresses that an aphorism has not been deciphered just because it has been read out; rather, an art of interpretation or exegesis needs to come into play.” Doesn’t this contradict Nietzsche that people need to break out of other paradigms and think new thoughts?
P. 4 “[A] negotiation with boundaries and horizons plays an important role in Nietzsche’s thinking.”
P. 6 “Nietzsche does not think philosophy exists to make us better human beings - but it can make us more profound ones. He begins his great text of 1887 on the genealogy of morals on a paradoxical note, claiming that ‘we knowers’ - as we moderns like to think of ourselves - are essentially unknown to ourselves. To find ourselves supposes we know how to search for ourselves. He notes that we are deaf to the sounds we hear around us, including the sounds and echoes of our own being. We find it difficult to find the time needed to digest life’s experiences - our heart (and our ear) is simply not in it. We exist in an absent-minded manner and are like someone sunk deep in their own thoughts who, upon hearing the twelve strokes of midday, wakes up with a start and wonders, ‘what hour has just struck?’ Only afterwards, upon the delay of time, do we rub our ears and ask, astonished and taken aback, ‘just what did we experience then?’ and ‘who am I in fact?’ Of necessity we are strangers to ourselves. We essentially seek to bring knowledge back home - that is, to a familiar time and place. Our desire is to see ourselves reflected always in all our events and actions. We want knowledge that is familiar and that will not place the demands of time on us. Nietzsche asks whether we are serious enough about acquiring self-knowledge and whether we can find ‘enough time’ for the task.”
P. 11 “In artistic terms, Apollo is the god of the plastic or representational arts (painting and sculpture), with a strong association with architecture, and Dionysus is the god of the non-representational art of music which is without physical form. One of the innovative aspects of Nietzsche’s argument in the book is the way it contests the idealised image of the Greeks that had been handed down, depicting Greek culture as one of serenity and calm grandeur. Nietzsche’s claim is that the Apollonian surface of Greek art and culture is the product of long and complex wrestling with the tragic insights afforded by the Dionysian state. Attic tragedy of the fifth century BC, contained in the work of tragedians such as Aeschylus and Sophocles, rested on a fusion of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Nietzsche’s book is a search for an adequate knowledge of the union between the two artistic powers (a union he calls a ‘mystery’) and the origin of Greek tragedy.”
P. 12 “In truth, however, Nietzsche says, the hero is the suffering Dionysos of the Mysteries, that is, the god who experiences the sufferings of individuation in his own person, the one who was torn to pieces as a boy by the Titans but who is also torn to pieces in the very heart of his terrible condition. He suffers because he is individuated and it is individuation that is the source and primal cause of all suffering and that needs rejecting, Nietzsche adds. . . . We suffer from life because we are individuals alienated from nature and because our consciousness of this separation afflicts us.”
P. 13 “ . . . the terror and absurdity of existence . . .”
P. 14 “For him the category of the tragic denotes not the purification of a dangerous emotion, such as pity or terror, through its forceful discharge, as in Aristotle’s theory of catharsis; rather it is an experience beyond pity and terror, an affirmation of the eternal joy of universal becoming, which also includes joy in destruction.”
P. 15 “For Nietzsche, the tragic cannot be deduced from the aesthetic category of appearance and the beautiful, but only on the basis of the spirit of music for only through this spirit do we encounter the joy experienced in the destruction of the individual.”
P. 19 “[T]he whole of teleology is constructed by speaking of the man of the last four millennia as of an eternal man towards whom all things in the world have had a natural relationship from the time he began. But everything has become: there are no eternal facts, just as there are no absolute truths. Consequently what is needed from now on is historical philosophizing, and with it the virtue of modesty.”
P. 21 “For Rée the fact that existence lacked meaning became a source of despair; Nietzsche, by contrast, saw the same lack of meaning as a source of human freedom.”
P. 23 “There could be a metaphysical world but because we cannot chop off our own head all we can say is that it has a ‘differentness’ that is inaccessible to us; any ontology of it could only be a negative one. Moreover, knowledge of a metaphysical world would prove to be as inconsequential to use as the knowledge of the chemical analysis of water to someone in a boat facing a storm. Art, religion or morality do not provide us with access to another dimension of reality (as Nietzsche had argued in The Birth of Tragedy in the case of Dionysian). We always find ourselves within a realm of representation and no intuition can take us any further. Furthermore, what we call the world is the result of numerous errors that result from the development of organic life. This collection of errors and fantasies also constitutes the treasure of a tradition - the value of humanity depends on it - and this gives rise to a conflict between our reliance on error and need for fantasy and the development of science and scientific truth.”
P. 23-24 on metaphysical philosophy vs. historical philosophy: “The former answers the question by appealing to a miraculous source such as a ‘thing in itself’ to explain the origin of something held to be of a higher value. This ‘in itself’ is taken by Nietzsche to denote something unconditioned that resides outside the conditions of life such as evolutionary change. The latter, by contrast, which Nietzsche insists can no longer be separated from the natural sciences (the youngest of all philosophical methods, he says) seeks to show that there are no opposites but that all things arise from and are implicated in a process of sublimation, hence his call for a ‘chemistry of concepts and sensations’ (chemistry being the science of change).
“This historical mode of philosophising gives rise to a number of ideas that have proved seminal in modern thought: there are no unalterable facts of mankind; our faculty of cognition far from being the transcendental source or originator of our knowledge of the world (the reference is to Kant) has itself evolved; and a society’s order of rank concerning what it holds to be good and evil actions is constantly changing . . . .”
P. 24 “Where it proves impossible to establish certainties of any kind an entire moral-metaphysical world is constructed to fill this darkness.”
P. 25 “[I]t should not be felt necessary to develop knowledge against faith; rather we should practise indifference.”
“An inquiry into origins is not enough; rather, the question of value must be reckoned with, and simply showing the lowly origins of the highest things cannot do this.”
P. 26 “[H]e notes how in metaphysics the most general and emptiest concepts - the absolute, the good, the true and the perfect - are posited as the highest and richest concepts. They must be presented as miraculous causes of themselves and be free of the contamination of growth and evolution.”
P. 27 “‘We are none of us that which we appear to be in accordance with the states for which alone we have consciousness and words.’ Consciousness is ‘a more or less fantastic commentary on an unknown, perhaps unknowable, but felt text.’”
“The problem that this raises, however, is an immense and perhaps insuperable one: we necessarily interpret the world through our own psychical fictions and projections, and Nietzsche’s innermost thinking of the world as will to power, which is a ‘pre-form of life’ . . . cannot escape the charge of anthropomorphism. We don’t have access to a pure ontological language that would tell us in neutral terms what the world is.”
P. 28 “He is highly critical of those he calls ‘hodgepodge philosophers’, such as modern positivists, who hold that facts rule the world and that science has overcome philosophy.”
P. 30 “Even less may one suppose many to know at all what this event really means - and. Now that this faith has been undermined, how much must collapse because it was built on this faith, leaned on it, had grown into it - for example, our entire European morality.”
“we firstlings and premature births of the next century”
P. 31 “Indeed, at hearing the news that ‘the old god is dead’, we philosophers and ‘free spirits’ feel illuminated by a new dawn; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, forebodings, expectation - finally the horizon seems clear again, even if not bright; finally our ships may set out again, set out to face any danger; every daring of the lover of knowledge is allowed again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; maybe there has never been such an ‘open sea’.”
P. 32 “the attempt to pursue questions and problems free of moral prejudices and fears” (later, on p. 36 “a spirit of adventure and fearlessness”)
P. 35 “There are a number of things we need to beware of, such as, fore example, thinking of the universe as either a living being or a machine, thinking that there are laws of nature when there are only necessities, thinking that death is opposed to life when the living is simply a rare type of what is dead, replacing the fiction of God with a cult of matter, and so on. Nietzsche argues, in short, that we face a situation of difficult knowledge simply because we realise that none of our aesthetic and moral judgments applies to the universe.”
P. 38 “[P]hilosophy is nothing other than this art of transfiguration by which the thinker transposes his states into a spiritual form and distance.” ??
P. 38-39 “Taking delight in the problem of life entails a highly spiritualised thinking, one that has conquered fear and gloominess. Nietzsche’s cheerfulness stems from his experiences of knowledge, including the experience of disillusionment and despair that can result from the practice of the love of knowledge - this is the long pressure that needs to be resisted. He speaks of gay or joyful science as a reward - for example, ‘ a reward for a long, brave, diligent, subterranean seriousness . . . ‘ Knowledge is to be conceived in terms of a ‘world of dangers and victories in which heroic feelings . . find places to dance and play’. He posits as a principle, ‘Life as a means to knowledge’ in which the pursuit of knowledge is not to be conducted in a spirit of duty or as a calamity or trickery. He speaks of the human intellect as a ‘clumsy, gloomy, creaking machine’ and of how the human being always seems to lose its good spirits when it thinks by becoming too serious. He wants to teach the intellect how it does not have to be such a machine and to challenge the prejudice that would hold that, where laughter and gaiety inform thinking, then this thinking is good for nothing. Nietzsche continues to speak of his cheerfulness in later works. In Ecce Homo, for example, he writes of being ‘cheerful among nothing but hard truths’.”
P. 39-40 “Does existence have any meaning at all? . . . to what end shall ‘man’ as a whole, and no longer as a people or a race, be raised and disciplined?”
P. 41 “only very late did truth emerge as the weakest form of knowledge.” ???
P. 43 “everything that is good and beautiful depends on illusion:”
P. 45 “This claim is part of his commitment to ‘perspectivism’, which put simply is the view that entities exist only within a perspective and a horizon of interpretation.”
P. 46-47 “For Nietzsche everything that exists, if it is the result of evolutionary processes, includes within it alien material. Bodies do not evolve by establishing closed or fixed boundaries between themselves, between an inside and an outside; if this were the case nothing could, in fact, evolve. This means that a body does not have an identity that is fixed once and for all, but is essentially informed by a plastic and adaptive power, one capable of profound change (this is what Nietzsche denotes when he posits life as ‘will to power’, conceived as a desire in all living things for growth and expansion). Such change takes place through processes of assimilation and incorporation. All bodies have to learn to adapt through change since the rules of what can and cannot be assimilated are not given in evolution (although there are clearly struggles for power and of fitness).”
P. 47 “Nietzsche is bothered by two insights: first, that error seems to be basic to our animal existence and so cannot be easily overcome; and, second, that truth is an intrinsically anthropological concept and so has no meaning outside of the conditions of human life (conditions of preservation and growth).”
P. 48 “Science lacks an ideal beyond itself, such as the passion of great faith that would give its pursuit of knowledge a goal and a will. Science refuses to acknowledge that the practice of knowledge has a necessary and vital basis in interpretation and everything that is essential to it.”
P. 49 “Nietzsche takes issue with modern science because it is fundamentally dishonest about its pursuit of knowledge; in reality it makes use of all those things he enumerates as essential to interpretation. Nietzsche insists that knowledge without presuppositions is unimaginable. In order for knowledge to win a direction, a philosophy or a ‘faith’ of some kind has to inform it. Instead of confronting itself, science chooses to deny itself and thus allows itself to be placed in the services of an existing power.”
“The free spirit is not truly free until it learns the need to question the belief in truth and knows how to questions this belief. This is why he states that to be a nihilist, an immortalist, or an Anti-Christ is not enough: all these types remain idealists of knowledge until they know how to question the will to truth and perform a critique of it.”
P. 50-51 “Nietzsche says we should not want to know everything or want to see everything naked. . . . rather the philosopher shows that thought is food, just as spirit is a stomach” ??
P. 52 “To shut the doors and windows of consciousness for a while; not to be bothered by the noise and battle with which our underworld of serviceable organs work with and against each other; a little peace, a little tabula rasa of consciousness to make room for something new . . . .”
P. 55 “A human being that did not possess the power of forgetting would no longer believe in its own being and lose himself in the stream of becoming.”
“This tells us something significant about memory itself: it has an existence independent of our will. Memories can come back to us in an unsuspected manner, perhaps triggered, as the novelist Marcel Proust found, by an accidental encounter with a smell or a taste, which then opens up for us an entire forgotten world we once inhabited. This return of memory in an involuntary fashion can bring both great joy and tremendous anguish.”
P. 56 “One reason why the treating of life in a spirit of haste is so universal, Nietzsche speculates, is because everyone is in flight from himself or herself. Sometimes we do not wish to have the leisure to stop and think, for we might then be accosted by unpleasant memories that have a habit of suddenly asserting themselves. Nietzsche argues that we are, in fact, always in a condition where memories assail us, ‘we live in fear of memory and of turning inward’ because there ‘are spirits all around us, every moment of our life wants to say something to us’. We have a real need, in fact, to deafen ourselves with sociability.”
P. 57 “We would find ourselves unable to create anything new or even to be receptive to the arrival of the new. Nietzsche says that the person in whom this capacity has been damaged can be compared to a dyspeptic who cannot cope because they cannot finish with anything. Instead they engage in endless regurgitation and suffer from undigested experiences.”
“The problem is not simply that we are reactive as opposed to active in our existence, but that we don’t act out our reactions. Instead, we come to feel our reactions and in this way open ourselves up to the poison of resentment. In the noble person, Nietzsche says, when resentment does take place it gets consumed and exhausted in some immediate reaction and, as a result it does not poison.”
P. 58-59 “To become what one is one must not have the slightest idea of what one is; rather, one has to learn this: ‘From this point of view the blunders of life . . . have their own meaning and value’, including the wrong turnings we make, the delays of life, the holding back from things, the over-commitment to tasks that lie outside our capacity and so on. The events of a life are not to be read through the concepts of misfortune and guilt; one who knows how to forget can be ‘strong enough for everything to have to turn out the best for him’.”
P. 59-60 “On the one hand, what we personally suffer from in life is incomprehensible and inaccessible to nearly everyone else. The feeling of compassion strips suffering of its personal character, to the point where, Nietzsche says, our so-called benefactors diminish our worth and will more than our enemies do. On the other hand, those who are keen to demonstrate compassion fail to comprehend the formative character of our suffering and the fact that we are capable of finding the resources to learn and profit from it. They do not understand that there is a ‘personal necessity’ in misfortune in which the deprivations, impoverishments, adventures, risks and blunders are as necessary to us as the opposite.”
I don’t know that I agree with this ^
P. 64 “It is a fact of our existence that the world is poor in beautiful moments and the unveiling of the ultimate beauties. We are creatures of sense and meaning who well in a universe devoid of sense and meaning (this is the ‘ungodly reality’ named in the aphorism). Imagine seeing the ultimate beauties all the time. They would not be ultimate beauties. Rather, they are the beauties one sees at singular, rare and precarious moments of life and that have no objective existence independent of such moments. They do not disclose to us anything about the world, but are bound up with the desire of our seeing. Although an ecstatic human life is one that turns on the seeing of the ultimate beauties, Nietzsche is not advocating that we lead such a life (this seeing cannot be willed)." NO MORE ROOM
Quotes:
P. 2 “He presents himself in untimely or unfashionable terms as a friend of slowness (lento), the teacher of slow reading. The contemporary age is an age of quickness; it no longer values slowness but seeks to hurry everything. Philology can be viewed as a venerable art which demands that its practitioners take time so as to become still and slow. More than anything it is an art that teaches one how to read well, which consists in reading slowly and deeply, and with the aid of which one looks and sees in a certain and specific manner: cautiously, observantly, ‘with doors left open’ and ‘with delicate eyes and fingers.’ Nietzsche believes that reading should be an art, for which rumination is required. He stresses that an aphorism has not been deciphered just because it has been read out; rather, an art of interpretation or exegesis needs to come into play.” Doesn’t this contradict Nietzsche that people need to break out of other paradigms and think new thoughts?
P. 4 “[A] negotiation with boundaries and horizons plays an important role in Nietzsche’s thinking.”
P. 6 “Nietzsche does not think philosophy exists to make us better human beings - but it can make us more profound ones. He begins his great text of 1887 on the genealogy of morals on a paradoxical note, claiming that ‘we knowers’ - as we moderns like to think of ourselves - are essentially unknown to ourselves. To find ourselves supposes we know how to search for ourselves. He notes that we are deaf to the sounds we hear around us, including the sounds and echoes of our own being. We find it difficult to find the time needed to digest life’s experiences - our heart (and our ear) is simply not in it. We exist in an absent-minded manner and are like someone sunk deep in their own thoughts who, upon hearing the twelve strokes of midday, wakes up with a start and wonders, ‘what hour has just struck?’ Only afterwards, upon the delay of time, do we rub our ears and ask, astonished and taken aback, ‘just what did we experience then?’ and ‘who am I in fact?’ Of necessity we are strangers to ourselves. We essentially seek to bring knowledge back home - that is, to a familiar time and place. Our desire is to see ourselves reflected always in all our events and actions. We want knowledge that is familiar and that will not place the demands of time on us. Nietzsche asks whether we are serious enough about acquiring self-knowledge and whether we can find ‘enough time’ for the task.”
P. 11 “In artistic terms, Apollo is the god of the plastic or representational arts (painting and sculpture), with a strong association with architecture, and Dionysus is the god of the non-representational art of music which is without physical form. One of the innovative aspects of Nietzsche’s argument in the book is the way it contests the idealised image of the Greeks that had been handed down, depicting Greek culture as one of serenity and calm grandeur. Nietzsche’s claim is that the Apollonian surface of Greek art and culture is the product of long and complex wrestling with the tragic insights afforded by the Dionysian state. Attic tragedy of the fifth century BC, contained in the work of tragedians such as Aeschylus and Sophocles, rested on a fusion of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Nietzsche’s book is a search for an adequate knowledge of the union between the two artistic powers (a union he calls a ‘mystery’) and the origin of Greek tragedy.”
P. 12 “In truth, however, Nietzsche says, the hero is the suffering Dionysos of the Mysteries, that is, the god who experiences the sufferings of individuation in his own person, the one who was torn to pieces as a boy by the Titans but who is also torn to pieces in the very heart of his terrible condition. He suffers because he is individuated and it is individuation that is the source and primal cause of all suffering and that needs rejecting, Nietzsche adds. . . . We suffer from life because we are individuals alienated from nature and because our consciousness of this separation afflicts us.”
P. 13 “ . . . the terror and absurdity of existence . . .”
P. 14 “For him the category of the tragic denotes not the purification of a dangerous emotion, such as pity or terror, through its forceful discharge, as in Aristotle’s theory of catharsis; rather it is an experience beyond pity and terror, an affirmation of the eternal joy of universal becoming, which also includes joy in destruction.”
P. 15 “For Nietzsche, the tragic cannot be deduced from the aesthetic category of appearance and the beautiful, but only on the basis of the spirit of music for only through this spirit do we encounter the joy experienced in the destruction of the individual.”
P. 19 “[T]he whole of teleology is constructed by speaking of the man of the last four millennia as of an eternal man towards whom all things in the world have had a natural relationship from the time he began. But everything has become: there are no eternal facts, just as there are no absolute truths. Consequently what is needed from now on is historical philosophizing, and with it the virtue of modesty.”
P. 21 “For Rée the fact that existence lacked meaning became a source of despair; Nietzsche, by contrast, saw the same lack of meaning as a source of human freedom.”
P. 23 “There could be a metaphysical world but because we cannot chop off our own head all we can say is that it has a ‘differentness’ that is inaccessible to us; any ontology of it could only be a negative one. Moreover, knowledge of a metaphysical world would prove to be as inconsequential to use as the knowledge of the chemical analysis of water to someone in a boat facing a storm. Art, religion or morality do not provide us with access to another dimension of reality (as Nietzsche had argued in The Birth of Tragedy in the case of Dionysian). We always find ourselves within a realm of representation and no intuition can take us any further. Furthermore, what we call the world is the result of numerous errors that result from the development of organic life. This collection of errors and fantasies also constitutes the treasure of a tradition - the value of humanity depends on it - and this gives rise to a conflict between our reliance on error and need for fantasy and the development of science and scientific truth.”
P. 23-24 on metaphysical philosophy vs. historical philosophy: “The former answers the question by appealing to a miraculous source such as a ‘thing in itself’ to explain the origin of something held to be of a higher value. This ‘in itself’ is taken by Nietzsche to denote something unconditioned that resides outside the conditions of life such as evolutionary change. The latter, by contrast, which Nietzsche insists can no longer be separated from the natural sciences (the youngest of all philosophical methods, he says) seeks to show that there are no opposites but that all things arise from and are implicated in a process of sublimation, hence his call for a ‘chemistry of concepts and sensations’ (chemistry being the science of change).
“This historical mode of philosophising gives rise to a number of ideas that have proved seminal in modern thought: there are no unalterable facts of mankind; our faculty of cognition far from being the transcendental source or originator of our knowledge of the world (the reference is to Kant) has itself evolved; and a society’s order of rank concerning what it holds to be good and evil actions is constantly changing . . . .”
P. 24 “Where it proves impossible to establish certainties of any kind an entire moral-metaphysical world is constructed to fill this darkness.”
P. 25 “[I]t should not be felt necessary to develop knowledge against faith; rather we should practise indifference.”
“An inquiry into origins is not enough; rather, the question of value must be reckoned with, and simply showing the lowly origins of the highest things cannot do this.”
P. 26 “[H]e notes how in metaphysics the most general and emptiest concepts - the absolute, the good, the true and the perfect - are posited as the highest and richest concepts. They must be presented as miraculous causes of themselves and be free of the contamination of growth and evolution.”
P. 27 “‘We are none of us that which we appear to be in accordance with the states for which alone we have consciousness and words.’ Consciousness is ‘a more or less fantastic commentary on an unknown, perhaps unknowable, but felt text.’”
“The problem that this raises, however, is an immense and perhaps insuperable one: we necessarily interpret the world through our own psychical fictions and projections, and Nietzsche’s innermost thinking of the world as will to power, which is a ‘pre-form of life’ . . . cannot escape the charge of anthropomorphism. We don’t have access to a pure ontological language that would tell us in neutral terms what the world is.”
P. 28 “He is highly critical of those he calls ‘hodgepodge philosophers’, such as modern positivists, who hold that facts rule the world and that science has overcome philosophy.”
P. 30 “Even less may one suppose many to know at all what this event really means - and. Now that this faith has been undermined, how much must collapse because it was built on this faith, leaned on it, had grown into it - for example, our entire European morality.”
“we firstlings and premature births of the next century”
P. 31 “Indeed, at hearing the news that ‘the old god is dead’, we philosophers and ‘free spirits’ feel illuminated by a new dawn; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, forebodings, expectation - finally the horizon seems clear again, even if not bright; finally our ships may set out again, set out to face any danger; every daring of the lover of knowledge is allowed again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; maybe there has never been such an ‘open sea’.”
P. 32 “the attempt to pursue questions and problems free of moral prejudices and fears” (later, on p. 36 “a spirit of adventure and fearlessness”)
P. 35 “There are a number of things we need to beware of, such as, fore example, thinking of the universe as either a living being or a machine, thinking that there are laws of nature when there are only necessities, thinking that death is opposed to life when the living is simply a rare type of what is dead, replacing the fiction of God with a cult of matter, and so on. Nietzsche argues, in short, that we face a situation of difficult knowledge simply because we realise that none of our aesthetic and moral judgments applies to the universe.”
P. 38 “[P]hilosophy is nothing other than this art of transfiguration by which the thinker transposes his states into a spiritual form and distance.” ??
P. 38-39 “Taking delight in the problem of life entails a highly spiritualised thinking, one that has conquered fear and gloominess. Nietzsche’s cheerfulness stems from his experiences of knowledge, including the experience of disillusionment and despair that can result from the practice of the love of knowledge - this is the long pressure that needs to be resisted. He speaks of gay or joyful science as a reward - for example, ‘ a reward for a long, brave, diligent, subterranean seriousness . . . ‘ Knowledge is to be conceived in terms of a ‘world of dangers and victories in which heroic feelings . . find places to dance and play’. He posits as a principle, ‘Life as a means to knowledge’ in which the pursuit of knowledge is not to be conducted in a spirit of duty or as a calamity or trickery. He speaks of the human intellect as a ‘clumsy, gloomy, creaking machine’ and of how the human being always seems to lose its good spirits when it thinks by becoming too serious. He wants to teach the intellect how it does not have to be such a machine and to challenge the prejudice that would hold that, where laughter and gaiety inform thinking, then this thinking is good for nothing. Nietzsche continues to speak of his cheerfulness in later works. In Ecce Homo, for example, he writes of being ‘cheerful among nothing but hard truths’.”
P. 39-40 “Does existence have any meaning at all? . . . to what end shall ‘man’ as a whole, and no longer as a people or a race, be raised and disciplined?”
P. 41 “only very late did truth emerge as the weakest form of knowledge.” ???
P. 43 “everything that is good and beautiful depends on illusion:”
P. 45 “This claim is part of his commitment to ‘perspectivism’, which put simply is the view that entities exist only within a perspective and a horizon of interpretation.”
P. 46-47 “For Nietzsche everything that exists, if it is the result of evolutionary processes, includes within it alien material. Bodies do not evolve by establishing closed or fixed boundaries between themselves, between an inside and an outside; if this were the case nothing could, in fact, evolve. This means that a body does not have an identity that is fixed once and for all, but is essentially informed by a plastic and adaptive power, one capable of profound change (this is what Nietzsche denotes when he posits life as ‘will to power’, conceived as a desire in all living things for growth and expansion). Such change takes place through processes of assimilation and incorporation. All bodies have to learn to adapt through change since the rules of what can and cannot be assimilated are not given in evolution (although there are clearly struggles for power and of fitness).”
P. 47 “Nietzsche is bothered by two insights: first, that error seems to be basic to our animal existence and so cannot be easily overcome; and, second, that truth is an intrinsically anthropological concept and so has no meaning outside of the conditions of human life (conditions of preservation and growth).”
P. 48 “Science lacks an ideal beyond itself, such as the passion of great faith that would give its pursuit of knowledge a goal and a will. Science refuses to acknowledge that the practice of knowledge has a necessary and vital basis in interpretation and everything that is essential to it.”
P. 49 “Nietzsche takes issue with modern science because it is fundamentally dishonest about its pursuit of knowledge; in reality it makes use of all those things he enumerates as essential to interpretation. Nietzsche insists that knowledge without presuppositions is unimaginable. In order for knowledge to win a direction, a philosophy or a ‘faith’ of some kind has to inform it. Instead of confronting itself, science chooses to deny itself and thus allows itself to be placed in the services of an existing power.”
“The free spirit is not truly free until it learns the need to question the belief in truth and knows how to questions this belief. This is why he states that to be a nihilist, an immortalist, or an Anti-Christ is not enough: all these types remain idealists of knowledge until they know how to question the will to truth and perform a critique of it.”
P. 50-51 “Nietzsche says we should not want to know everything or want to see everything naked. . . . rather the philosopher shows that thought is food, just as spirit is a stomach” ??
P. 52 “To shut the doors and windows of consciousness for a while; not to be bothered by the noise and battle with which our underworld of serviceable organs work with and against each other; a little peace, a little tabula rasa of consciousness to make room for something new . . . .”
P. 55 “A human being that did not possess the power of forgetting would no longer believe in its own being and lose himself in the stream of becoming.”
“This tells us something significant about memory itself: it has an existence independent of our will. Memories can come back to us in an unsuspected manner, perhaps triggered, as the novelist Marcel Proust found, by an accidental encounter with a smell or a taste, which then opens up for us an entire forgotten world we once inhabited. This return of memory in an involuntary fashion can bring both great joy and tremendous anguish.”
P. 56 “One reason why the treating of life in a spirit of haste is so universal, Nietzsche speculates, is because everyone is in flight from himself or herself. Sometimes we do not wish to have the leisure to stop and think, for we might then be accosted by unpleasant memories that have a habit of suddenly asserting themselves. Nietzsche argues that we are, in fact, always in a condition where memories assail us, ‘we live in fear of memory and of turning inward’ because there ‘are spirits all around us, every moment of our life wants to say something to us’. We have a real need, in fact, to deafen ourselves with sociability.”
P. 57 “We would find ourselves unable to create anything new or even to be receptive to the arrival of the new. Nietzsche says that the person in whom this capacity has been damaged can be compared to a dyspeptic who cannot cope because they cannot finish with anything. Instead they engage in endless regurgitation and suffer from undigested experiences.”
“The problem is not simply that we are reactive as opposed to active in our existence, but that we don’t act out our reactions. Instead, we come to feel our reactions and in this way open ourselves up to the poison of resentment. In the noble person, Nietzsche says, when resentment does take place it gets consumed and exhausted in some immediate reaction and, as a result it does not poison.”
P. 58-59 “To become what one is one must not have the slightest idea of what one is; rather, one has to learn this: ‘From this point of view the blunders of life . . . have their own meaning and value’, including the wrong turnings we make, the delays of life, the holding back from things, the over-commitment to tasks that lie outside our capacity and so on. The events of a life are not to be read through the concepts of misfortune and guilt; one who knows how to forget can be ‘strong enough for everything to have to turn out the best for him’.”
P. 59-60 “On the one hand, what we personally suffer from in life is incomprehensible and inaccessible to nearly everyone else. The feeling of compassion strips suffering of its personal character, to the point where, Nietzsche says, our so-called benefactors diminish our worth and will more than our enemies do. On the other hand, those who are keen to demonstrate compassion fail to comprehend the formative character of our suffering and the fact that we are capable of finding the resources to learn and profit from it. They do not understand that there is a ‘personal necessity’ in misfortune in which the deprivations, impoverishments, adventures, risks and blunders are as necessary to us as the opposite.”
I don’t know that I agree with this ^
P. 64 “It is a fact of our existence that the world is poor in beautiful moments and the unveiling of the ultimate beauties. We are creatures of sense and meaning who well in a universe devoid of sense and meaning (this is the ‘ungodly reality’ named in the aphorism). Imagine seeing the ultimate beauties all the time. They would not be ultimate beauties. Rather, they are the beauties one sees at singular, rare and precarious moments of life and that have no objective existence independent of such moments. They do not disclose to us anything about the world, but are bound up with the desire of our seeing. Although an ecstatic human life is one that turns on the seeing of the ultimate beauties, Nietzsche is not advocating that we lead such a life (this seeing cannot be willed)." NO MORE ROOM
May 1, 2013
Rambling and badly-written. Two or three beautiful quotes save the book from being a crashing bore.
"Truth has no metaphysical status."
"Our lives are separated by moments of rare bliss, which then struggle under their weight."
"Self-liberation consists of liberation from one's own romanticism."
"Truth has no metaphysical status."
"Our lives are separated by moments of rare bliss, which then struggle under their weight."
"Self-liberation consists of liberation from one's own romanticism."
October 10, 2021
This is the most beautiful book on Nietzsche. Who is this author? I must investigate further. I like reading this commentary much more than I like reading actual Nietzsche, which I realize is embarrassing for me to admit, but no worries, I will still press on. I just thought the description of Nietzsche's ideas were articulated in sacred ways that brought me to tears. Hopefully I can find some of that as well in the actual writings of Nietzsche, but I often get such a sour feeling in my stomach when I read him. We shall see. But K. A-P, thank you. Who are you? Hands down, best in the series so far. The ones on Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein have been less brilliant. You can tell that this author really loves Nietzsche (in an academic way).
Want to read
August 5, 2023Hello . I want to start reading Nietzsche's books. But I don't have a roadmap for this, can you help me and guide me how to start? From what book? And in what order should I read the books?
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سلام . من میخواهم کتاب های نیچه را شروع کرده و بخوانم. اما نقشه ی راهی برای این موضوع ندارم ، شما می توانید به من کمک نمایید و راهنمایی کنید که چگونه شروع کنم ؟ از چه کتابی ؟ و با چه ترتیبی کتاب ها را بخوانم ؟
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سلام . من میخواهم کتاب های نیچه را شروع کرده و بخوانم. اما نقشه ی راهی برای این موضوع ندارم ، شما می توانید به من کمک نمایید و راهنمایی کنید که چگونه شروع کنم ؟ از چه کتابی ؟ و با چه ترتیبی کتاب ها را بخوانم ؟
January 14, 2024
Decent introduction to Nietzsche; however, I felt it focused a little too much on his personal life and did not go deep enough into his ideas. Of course I don’t anticipate an entire analysis of every book he wrote, but I would like a better overview. It was also annoying that the author puts a pin in so many things throughout the chapters. I wish he had simply explained something briefly rather than putting “This will be looked at in chapter nine” (Which happens almost every chapter).
January 31, 2023
Solid read. Ansell-Pearson is equal parts charitable to and critical of Nietzsche and his variegated philosophies. A great introduction to one of the most misunderstood thinkers of the last 200 years. My recommendation after reading this book would be to go ahead and jump into any of Kaufmann's English translations of Nietzsche (with care!).
March 19, 2013
Keith Pearson was a phenomenal tour guide of the writings and thoughts of Nietzsche. This book not only surveyed the writings of Nietzsche, but it also exposes you to them in their barest forms and quotes. Pearson gives a great historical map for which to contextualize ones reading of Nietzsche. Of the 131 pages he only let go of his bias once (pg.103-104)! As a young mind and a new pioneer in the world of philosophy, this book was a great catapult into the late 18th century genius of Nietzsche. Reading this book will save you a lot of time when you find yourself struggling through Nietzsches thought processes.
June 12, 2009
This is a really good series. Whilst most introductions of Nietzsche would simply provide a second-hand description of his work, this one actually gives you a first-hand engagement with some of his writing which encourages you to read more of Nietzsche.
July 1, 2013
I am certain that the author knows his stuff about Nietzsche, but I found this little book somewhat opaque and hard work. Not a clear survey of Nietzsche's ideas, but somewhat waffling and circumstantial.
January 24, 2013
An easy read.
June 6, 2013
Pretty concise summary of Nietzsche's major writings.
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