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Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography
A seminal biography, essential reading for anyone studying the philosophy of history's most enigmatic and fascinating thinker. No other modern philosopher has proved as influential as Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and none is as poorly understood. In the first new biography in decades, Rüdiger Safranski, one of the foremost living Nietzsche scholars, re-creates the anguished life of Nietzsche while simultaneously assessing the philosophical implications of his morality, religion, and art. Struggling to break away from the oppressive burdens of the past, Nietzsche invented a unique philosophy based on compulsive self-consciousness and constant self-revision. As groundbreaking as it will be long-lasting, this biography offers a brilliant, multifaceted portrait of a towering figure.
414 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
About the author
Rüdiger Safranski
37 books231 followersRüdiger Safranski is a German literary scholar and author. He has been Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at the Free University of Berlin since 2012.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 64 reviews
March 17, 2010
A biography with clear cut pros and cons. Here is a brief enumeration of both:
Pros:
1. Great introductory biography for those unfamiliar with Nietzsche's life and writings. Safranski outlines Nietzsche's thought in clear, elegant prose requiring little previous philosophical background to understand.
2. Stays focused on Nietzsche's philosophy and doesn't get sucked into the petty details of his life or those of the age he lived in.
3. Lacks any glaring distortions of Nietzsche's philosophy. Acknowledges shortcomings in Nietzsche's thought and how they led his sullied reputation during the post-war period.
Cons:
1. The last chapter is a complete disaster. Aside from almost plagiarizing the work of Aschheim, the topic is too large to be covered in one chapter. By taking on too much material, the final chapter lacks focus and ends the book on a low note.
2. His apologetic treatment of Martin Heidegger in the final chapter. Safranski refuses to acknowledge the controversy that has arisen from Heidegger's appropriation of Nietzsche during World War II. I understand that Safranski has written a biography of Heidegger and likely believes Heidegger has been unfairly condemned for his flirtations with Nazism, but he should have acknowledged the controversy.
3. I would have liked more comparison between philosophical works. There are a few comparisons made, but it would have been interesting if Safranski illustrated more explicitly how Nietzsche's philosophy changed from the Birth of Tragedy to his later unpublished writings.
Overall, this isn't my favorite Nietzsche biography (I am still partial to R.J. Hollingdale's biography), but Safranski provides a solid introduction to Nietzsche's life and oeuvre. I would recommend it to those who have some philosophical background and are looking for a general book on Nietzsche's philosophy as background reading before reading Nietzsche for themselves.
Pros:
1. Great introductory biography for those unfamiliar with Nietzsche's life and writings. Safranski outlines Nietzsche's thought in clear, elegant prose requiring little previous philosophical background to understand.
2. Stays focused on Nietzsche's philosophy and doesn't get sucked into the petty details of his life or those of the age he lived in.
3. Lacks any glaring distortions of Nietzsche's philosophy. Acknowledges shortcomings in Nietzsche's thought and how they led his sullied reputation during the post-war period.
Cons:
1. The last chapter is a complete disaster. Aside from almost plagiarizing the work of Aschheim, the topic is too large to be covered in one chapter. By taking on too much material, the final chapter lacks focus and ends the book on a low note.
2. His apologetic treatment of Martin Heidegger in the final chapter. Safranski refuses to acknowledge the controversy that has arisen from Heidegger's appropriation of Nietzsche during World War II. I understand that Safranski has written a biography of Heidegger and likely believes Heidegger has been unfairly condemned for his flirtations with Nazism, but he should have acknowledged the controversy.
3. I would have liked more comparison between philosophical works. There are a few comparisons made, but it would have been interesting if Safranski illustrated more explicitly how Nietzsche's philosophy changed from the Birth of Tragedy to his later unpublished writings.
Overall, this isn't my favorite Nietzsche biography (I am still partial to R.J. Hollingdale's biography), but Safranski provides a solid introduction to Nietzsche's life and oeuvre. I would recommend it to those who have some philosophical background and are looking for a general book on Nietzsche's philosophy as background reading before reading Nietzsche for themselves.
September 29, 2019
I prefer Kaufmann, Danto and Hollingdale to Safranski's treatment of Nietzsche's philosophical development, perhaps because they tend toward portraying his thought as more coherent than Safranski does. This is not to say he's wrong and they're right. It may simply amount to my own predilections for systems and system building. I am, after all, most attracted to Kant and to interpretations of Nietzsche which put him within that tradition, albeit as towards the radical side of things.
Safranski at times made me think I was reading FN through Martin Heidegger, which might be simply a way of admitting that I found him, like Heidegger, obscurant--or simply difficult. Still, Safranski is known for his study of the latter. At other times I found him to be (over-?) emphasizing the aesthetic side of FN's concerns. Throughout, Safranski paints a picture of a thinker all over the place, inconsistent to an extreme, thinking tied strongly to passing moods and obsessional themes (see the recent 'I Am Dynamite' biography for a fuller exposition of this).
As Nietzsche himself wrote of his own works, in 1888, "In all seriousness, I really never knew what they signified. I would be lying if I claimed that they (apart from Zarathustra) had impressed me."
Safranski at times made me think I was reading FN through Martin Heidegger, which might be simply a way of admitting that I found him, like Heidegger, obscurant--or simply difficult. Still, Safranski is known for his study of the latter. At other times I found him to be (over-?) emphasizing the aesthetic side of FN's concerns. Throughout, Safranski paints a picture of a thinker all over the place, inconsistent to an extreme, thinking tied strongly to passing moods and obsessional themes (see the recent 'I Am Dynamite' biography for a fuller exposition of this).
As Nietzsche himself wrote of his own works, in 1888, "In all seriousness, I really never knew what they signified. I would be lying if I claimed that they (apart from Zarathustra) had impressed me."
May 18, 2020
«Nietzsche: Biografía de su pensamiento», es, en esencia, un viaje. Es dejarse llevar por mares turbulentos, por el verdadero mundo, lo monstruoso. Las valquirias, en su caminar, nos acompañan en nuestro afán de búsqueda. Atravesamos el espacio y el tiempo, y conversamos con Sócrates, discutiéndole sus ideas. Seguimos, como por encanto, hasta Marx, con quien tomamos un café.
El resto de la reseña se encuentra en mi blog: https://jsaaopinionpersonal.wordpress...
El resto de la reseña se encuentra en mi blog: https://jsaaopinionpersonal.wordpress...
July 11, 2022
Een biografie over het denken van Nietzsche. Het resultaat: een warboel aan gedachten. Wat in lijn is met Nietzsche zelf echter zonder de poëtische stijl van de filosoof. Dit boek is geen adequaat begin voor de leek maar eerder een verwarring voor de ingelezene. Als u dan ook een biografie van het denken van Nietzsche wilt lezen, leest u beter Nietzsche zelf.
October 18, 2020
This is a very handsome introduction to the life and work of the "philosopher with the hammer". Great read.
March 12, 2015
"It is absolutely unnecessary and not even desirable for you to argue in my favour; on the contrary, a dose of curiosity, as if you were looking at an alien planet with ironic distance, would strike me as an incomparably more intelligent attitude towards me."
This "philosophical biography" provides a thoughtful, chronological overview of the key ideas contained in Nietzsche's writings, taking each book in turn, but I would hesitate to respond by offering a review of Nietzsche. He himself, when he considered producing a comprehensive statement of his philosophy in a major work to be entitled "The Will to Power," had the insight that this would be redundant, since he had already published all that required saying and provided his own key in the form of a new preface for each book, which he wrote in 1886 for a new publisher. I am not convinced that all that work can be condensed into one volume or that it can be conveyed in calm prose.
The book does suggest that Nietzsche's ideas are intelligible and coherent, and gives a flavour of his style, so that there is no reason to be deterred from turning to the original works. It is not a substitute for reading what Nietzsche actually wrote. But it gives a lot of guidance to enable readers to approach Nietzsche critically and to avoid becoming submerged in what is certainly going to be very intense and challenging material.
I would say that this is a readable and accessible account and that is an achievement to be commended. It was a pleasure to read.
This "philosophical biography" provides a thoughtful, chronological overview of the key ideas contained in Nietzsche's writings, taking each book in turn, but I would hesitate to respond by offering a review of Nietzsche. He himself, when he considered producing a comprehensive statement of his philosophy in a major work to be entitled "The Will to Power," had the insight that this would be redundant, since he had already published all that required saying and provided his own key in the form of a new preface for each book, which he wrote in 1886 for a new publisher. I am not convinced that all that work can be condensed into one volume or that it can be conveyed in calm prose.
The book does suggest that Nietzsche's ideas are intelligible and coherent, and gives a flavour of his style, so that there is no reason to be deterred from turning to the original works. It is not a substitute for reading what Nietzsche actually wrote. But it gives a lot of guidance to enable readers to approach Nietzsche critically and to avoid becoming submerged in what is certainly going to be very intense and challenging material.
I would say that this is a readable and accessible account and that is an achievement to be commended. It was a pleasure to read.
February 24, 2012
Nietzsche is one of those philosophers that you don't just pick up and read and digest and move on. Really you have to wrestle with his ideas over the course of your life. The young and ambitious are attracted to his ideas about rebellion - I think most people, at some point in their lives, view themselves as "exceptional" . . . while the older and experienced readers might be attracted to some of the more of the cynical side of N.'s writing.
This biography illuminates some of his more difficult or obtuse concepts, but I think Nietzsche really defies easy summarizing. Because he can be very indirect(but also one of the most literary and poetic of philosophers), you really have to kind of immerse yourself in his worldview to come out with a coherent set of ideas. That kind of immersion is impossible with this kind of "philosophical biography". Thanks for reading.
This biography illuminates some of his more difficult or obtuse concepts, but I think Nietzsche really defies easy summarizing. Because he can be very indirect(but also one of the most literary and poetic of philosophers), you really have to kind of immerse yourself in his worldview to come out with a coherent set of ideas. That kind of immersion is impossible with this kind of "philosophical biography". Thanks for reading.
January 23, 2016
Safranski es un gran biógrafo y un ensayista desafortunado. Su Nietzsche se encuentra más cerca del lado de la biografía, aunque desde el título advierte que hace un relato biográfico de su pensamiento. El resultado es increíble: muestra los libros de Nietzsche y los relaciona todo el tiempo con sus desafortunados andares; mejor homenaje no puede existir. Eso coloca al libro en una situación extraña: puede ser introductorio para unos, para otros un repaso -en el que se muestran algunas vetas antes ignoradas-.
El único pero que podría anteponérsele a Safranski es que prefiere ahondar en los libros tempranos de Nietzsche y el Zaratustra, pasando como si no le interesara -o fuese a terminar su beca- sobre los libros mas crueles: el Anticristo, Más allá del bien y del mal y la Genealogía. Otro pero es el último capítulo en el que da rienda suelta a su vena de novelista y solo hace un caótico collage de autores europeos del siglo XX influenciados por Nietzsche.
Soy un entusiasta lector de Nietzsche y esta biografía intelectual sólo ha exacerbado mis ganas de seguir en la vorágine de su pensamiento.
El único pero que podría anteponérsele a Safranski es que prefiere ahondar en los libros tempranos de Nietzsche y el Zaratustra, pasando como si no le interesara -o fuese a terminar su beca- sobre los libros mas crueles: el Anticristo, Más allá del bien y del mal y la Genealogía. Otro pero es el último capítulo en el que da rienda suelta a su vena de novelista y solo hace un caótico collage de autores europeos del siglo XX influenciados por Nietzsche.
Soy un entusiasta lector de Nietzsche y esta biografía intelectual sólo ha exacerbado mis ganas de seguir en la vorágine de su pensamiento.
March 23, 2021
Ik hou wel van Safranki's boeken. Ook dit boek prikkelt me om over het afgrondelijke van kunst en leven na te denken, het zichzelf overstijgen of de lust tot denken. Ik voel wel dat ik soms te weinig over de mens Nietzsche mee krijg om zaken goed biografisch te kunnen kaderen. Daardoor voelt dit boek wat rafeliger aan dan bijvoorbeeld zijn boek over Heidegger.
May 25, 2020
Colosal.
Empecemos aclarando un par de asuntos:
Primero, este libro no pretende ser un análisis total de la filosofía del monstruo alemán. Cuarenta años de producción no se pueden, ya no digo comentar, siquiera resumir en cuatrocientas páginas.
Segundo, cuando uno lee este tipo de obras tiene que saber que está leyendo, al menos, tres cosas distintas: las ideas del filósofo a través de la lente del autor, las ideas del propio autor -más o menos desarrolladas-, y un artefacto literario, con su estilo, su prosa, etc.
En otras reseñas la gente se queja de las interpretaciones de las ideas, de ciertas omisiones, de complacencia hacia ciertas contradicciones...mira, yo que sé, yo creo que con figuras de este calibre, ni siquiera leyendo las fuentes primarias puede uno afirmar que ha entendido toda la complejidad y riqueza, y menos en un pensador que claramente no quería construir un sistema. Estos libros tienen que servir de entremés, no de plato principal.
Deben ser un mapa del territorio, y, camaradas, ¡vaya territorio!
Safransky utiliza en el epílogo la expresión "artista de la filosofía" y sinceramente creo que el Nietzsche que él nos pinta lo es, un coloso que se atrevió a pensar contracorriente, con opiniones muy incomodas, y cuyo pensamiento se convirtió, aparentemente, en la supernova de la filosofía del XX y del XXI. Lo trata todo, directa o indirectamente, de manera más o menos acertada, pero no hay tema relevante que no encuentre una semilla o un tallo en sus pensamientos.
Tenía que ser terriblemente difícil ser Nietzsche y poder mirar la vida con sus ojos.
A lo largo del libro vemos como el personaje evoluciona, cambia, cambian sus intereses, cambia su método, cambia lo que considera importante, pero en todos estos periodos encontramos ideas capitales, incluso contradictorias, que nos muestra que el trabajo intelectual de Nietzsche era más el de un laboratorio experimental que el de una obra de construcción.
En cuanto al libro como artefacto literario, tengo que decir que lo he disfrutado mucho, no cae en la divulgación, pero se lee como una historia de verdad, con las miserias y grandezas de ciertos actos personales que, o bien influían, o eran influidos por lo que en ese momento estaba trabajando el filosofo. Destacar la relación con Wagner, que se lee como un folletín.
No es un libro fácil, que duda cabe (en alguna secciones estamos leyendo lo que Safransky dice que decía Nietzsche sobre lo que decía Heraclito, y por lo tanto aplicando tres lentes superpuestas), pero es un libro que se lee ágil, que en contadísimas ocasiones se llega a hacer algo tedioso (algo muy habitual en otros libros de recuento filosófico), y que como foto de conjunto funciona muy bien.
Insisto, yo me creo el Nietzsche que me pinta Safransky, ahora mi alternativa es leer otro interprete de su pensamiento y contrastar, o lanzarme yo mismo al mar de fondo de su obra. Pero el objetivo que buscaba al leer el libro está cumplido con creces.
Una nota final, tanto me ha gustado el contenido y el continente que:
- Me he comprado la bio de Heidegger del mismo autor.
- He encargado "La genealogía de la moral" .
Empecemos aclarando un par de asuntos:
Primero, este libro no pretende ser un análisis total de la filosofía del monstruo alemán. Cuarenta años de producción no se pueden, ya no digo comentar, siquiera resumir en cuatrocientas páginas.
Segundo, cuando uno lee este tipo de obras tiene que saber que está leyendo, al menos, tres cosas distintas: las ideas del filósofo a través de la lente del autor, las ideas del propio autor -más o menos desarrolladas-, y un artefacto literario, con su estilo, su prosa, etc.
En otras reseñas la gente se queja de las interpretaciones de las ideas, de ciertas omisiones, de complacencia hacia ciertas contradicciones...mira, yo que sé, yo creo que con figuras de este calibre, ni siquiera leyendo las fuentes primarias puede uno afirmar que ha entendido toda la complejidad y riqueza, y menos en un pensador que claramente no quería construir un sistema. Estos libros tienen que servir de entremés, no de plato principal.
Deben ser un mapa del territorio, y, camaradas, ¡vaya territorio!
Safransky utiliza en el epílogo la expresión "artista de la filosofía" y sinceramente creo que el Nietzsche que él nos pinta lo es, un coloso que se atrevió a pensar contracorriente, con opiniones muy incomodas, y cuyo pensamiento se convirtió, aparentemente, en la supernova de la filosofía del XX y del XXI. Lo trata todo, directa o indirectamente, de manera más o menos acertada, pero no hay tema relevante que no encuentre una semilla o un tallo en sus pensamientos.
Tenía que ser terriblemente difícil ser Nietzsche y poder mirar la vida con sus ojos.
A lo largo del libro vemos como el personaje evoluciona, cambia, cambian sus intereses, cambia su método, cambia lo que considera importante, pero en todos estos periodos encontramos ideas capitales, incluso contradictorias, que nos muestra que el trabajo intelectual de Nietzsche era más el de un laboratorio experimental que el de una obra de construcción.
En cuanto al libro como artefacto literario, tengo que decir que lo he disfrutado mucho, no cae en la divulgación, pero se lee como una historia de verdad, con las miserias y grandezas de ciertos actos personales que, o bien influían, o eran influidos por lo que en ese momento estaba trabajando el filosofo. Destacar la relación con Wagner, que se lee como un folletín.
No es un libro fácil, que duda cabe (en alguna secciones estamos leyendo lo que Safransky dice que decía Nietzsche sobre lo que decía Heraclito, y por lo tanto aplicando tres lentes superpuestas), pero es un libro que se lee ágil, que en contadísimas ocasiones se llega a hacer algo tedioso (algo muy habitual en otros libros de recuento filosófico), y que como foto de conjunto funciona muy bien.
Insisto, yo me creo el Nietzsche que me pinta Safransky, ahora mi alternativa es leer otro interprete de su pensamiento y contrastar, o lanzarme yo mismo al mar de fondo de su obra. Pero el objetivo que buscaba al leer el libro está cumplido con creces.
Una nota final, tanto me ha gustado el contenido y el continente que:
- Me he comprado la bio de Heidegger del mismo autor.
- He encargado "La genealogía de la moral" .
September 12, 2022
Una obra muy bien documentada con la que Safranski rastrea la biografía intelectual de Nietzsche. Desde la convicción de que existe en él una relación indisoluble entre vida y obra, Safranski da cuenta de eventos cruciales vividos por Nietzsche y explora cómo estos modelaron ciertas ideas centrales como lo dionisíaco, lo monstruoso, el eterno retorno, la voluntad de poder, etcétera. El texto alcanza su mayor lucidez al presentar las indagaciones en torno al vínculo entre Nietzsche y Wagner y la posibilidad (esbozada por algunos críticos) de ciertas conductas homoeróticas por parte del filósofo alemán. Como epítome de esta exposición, Safranski presenta un capítulo con un breve recuento de la historia de la recepción crítica de Nietzsche y una amplia cronología enriquecida con observaciones tomadas de cartas y textos de primera mano.
January 3, 2023
I'm finally free! It's hard to socialize properly after sleeping with this text for a few weeks. Amor fati. The last chapter was so good one could come back to it many times. Is wokeness a slave revolt? Who knew Nietzsche was a Buddhist? It seems like Dionysian wisdom folds in on itself a hundred times. Watching and listening to Wagner will be a lot more fun now. Increasingly I feel hermeneutics to be a way of life.
December 20, 2013
Keine Biographie des wunderlichen Lebens dieses gnadenlosen Denkers, sondern eine Geschichte der Entwicklung seines Denkens. Nicht ganz eingängig geschrieben, kein Wunder bei der Komplexität des Gegenstandes, jedoch durchaus klar erläuternd, was Nietzsche will, woher er kommt und welche Brüche mit Denktraditionen ihn vorantreiben.
November 2, 2007
I first encountered Friedrich Nietzsche in my freshman year at Kenyon College, when my introductory political science class read his Beyond Good and Evil. It was fascinating and challenging, and though I understood the gist of it, there were plenty of aspects of it that went over my head. During my junior year, I abruptly dropped my music major (I picked it up again the next year) and took two classes that—finally—weren’t either English or music courses: computer programming and a political science seminar devoted to Nietzsche. We began with his On the Genealogy of Morals, which was a fascinating and subversive look at the origins of conventional morality. From here, we moved on to Nietzsche’s literary exposition of his philosophy, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It was absolutely fascinating, both in its ideas and the style of Nietzsche as translated by Walter Kauffman, and both of these aspects had an influence on me.
A couple years ago, while shopping for gifts, I came across this volume and thought it sounded interesting. Well, it was. Take note of the subtitle: “a philosophical biography.” The emphasis is on philosophical, not on biography. This book is about the development of Nietzsche’s ideas; the events of his life are included primarily as they influenced his philosophy or otherwise illuminate the development of his ideas.
Enjoying this book is helped if you have at least some familiarity with philosophy in general and/or Nietzsche’s writing. If you don’t have any background in either one, it may still be possible to enjoy this book because of how well written it is, but Safranski doesn’t stop to explain a lot of philosophical terms.
That said, it is a really well-written book. Safranski shows us the development of Nietzsche’s philosophy. At the same time, Safranski is not afraid to offer opinions as to where Nietzsche may have gone wrong. It’s also clear to see, alongside Nietzsche’s genius, his profoundly human qualities, his insecurities and imperfections.
Safranski concludes his book with an epilogue tracing Nietzsche’s reception and influence in the years after his death. It is, by his own admission, incomplete, but still quite interesting as far as it goes.
A couple years ago, while shopping for gifts, I came across this volume and thought it sounded interesting. Well, it was. Take note of the subtitle: “a philosophical biography.” The emphasis is on philosophical, not on biography. This book is about the development of Nietzsche’s ideas; the events of his life are included primarily as they influenced his philosophy or otherwise illuminate the development of his ideas.
Enjoying this book is helped if you have at least some familiarity with philosophy in general and/or Nietzsche’s writing. If you don’t have any background in either one, it may still be possible to enjoy this book because of how well written it is, but Safranski doesn’t stop to explain a lot of philosophical terms.
That said, it is a really well-written book. Safranski shows us the development of Nietzsche’s philosophy. At the same time, Safranski is not afraid to offer opinions as to where Nietzsche may have gone wrong. It’s also clear to see, alongside Nietzsche’s genius, his profoundly human qualities, his insecurities and imperfections.
Safranski concludes his book with an epilogue tracing Nietzsche’s reception and influence in the years after his death. It is, by his own admission, incomplete, but still quite interesting as far as it goes.
January 5, 2022
A very eloquent and extensive overview of the life and works of Nietzsche. This is clearly the result of years and years of reading and hard work. The style makes for a nice read and has its merits. I found it however to be unfitting for the goal the text tries to accomplish. Safranski does not achieve enough critical distance towards his subject to give a clear account of Nietzsche's philosophical systems and positions as well as of his life. He too often resorts to mimicing his language which leads to central definitions and concepts remaining uninformative and obscure. He rarely puts Nietzsche in the philosophical context of his age. For example at one point towards the end Safranski indicates that the concept of "God is Dead" is neither as scandalous nor as innovative as Nietzsche makes it seem in his biographical reflections but he leaves it at this short remark. Nietzsche knew very well how to stage himself and Safranski falls for this frustratingly often.
December 31, 2011
I read this for two reasons: one, because the author wrote a philosophical biography of Schopenhauer which I really liked; two, to prepare for my Nietzsche class next semester. I was expecting to like this as much as Safranski's other book. However, I found this book lacking. Although it focuses more on the philosophy rather than the biography, it seemed that the explanations where rather superficial. And yes, they seemed more like explanations rather than justifications. Perhaps the redeeming chapters was on morality and his view on intimacy. Overall, this may be good for hardcore Nietzsche fans, but I thought it was just ok. I'll keep it on my bookshelf for reference, but I doubt I'll read it cover to cover again.
March 12, 2022
Few thinkers in the relatively modern era have given rise to so many and widely differing interpretations as the "crazy German" Nietzsche. From Walter Kaufmann's romantic aestheticization to Zeev Sternhell's reading of him as one of the founders of the radical right and the portal figure of anti-modernism. As Kurt Tucholsky once said, "Tell me what you need, and I'll supply you with the right Nietzsche quotation."
This fact leads to the the need of specialized biographies such as this one, presented by presented by Rüdiger Safranski. But it also presents the author with a series of difficulties, which are admittedly always present in all historical work, but witch becomes even more pernicious in dealing with this specific author. Especially when it comes to the difficulty of projecting one's own agenda on the objects of the research.
Rüdiger Safranski already writes in his preface that he wishes to present a Nietzsche beyond the obvious distortions and forgeries to which the philosopher's sister exposed his legacy. Since most of work of reconstructing the author's actual manuscript has been done in German the english reader have to rely on schoolers like Safranski’, with his background as a Germanist to present the latest findings and scholarship. Who is the Nietzsche that Safranski wants to save form his own legacy?
The picture that is painted by is that of the early author, with a great focus on the early works. A philologist who became a philosopher. A thinker obsessed with letting his ideas incarnate in himself and other people. The goal of thinking was obviously the individual's own change. The thoughts are brought to Freud's self-analysis, by tracing Western tradition of ides to psychological sediments in the individual, Nietzsche hoped to be able to free himself from the ”slave morality” that shaped contemporary man. Here is the great treasure in Safranski's portrait. He convincingly connects the author's idea of "superhuman" with Nietzsche's aristocratic ideal of an individual who has freed himself from the shackles of history and thereby become free to create high culture.
Another of the book's treasures is the way Safranski connects this dream with Nietzsche's teachers Wagne, Schopenhauer and Stirner. But by focusing on this more easily digestible Nietzsche, the author's later development is hastened. It also becomes clear that Safranski chooses to tone down (albeit in his defense not completely ignore) Nietzsche's genuine hatred of all forms of equality and the maintenance of the coming superhuman by forcing everyone else into permanent slavery. One of the reasons for this downplaying is that Safranski chooses to see Nietzsche as a creative genius, largely disconnected from contemporary cultural and political currents. By focusing on the internal development of a closed system of thought, the objects of the study are disconnected from the contemporary hatred of the poor and of the pursuit of equality.
This is the book's big mistake. The author seems almost incapable of adequately contextualizing thoughts in a broader economic and social situation. Which leads to the last chapter on the legacy of Nietzsche, where Foucault, Heidegger and psychoanalysis are discussed, to becoming almost laughable in their lack of historicity. This lack of historicity is necessary for the author's attempt to save Nietzsche from his own aristocratic sadism of which the thinking was a part. Which, unfortunately, turns his ideas and insights into easily palatable ideas of breaking free form conventions and Western morality into something morally to something boring and almost uninteresting instead of the heated hatred of human dignity and development that still makes Nietzsche worth reading today.
This fact leads to the the need of specialized biographies such as this one, presented by presented by Rüdiger Safranski. But it also presents the author with a series of difficulties, which are admittedly always present in all historical work, but witch becomes even more pernicious in dealing with this specific author. Especially when it comes to the difficulty of projecting one's own agenda on the objects of the research.
Rüdiger Safranski already writes in his preface that he wishes to present a Nietzsche beyond the obvious distortions and forgeries to which the philosopher's sister exposed his legacy. Since most of work of reconstructing the author's actual manuscript has been done in German the english reader have to rely on schoolers like Safranski’, with his background as a Germanist to present the latest findings and scholarship. Who is the Nietzsche that Safranski wants to save form his own legacy?
The picture that is painted by is that of the early author, with a great focus on the early works. A philologist who became a philosopher. A thinker obsessed with letting his ideas incarnate in himself and other people. The goal of thinking was obviously the individual's own change. The thoughts are brought to Freud's self-analysis, by tracing Western tradition of ides to psychological sediments in the individual, Nietzsche hoped to be able to free himself from the ”slave morality” that shaped contemporary man. Here is the great treasure in Safranski's portrait. He convincingly connects the author's idea of "superhuman" with Nietzsche's aristocratic ideal of an individual who has freed himself from the shackles of history and thereby become free to create high culture.
Another of the book's treasures is the way Safranski connects this dream with Nietzsche's teachers Wagne, Schopenhauer and Stirner. But by focusing on this more easily digestible Nietzsche, the author's later development is hastened. It also becomes clear that Safranski chooses to tone down (albeit in his defense not completely ignore) Nietzsche's genuine hatred of all forms of equality and the maintenance of the coming superhuman by forcing everyone else into permanent slavery. One of the reasons for this downplaying is that Safranski chooses to see Nietzsche as a creative genius, largely disconnected from contemporary cultural and political currents. By focusing on the internal development of a closed system of thought, the objects of the study are disconnected from the contemporary hatred of the poor and of the pursuit of equality.
This is the book's big mistake. The author seems almost incapable of adequately contextualizing thoughts in a broader economic and social situation. Which leads to the last chapter on the legacy of Nietzsche, where Foucault, Heidegger and psychoanalysis are discussed, to becoming almost laughable in their lack of historicity. This lack of historicity is necessary for the author's attempt to save Nietzsche from his own aristocratic sadism of which the thinking was a part. Which, unfortunately, turns his ideas and insights into easily palatable ideas of breaking free form conventions and Western morality into something morally to something boring and almost uninteresting instead of the heated hatred of human dignity and development that still makes Nietzsche worth reading today.
November 4, 2017
Elaborate review of Nietzsche's thought development. Correlates his thinking with many of his predecessors (mostly ancient Greek philosophers like Heraclitus and Socrates, and enlightenment guys like Kant and Spinoza), temporaries (Hegel, Schopenhauer, Max Stirner, Wagner, Strauss), and successors (Freud, Heidegger, Foucault, but no Husserl or Sartre).
Safranski uses a chronological order in which themes are very frequently repeated and much of the inconsistencies within Nietzsche's work come forward. Sometimes Safranski steps in to elucidate these, but to my taste not frequently enough. Nietzsche and other writers are cited all the time.
Like the title says, it is a philosophical biography focusing on the thoughts and intellectual works of Nietzsche. Spicy and concrete details are mostly lacking, which I consider a good thing. Curious in this regard is the authors speculative suggestion, late in the book, that Nietzsche may have been raped as a child and may have harbored homosexual feelings. This is mentioned along the way without further elaboration. Very curious indeed.
The writing is pleasant and offers some sublime clarifications of Nietzsche's vague writings. E.g. the concept of the Übermensch is in my opinion finely elucidated in the following: "The Übermensch embodies the sanctification of this world as a response to the "death of God." The Übermensch is free of religion. He has not lost it, but reclaimed it for himself." Likewise the author explains diligently how Nietzsche was strongly opposed to nationalism, racism, anti-semitism, and socialism.
I do really like the author's emphasis on an often lost suggestion of Nietzsche of a so-called "bicameral" system in which there is room for both a personal intuitive passionate life combined with a scientific explanatory view of life. "A higher culture must give people "two chambers of the brain, as it were, one to experience science and the other non-science: lying juxtaposed, without confusion, divisible, able to be sealed off; this is necessary to preserve health. The source of power is located in the one region; the regulator, in the other. Illusions, partialities, and passions must provide the heat, while the deleterious and dangerous consequences of overheating must be averted with the aid of scientific knowledge."
He takes time to explain the view of how Christianity is a "slave morality" which was used by the weak in the Roman times to take control over their strong masters, by turning weak traits characteristic of low self-esteem (e.g. charity, humility, pity, obedience) into values and strong traits (e.g. egotism, pride) into vices; and how this morality suppresses life.
I really enjoyed his explaining of Nietzsche's view of different cultures: "What system of blinders does each culture rely on to shut out the threatening power of the Dionysian and to channel essential Dionysian energies? Nietzsche posed this question fully aware that he was touching on the innermost secrets of each culture. He traced the surreptitious ways of the will to live and discovered how culturally inventive this will to live could be. He traced the surreptitious ways of the will to live and discovered how culturally inventive this will to live could be. To keep its creatures"clinging to life"(1,115;BT§ 18),it wraps them in illusions. It ensures that some choose the "veil of beauty in art" and that others seek metaphysical solace in religion and philosophy in order to be reassured "that under the whirl of phenomena eternal life keeps flowing indestructibly." Still others are captivated by a "Socratic love of knowledge" and are deceived into thinking that knowledge can "heal the eternal wound of existence" (1,115). A mixture of these ingredients yields what we call culture. According to the proportions of the mixture, a culture will be predominantly artistic, such as that of Greek antiquity, or religious and metaphysical, as in the heyday of the Christian West and the eastern Buddhist world, or Socratic, emphasizing knowledge and science."
Safranski audaciously explains some of Nietzsche's darker statements about inferior people and how they should be overruled by the strong people, referring to his own tragic solitary life and how he has suffered from his own excessively kind and pitiful character, which was taken advantage of mostly by his malignant mother and sister. Clearly here the author defends Nietzsche.
The writing structure is disorganised and repetitive, certain parts could have been much shorter. Some quotes seem to appear several times in each chapter, like the one how one should become master of himself and his virtues. It strikes me as absurd that this is repeated so frequently while the entire amor fati concept is completely neglected. Isn't that one of the core concepts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra: the Übermensch uses his will to power to conquer his past, affirm life and thus take over the role of the deceased God?
My main critique is Safranski's inability to grasp that Nietzsche was fully aware of the highly individual nature of one's "knowledge" and one's "values". Wasn't it Nietzsche himself who subjected these things to the will to power, and didn't he clearly designate every individual as a point of will to power? Clearly here, Nietzsche's thought system is his will to power. Safranski designates this as a massive inconsistency within his system, yet in my view it is the point where Nietzsche leaves the universal part of his thoughts and starts designing his own particular truth, his personal philosophy, his will to power, so as to finish his legacy in the history of philosophy.
Due to the complexity of the subject I rate it 5 stars as it has given me very fine insight and clarification. I guess much of the chaos and inconsistency has more to do with Nietzsche himself than the author, and I applaud him for his courage and insight to clarify at least some elements of it. Safranski however clearly struggles in this book with this absurdly complex philosophical legacy, and hides behind a thick wall of metaphoric Nietzsche quotes, which leaves a somewhat unsatisfied feeling.
Would I have done a better job? Decidedly not.
Safranski uses a chronological order in which themes are very frequently repeated and much of the inconsistencies within Nietzsche's work come forward. Sometimes Safranski steps in to elucidate these, but to my taste not frequently enough. Nietzsche and other writers are cited all the time.
Like the title says, it is a philosophical biography focusing on the thoughts and intellectual works of Nietzsche. Spicy and concrete details are mostly lacking, which I consider a good thing. Curious in this regard is the authors speculative suggestion, late in the book, that Nietzsche may have been raped as a child and may have harbored homosexual feelings. This is mentioned along the way without further elaboration. Very curious indeed.
The writing is pleasant and offers some sublime clarifications of Nietzsche's vague writings. E.g. the concept of the Übermensch is in my opinion finely elucidated in the following: "The Übermensch embodies the sanctification of this world as a response to the "death of God." The Übermensch is free of religion. He has not lost it, but reclaimed it for himself." Likewise the author explains diligently how Nietzsche was strongly opposed to nationalism, racism, anti-semitism, and socialism.
I do really like the author's emphasis on an often lost suggestion of Nietzsche of a so-called "bicameral" system in which there is room for both a personal intuitive passionate life combined with a scientific explanatory view of life. "A higher culture must give people "two chambers of the brain, as it were, one to experience science and the other non-science: lying juxtaposed, without confusion, divisible, able to be sealed off; this is necessary to preserve health. The source of power is located in the one region; the regulator, in the other. Illusions, partialities, and passions must provide the heat, while the deleterious and dangerous consequences of overheating must be averted with the aid of scientific knowledge."
He takes time to explain the view of how Christianity is a "slave morality" which was used by the weak in the Roman times to take control over their strong masters, by turning weak traits characteristic of low self-esteem (e.g. charity, humility, pity, obedience) into values and strong traits (e.g. egotism, pride) into vices; and how this morality suppresses life.
I really enjoyed his explaining of Nietzsche's view of different cultures: "What system of blinders does each culture rely on to shut out the threatening power of the Dionysian and to channel essential Dionysian energies? Nietzsche posed this question fully aware that he was touching on the innermost secrets of each culture. He traced the surreptitious ways of the will to live and discovered how culturally inventive this will to live could be. He traced the surreptitious ways of the will to live and discovered how culturally inventive this will to live could be. To keep its creatures"clinging to life"(1,115;BT§ 18),it wraps them in illusions. It ensures that some choose the "veil of beauty in art" and that others seek metaphysical solace in religion and philosophy in order to be reassured "that under the whirl of phenomena eternal life keeps flowing indestructibly." Still others are captivated by a "Socratic love of knowledge" and are deceived into thinking that knowledge can "heal the eternal wound of existence" (1,115). A mixture of these ingredients yields what we call culture. According to the proportions of the mixture, a culture will be predominantly artistic, such as that of Greek antiquity, or religious and metaphysical, as in the heyday of the Christian West and the eastern Buddhist world, or Socratic, emphasizing knowledge and science."
Safranski audaciously explains some of Nietzsche's darker statements about inferior people and how they should be overruled by the strong people, referring to his own tragic solitary life and how he has suffered from his own excessively kind and pitiful character, which was taken advantage of mostly by his malignant mother and sister. Clearly here the author defends Nietzsche.
The writing structure is disorganised and repetitive, certain parts could have been much shorter. Some quotes seem to appear several times in each chapter, like the one how one should become master of himself and his virtues. It strikes me as absurd that this is repeated so frequently while the entire amor fati concept is completely neglected. Isn't that one of the core concepts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra: the Übermensch uses his will to power to conquer his past, affirm life and thus take over the role of the deceased God?
My main critique is Safranski's inability to grasp that Nietzsche was fully aware of the highly individual nature of one's "knowledge" and one's "values". Wasn't it Nietzsche himself who subjected these things to the will to power, and didn't he clearly designate every individual as a point of will to power? Clearly here, Nietzsche's thought system is his will to power. Safranski designates this as a massive inconsistency within his system, yet in my view it is the point where Nietzsche leaves the universal part of his thoughts and starts designing his own particular truth, his personal philosophy, his will to power, so as to finish his legacy in the history of philosophy.
Due to the complexity of the subject I rate it 5 stars as it has given me very fine insight and clarification. I guess much of the chaos and inconsistency has more to do with Nietzsche himself than the author, and I applaud him for his courage and insight to clarify at least some elements of it. Safranski however clearly struggles in this book with this absurdly complex philosophical legacy, and hides behind a thick wall of metaphoric Nietzsche quotes, which leaves a somewhat unsatisfied feeling.
Would I have done a better job? Decidedly not.
May 3, 2019
Profundiza bastante en el pensamiento de Nietzsche, haciendo uso de material como escritos póstumos, diarios y cartas.
Me encantó.
Me encantó.
April 2, 2020
Great introduction to Nietzsche.
December 3, 2020
I’m not an authority on the subject but I thought this was very good.
March 8, 2022
Briljantan, dubok uvid u filozofsku misao F. Nietzschea. Pisano sa strašću.
March 28, 2024
One of the problems in studying philosophy historically is that philosophers are taken as an 'event' rather than as a 'process'. A master work is chosen as exemplar or the writer of a book tries to set down the philosophy of a thinker as if it was a thing out of time or out of cultural place.
This forgets that philosophers are thinking in time and over a life-cycle of their own from birth (as incipient personality) to culmination in death and that philosophers are not only responding to the past but to the shifting politics and social and cultural changes of their own era.
Safranski's 'Nietzsche' is very much the story of a process of thought, a 'philosophical biography', that lodges Nietzsche's thinking within a life (less so within a culture) and tracks how his thinking changed over decades until madness overtook him.
Seen in this way, his thought unfolds in three broad phases that match the way a man thinks as he grows and matures. How Nietzsche took something in his core personality and expanded it into something that changed our whole culture is the story of this book.
I write 'in his core personality' because, from a very early age, Nietzsche is thinking 'differently' and showing a driven quality to pursue thought to its limits. His life is 'thinking to its limits' in ways that were literally 'unthinkable' to his contemporaries and to the vast majority of our species even today.
The first phase of his thought is that largely of his twenties until his final breach with Wagner (1876, Age 32). Influenced by Schopenhauer, his early philosophy might be seen as interesting more in its potential rather than the actual. It is a philosophy of over-enthusiastic late romantic aesthetics.
A man of high intelligence drawn into academicism, he rebels because his thought processes see how dessicated was the world that he had joined professionally. Art (not art but Art) as a total Dionysian experience appeared to be a way out as he developed a theory of culture.
'The Birth of Tragedy' provides a grounding for his later thought, situated between his own reaction to Greek thought and what will become an emergent psychology - the bicameral tension between Dionysiac excess and Apollonian order.
The disillusion with Wagner (when he sees Bayreuth as just another example of what we might call 'show business') permits the second phase of his thinking which, in my view, is the most important of all - from 1876 until his transcendent peak experience in August 1881.
This relatively brief period in his mid-thirties allows him to escape German Idealism entirely and think, without restraint, about the relationship between himself and the world and so, more generally, about what it is to be human in relation to existence.
This is a period of both personal misery and sometimes ecstatic insight. He is making profound contributions to epistemology but also to psychology in ways that not merely anticipate Freud but, frankly, are vastly superior to the thinking of the later founder of the psychoanalytic wrong turn.
Above all, Nietzsche is a phenomenologist, observing with care how his own mind works in relation to the world and drawing general conclusions about the human condition. From there, he draws, less reliably, further conclusions about culture and society.
It is at this point that we might have hoped he would retain his full sanity and come to terms with the 'world-shattering' vision he was developing. But the link to personal misery, much of it expressed psychosomatically, and manic depression meant that things were not going to end well.
Given the culture into which he was born and his undoubtedly unstable personality, the idea that he could have somehow transformed himself into Heidegger 'avant la lettre' and explored his thinking about our relation to Being with dogged academic determination is absurd.
Nietzsche simply did not have the all the mental tools to sit back and observe his own thought in the way that he seemed to demand as necessary. He 'lived' his thought. His body 'lived' his thought. And he never found a way of conquering the psychological conflicts that his thought created.
One of the most interesting aspects of that thought is the transfer of his initially academic Dionysian-Apollonian analysis of culture and the human condition to psychology. Bicamerality is today seen as neuroscientifically real as our minds try to cope with balancing two hemispheres in the brain.
Nietzsche's intuitions about bicameral conflict, extended beyond the individual to society and culture as a whole, now look remarkably astute. Attempts to reconcile the impulses in one part of our brain with the cognitive apparatus of the other raise fundamental questions about perceived reality.
Our relationship to Being is complicated by physical responses to the fact of our being in Being (questions for Heidegger to deal with although he lost this bicameral psychological assessment in doing so). Nietzsche's real physical reaction to the process of thinking is part of the thought.
At the Surej boulder in 1881 (age 37), Nietzsche goes on a very different path. We might consider that the final phase before his collapse into madness in 1889 (Age 45) is one extended mid-life crisis in which he attempts to resolve his contradictions through assertion.
What we see is a drive towards self-expression as the 'will to power' amidst a new mythology of the 'eternal recurrence' and the promotion of his poetic character of Zarathustra. It is fertile stuff culturally but often hard to pin down as reliable 'philosophy'.
This final phase (if we discount the subsequent decade of insanity) is nevertheless of immense cultural importance although (I would argue) more philosophically barren. Sometimes it seems like a constant scream of egoistic 'look at me', increasingly monomaniac as time passes.
This is not to say that these powerful final works are not important but only that the thinking, which is often contradictory and extreme, sometimes has the feel of a tormented man letting rip on the psychologist's couch. Yet it is these works that mostly define what Nietzsche is to the public.
The power of these late works (which Safranski significantly spends relatively little time analysing) lies in the effect that their no-holds-barred narcissism has on Europeans looking for an excuse for high emotional expression in a repressive culture. Humans always need excuses.
A final chapter on the way Nietzsche's work came to be employed after his death is invaluable in this context especially because of its German focus, indicating how his thoughts came to be used before Heidegger, Adorno/Horkheimer and Foucault employed them as seeds for their own thought.
Can Nietzsche be 'blamed' for national socialism? Only a fool would not see that Nietzsche's late thought leads inexorably to its use as a tormented brutalism that follows logically from his refusal to compromise on his vision of the human condition. But 'blame' is absurd.
Indeed, it is hard to fault Nietzsche's logic (such as it is). Or, in some respects, even Hitler's and that of the national socialist philosophers like Bauemler, a rival to Rosenberg, who Safranski recognises as sophisticated. Nietzsche's brutal logic can imply national socialism without much difficulty.
Yes, his sister and brother-in-law twisted his legacy to serve German nationalism and, no, Nietzsche was anti-anti-semitic and highly critical of nationalism but special pleading cannot hide the continuity between the philosophy of existence and anti-Christian Nazi Darwinian struggle.
It is at this deeper (the scientific, in its time) level of existential skirting of nihilism with an invented commitment to will that we see the affinity between Nietzsche and National Socialism and not at the secondary level of antisemitism, militarism, nationalism and imperialism.
This is the problem with Nietzsche. The more you read his brute analysis of the human condition (the thinking of Truth including the non-Truth of Truth), the more plausible it becomes although there is no doubt that his struggle was always against the consequent logic arising from this of nihilism.
To avoid the nihilistic interpretation of reality, Nietzsche required a will to something, a human engagement in Life and this engagement in Life married to the darkness of Being resulted in a cruel and vicious view of life that failed to live up to the fanatic expectations for Life itself.
That this Truth troubled Nietzsche despite his attempt to think things through according to the facts of the matter becomes clear in snatches and it strikes me as no accident that he finally goes mad in response to the beating of a horse which could stand for inner revolt against his own philosophy.
It is as if he thought himself into a corner from which there was no escape but insanity and at times, being an honest man intellectually, he could see the way of the meek as a form of will to power whose conquest of the brute might perhaps be part of the Truth too.
Whenever he comes close to systematising his thought, his intellectual honesty (which is undoubted) would periodically break through in force to ask an awkward question of himself that might unravel the psychological scaffolding that held him together.
If we accept that Nietzsche describes our condition accurately once God is recognised to be dead (God stands for all past solutions to the human condition invented to avoid the Truth), then we are left with decisions about what to invent in its place.
Making the invention consonant with science as it was understood in the 1870s and 1880s in Europe means over-accepting science in the construction of the Overman (Ubermensch) and allowing Darwinism to become over-privileged in defining the human condition.
In other words, a correct assessment of our relation to the world as material existence (a different issue than the relation to Being as Heidegger would attempt to understand the problem) can get bogged down in inadequate assumptions about our scientific understanding of that world.
Nietzschean thought is literally 'beyond good and evil' because it can end up anywhere. Much of non-analytical philosophy since Nietzsche has, therefore, been spent trying to analyse the world in ways that restore some sort of value or re-jigs Truth to be more palatable (that is, not-Truth).
Each attempt to do so must be of its time and place much as Nietzsche's own solutions, which were less 'truthful' than the Truth, were bound by its (or rather his) conditions of existence. At this level, all philosophy is personal and about knowing where to sever derivative truths from the Truth itself.
In Nietzsche's case (Safranski is very informative on this), our philosopher was embedding his truth in the fact of science (the Appollonian/left hemisphere) in tension with the Dionysiac and so scientific materialism (not the Marxist version) became central to his will to power.
This is where Truth becomes problematic for our species - the innocent Darwin set off a chain of events that led to Auschwitz and Nietzsche was no more responsible for that than Darwin was. In both cases, ideas that were true became tools and weapons in the struggle for human meaning.
So, Nietzsche sits as a child of mid-century Germany trying to cope with personal turmoil, the death of God (which Heidegger found equally problematic), the rise of science, cultural philistinism, the chatter of the blind and the conventional and he came to certain conclusions.
For example, his analysis of Christianity in 'On The Genealogy of Morals' was only too accurate although his assesssment of socialism remained that of a spoiled bourgeois brat. What we do with his analyses is what counts and that includes fundamental criticism of the limitations of his thought.
Where Nietzsche 'went wrong' is only in failing to continue to think along the lines he was thinking in his second phase - phenomenologically, psychologically, epistemologically as well as existentially - and jumping into the cultural fray with a form of 'revelation' that over-privileged the Dionysiac.
This seems to be core to Nietzsche and to Nietzscheans - the centrality of the rational Apollonian in their assessment of reality but under conditions where they desperately yearn for the Dionysiac, the animal spirits of music, poetry and religion and try to force an older animal brain into action.
At a certain point, like an 'old man in a hurry' as if he knew time was limited, Nietzsche wanted to make a mark on the world, to be 'important, the centre of attention, a prophet, perhaps (through Zarathustra) a founder of new world religion or at least national culture.
In fact, Nietzsche was not inherently Dionysiac. He wanted it desperately. He thought himself into this state out of this desperation and perhaps it helped tip him over the edge into insanity. Certainly, the psychosomatic aspects of the second phase merge into near-monomania in the third.
He never stopped writing important things in that third phase but we, the reader, find ourselves shifting from the thought as a whole to abstracting the thoughts we find useful from a huge corpus of ranting and aphoristic position-taking which is exhausting and time-consuming to say the least.
Nietzsche must be counted a true genius if an unstable one but one around which we should be careful to retain our critical faculties. Safranski has thus done us a great service by showing his thought as a process within a particular context underpinned by a very definite personality.
What exactly we do with Nietzsche is down to our particular contexts and our particular personalities but one thing is clear. If we are at all serious about thinking, we have to start, in effect, from the Truth of our situation in relation to the world that this genius exposed to us.
His thought is only the beginning of our own thought and is not for the faint-hearted. It was always potentially very dangerous to individual and society alike. The continuing denial of its truth may indicate just how deluded about our condition we necessarily have to be in order to be human.
April 21, 2018
If anyone is planning to dig in the philosophy of Nietzsche, I recommend this book as a good start as it gives you a background on his life and his works. I really liked to follow the development of Nietzsche's ideas and the way he changes it. What I liked the most is the concept on how one avoids from being purely spiritual or purely natural, he views these poles as dangerous. Another, perhaps misunderstanding is the concept of anti-religion. Even though I partly disagree with him in his anti-religion sentiment, I liked that he emphasizes that even an irreligious man cannot live without moral, he views morality as a reason why humans have evolved from animals.
A logical continuation would be "Thus spoke Zarathustra", unless you want to dig deeper, I liked Rudiger Safranski's analysis of book "Human, all to human" in this book (it was somewhere between 9-12 chapter) as it is where Nietzsche rejects the idea of humanity, probably heavily influencing Oswald Spengler some decades later.
A logical continuation would be "Thus spoke Zarathustra", unless you want to dig deeper, I liked Rudiger Safranski's analysis of book "Human, all to human" in this book (it was somewhere between 9-12 chapter) as it is where Nietzsche rejects the idea of humanity, probably heavily influencing Oswald Spengler some decades later.
February 10, 2019
I know people say this book is great, but I didn't think the throughlines were as strong as they could have been. It was both biography and summary of Nietzsche's work, without doing an amazing job of either, to be honest. I think I need to read at least one more biography of Nietzsche, at least. He's a complicated guy, of course. This just didn't nail it for me like I was led to expect it would.
May 18, 2020
A dense book about Nietzsche’s journey with philosophy. I read this to decide whether or not to attempt one of Nietzsche’s books, and I’m still torn on the issue. I’m glad I read this book, however, as it gave me a fuller perspective with which to approach his work.
“There is no point of arrival in Nietzsche’s philosophy, no outcome, and no end result. There is only the will to an unceasing adventure in thinking.”
“There is no point of arrival in Nietzsche’s philosophy, no outcome, and no end result. There is only the will to an unceasing adventure in thinking.”
May 14, 2021
Lees wat ik vond van dit prachtboek van Rüdiger Safranski op depiependemeerkoet.nl.
April 17, 2024
A must read for anyone interested in the mad Philosopher. Originally written in German the author had access to Nietzsche's notes and letters and works that were not tampered with by his sister and that we lack in English.
My only complaint is after really mining through his earlier works the author felt Nietzsche repeated many of the same themes in his older works and so skipped through the works after Zarathustra very quickly. The Genealogy only gets a few pages which is more then the other ones.
This book helped me as I hadn't read through the Untimely Meditations, Dawn, or Human All too Human and the author spends a lot of time with these early works.
One reviewer didn't like how the author bounces around but I don't see how that can be helped when Nietzsche wrote the way he did. If there is one systematic point Nietzsche did make in his way was that his philosophy is one of constant becoming and trying on new perspectives which I find very relatable. I thought N wrote aphoristically due to his health issues but the author believes he fought his craving impulse to lay out a comprehensive and systematic system and forced himself to write aphoristically.
The author didn't go to much into N's personal life but he did a little more in his early youth. N would interrupt his play to write down what they were doing and summarize it in ways that made it sound more fun then it actually was. He would also try and remember every detail of his life and write autobiographies of himself which is when he realized he could not remember everything and the mind was limited. But he came to this after scrutinizing his own mind and thoughts extensively which is what gave his philosophy to the degree that it is interesting is due to this well honed insight into his own inner workings.
From an early age N really honed his writing style.
N seemed to have gone through several major phases in his writing.
First is centered around his relationship with Wagner and his books Birth of Tragedy and Untimely Meditations where the two of them believed art and especially music would be able to create a myth for modern man and give meaning to life in replace of religion. However after witnessing the vulgarity of the Bayreuth festival and how crass people were and who were more interested in pleasurable entertainment and free food then having the religious artistic experience N was hoping for he became disillusioned.
This early phase is one of my favorite of N's I think although he has some good things in the next as well. But I really like his attack on the grasping will to knowledge that seeks to strip all meaning and mystery from things. And his balance of Dionysus and Apollo is much more sophisticated then his later reliance on just the Dionysian instinct. At this stage he understands Socrates as the one who begins this rationalized will to knowledge that demystifies and destroys the religious.
The second phase is captured in Human All too Human and Daybreak. Like Plato N turns on his beloved art and attacks it. He does this by "cooling off" and embracing cold hard reason and abandons the tragic and dramatic comfort of art. Socrates and Plato instead of being the representations of rationalism that destroy myth they become the idealistic escape from the cold and brutal atomistic world of Democritus that for Nietzsche represents science. During this time N got into reading science and physiology. Which is somewhat disappointing for he returned to the myth of his age, scientific reason, to find a way to cope with reality. From this point on knowledge for N becomes a meaningful expansion of oneself.
The third phase begins when he discovers the eternal recurrence of the same. From this point on he expands and clarifies his main theories such as the eternal recurrence of the same, Ubermensch, Will to Power, Amor Fati, and being a free creative spirit. I previously never understood how N could attack ideals so ferociously and yet posit the Ubermensch. But the Ubermensch is a self referential ideal and a person's higher and greater self supposedly.
Towards the end the author talked about the "augurs smile" as a mask worn by those who knowingly tell people a lie and points in evidence in N's writing that he may have had doubts as to his own ideas.
It seems pretty clear that the WEF has read N and were big fans of the Philosophers role of legislating value and the "augurs smile" smiling the way only a psychopath can.
My only complaint is after really mining through his earlier works the author felt Nietzsche repeated many of the same themes in his older works and so skipped through the works after Zarathustra very quickly. The Genealogy only gets a few pages which is more then the other ones.
This book helped me as I hadn't read through the Untimely Meditations, Dawn, or Human All too Human and the author spends a lot of time with these early works.
One reviewer didn't like how the author bounces around but I don't see how that can be helped when Nietzsche wrote the way he did. If there is one systematic point Nietzsche did make in his way was that his philosophy is one of constant becoming and trying on new perspectives which I find very relatable. I thought N wrote aphoristically due to his health issues but the author believes he fought his craving impulse to lay out a comprehensive and systematic system and forced himself to write aphoristically.
The author didn't go to much into N's personal life but he did a little more in his early youth. N would interrupt his play to write down what they were doing and summarize it in ways that made it sound more fun then it actually was. He would also try and remember every detail of his life and write autobiographies of himself which is when he realized he could not remember everything and the mind was limited. But he came to this after scrutinizing his own mind and thoughts extensively which is what gave his philosophy to the degree that it is interesting is due to this well honed insight into his own inner workings.
From an early age N really honed his writing style.
N seemed to have gone through several major phases in his writing.
First is centered around his relationship with Wagner and his books Birth of Tragedy and Untimely Meditations where the two of them believed art and especially music would be able to create a myth for modern man and give meaning to life in replace of religion. However after witnessing the vulgarity of the Bayreuth festival and how crass people were and who were more interested in pleasurable entertainment and free food then having the religious artistic experience N was hoping for he became disillusioned.
This early phase is one of my favorite of N's I think although he has some good things in the next as well. But I really like his attack on the grasping will to knowledge that seeks to strip all meaning and mystery from things. And his balance of Dionysus and Apollo is much more sophisticated then his later reliance on just the Dionysian instinct. At this stage he understands Socrates as the one who begins this rationalized will to knowledge that demystifies and destroys the religious.
The second phase is captured in Human All too Human and Daybreak. Like Plato N turns on his beloved art and attacks it. He does this by "cooling off" and embracing cold hard reason and abandons the tragic and dramatic comfort of art. Socrates and Plato instead of being the representations of rationalism that destroy myth they become the idealistic escape from the cold and brutal atomistic world of Democritus that for Nietzsche represents science. During this time N got into reading science and physiology. Which is somewhat disappointing for he returned to the myth of his age, scientific reason, to find a way to cope with reality. From this point on knowledge for N becomes a meaningful expansion of oneself.
The third phase begins when he discovers the eternal recurrence of the same. From this point on he expands and clarifies his main theories such as the eternal recurrence of the same, Ubermensch, Will to Power, Amor Fati, and being a free creative spirit. I previously never understood how N could attack ideals so ferociously and yet posit the Ubermensch. But the Ubermensch is a self referential ideal and a person's higher and greater self supposedly.
Towards the end the author talked about the "augurs smile" as a mask worn by those who knowingly tell people a lie and points in evidence in N's writing that he may have had doubts as to his own ideas.
It seems pretty clear that the WEF has read N and were big fans of the Philosophers role of legislating value and the "augurs smile" smiling the way only a psychopath can.
November 26, 2022
There is nothing to say about this book, because Safranski says it all. But something in particular must be pointed out: Besides the comprehensive content he covers, what strikes me formally is his unique style of writing. He always employs a reasonable structure, laying a thread whose multiple ends he explores, some of which he lingers over, some of which he touches upon, some of which he mentions and passes over, but he never stays with them for a too great or small amount of time, thus picking up the thread at the right time in order to move on with the story, a story that thrives on his oscillating analytical rigor and his creativity to draw meaningful connections with both temporally and thematically close as well as distant of Nietzsche's statements, events of his life, or themes of other philosophers; a story Safranski narrates with a predicative sentence structure that renders his writing concise and so occasionally produces beautiful aphorisms, and even more frequently curious wordplay. His style his reminiscent - of whose? I believe one can make an informed guess.
August 24, 2023
Stellar. I was looking for a sweeping introduction to Nietzsche’s thought, less biographical and more intellectually concerned. A work that wouldn’t try to do too much, yet didn’t fall flat with a thin veneer of substance. That’s what I found here in Safranski’s philosophical engagement with Nietzsche. I can see why this book is so widely praised, and it’s certainly a great place to begin before engaging with Nietzsche directly as he’s somewhat of a complicated individual. The man who once understood himself as “a plant, born near the church yard,” succeeded in creating himself anew. His was an explosive impact, not in his own day, but in the next. A byword or a proverb; I I guess it just depends on where you’re standing.
“I know my destiny. Someday my name will be associated with something tremendous, a crisis like no other on earth, the profoundest collision of conscience, a decision conjured up against everything that had been believed, required, and held sacred up to that time. I am not a man; I am dynamite.” (P. 308)
Dynamite, indeed.
“I know my destiny. Someday my name will be associated with something tremendous, a crisis like no other on earth, the profoundest collision of conscience, a decision conjured up against everything that had been believed, required, and held sacred up to that time. I am not a man; I am dynamite.” (P. 308)
Dynamite, indeed.
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