Nietzsche: Life as Literature

This book is excellent. Nehamas explicates Nietzsche's philosophy in such a way as to neutralize the paradoxes that logically arise from the conflict between the "content" of Nietzsche's critical philosophy and their written "form" (the previous sentence already manifests the difficulty in this project because of "the seduction of language (and of the fundamental errors of reason that are petrified in it)" GM I:13). For those of you who squint with suspicion at the credibility of an open online review (as I frequently do), I will supply some--but almost no--information (definitely not "knowledge") about myself: I hold a BA in philosophy from a university that celebrates its distinction in "continental philosophy" (whatever that means) and I have been reading Nietzsche for many years. The point however is that this book is one of the best books I've ever read on him and was essential in clearing up confusions that have plagued me for quite some time. Read it!

Nietzsche's "aestheticist" turn, in Alexander Nehamas's ingenious exposition, is twofold. First, he interpreted the entire world as an enormous literary text. Secondly, he was preoccupied by creating, through the medium of his texts, a specific personality, which as Nehamas contends, was Nietzsche himself. He argues that Nietzsche's key ideas, such as the will to power, nihilism, his view of truth, his ideas on cruelty, the overman and the dreadful doctrine of the eternal recurrence (which Nehamas interprets as a psychological, as opposed to cosmological, conception) were all fused into Nietzsche's aestheticist model of "self-creation". In a move of apocalyptic boldness, Nehamas claims that the figure of the overman which Nietzsche held in such high regard, was actually Nietzsche himself as he fashioned himself through his texts, a unique individual who affirmed the sum-total of life, which includes, of course, the suffering entailed in living. The literary analogues that Nehamas uses to illustrate Nietzsche's fundamental concepts are highly illuminating. Above all, Nehamas implies that theoretical knowledge is empty compared to the radical philosophy pursued by Nietzsche, which resulted in a synthetic merging of life with art. This philosophy, combining self-reference with self-creation was why Nietzsche was, and is, "the first Modernist as well as the last Romantic." Along with Walter Kaufmann's "Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Anti-Christ", this book is possibly the best book on Nietzsche available in English.

I am not a philosopher by training, but have read some of the classics in the field by sheer enjoyment, some Plato, some Aristotle, others also. But none impressed me more than Nietzsche, from whose opera I have savored many books: Genealogy of Morals (fantastic), Zarathustra (enigmatic), Antichrist (outraging), Twilight of the Idols, Ecce Homo, Birth of Tragedy, Beyond Good and Evil (don't die without reading this; if you don't read German, try Walter Kaufman's translations), and some parts of Dawn, Gay Science and Human-all-too-Human. I also read a couple of biographies. FN was a profound thinker, one of the most brilliant of all time, IMHO. And he was also a sad, lonely and pathetic man, a kind of Van Gogh in Philosophy. And this turns him also into an exceedingly interesting character. The central thesis of Nehamas book is that FN tried to build a character out of himself through his multi-style books. This character, a "free spirit", a "philosopher" in a very particular sense, or the übermensch if you will, is the common voice behind the many different literary styles he used, from the academic to the poetic to the prophetic. Nehamas wrote a very interesting book. I enjoyed it a lot and I thank him for giving me a new and surprising perspective on one of my preferred authors. And his prose does not lack a touch of drama, which is adequate to his subject, but is also unexpected in a technical book about modern philosophy. I recommend Nehamas strongly to anyone interested in Nietzsche.

This is one of the most well known hatchet jobs done on Nietzsche over the last two decades in hopes of selling the idea that Nietzsche is a postmodernist -- that is, a person who buys into the notion that the world is a text, or that text is everything, or that there is nothing outside the text, or some other grotesque expansion of the power of words. But Nietzsche is not one of those types. Indeed, 'there is nothing outside the text' is one of those pieces of philosophical insanity that can only be compared to other such pieces: like Parmenides belief that nothing moves, or Barkeley's belief that there is no such thing as matter, or Palto's belief that things do not have their properties, or Kant's belief that because we have categories we cannot know, and so on.Nehamas and postmodernism are outgrowths of German Idealism. Nietzsche rejected that school. Almost everything he fought he called 'idealism' at one point or another in hiw career. He thought of German philosophy as a flight from reality, and a coward's philosophy designed to make a big show and distract everyone from how paltry and small minded one's German soul really was. The very notion of life as literature is self-contradictory. But, of course, like all postmodern theorists, Nehamas is un-selfcritical. His rectitude is all that matters. Like all postmodernists, he demands that we sacrifice our knowledge in order to accept an absurdity. His absurdity: that a pretend Nietzsche is of the same value as the real Nietzsche -- that imaginary and real are equal.

thought provoking and an innovative and exciting interpretation of Nietzsche's work by one of most important classicists of our time - obliged reading on the topic and on general philosophy too

…so hallt es zurück. Was man in Nietzsche hineinlegt, liest man heraus. Dieses Buch ist ein Beispiel für akademisches Philosophieren im schlechtesten Sinn: Ein hochgestochenes Geschwurbel um mikroskopische Details eines Werks, dessen Hauptaspekte dabei überhaupt nicht ins Auge gefasst werden. Und nach jedem Kapitel erinnert man sich an Andersens Märchenparabel: "So ging der Kaiser unter dem prächtigen Thronhimmel, und alle Menschen auf der Straße und in den Fenstern sprachen: 'Wie sind des Kaisers neue Kleider unvergleichlich! Welche Schleppe er am Kleide hat! Wie schön sie sitzt!' Keiner wollte es sich merken lassen, daß er nichts sah; denn dann hätte er ja nicht zu seinem Amte getaugt oder wäre sehr dumm gewesen. Keine Kleider des Kaisers hatten solches Glück gemacht wie diese. 'Aber er hat ja gar nichts an!' sagte endlich ein kleines Kind. 'Hört die Stimme der Unschuld! sagte der Vater; und der eine zischelte dem andern zu, was das Kind gesagt hatte. 'Aber er hat ja gar nichts an!' rief zuletzt das ganze Volk. Das ergriff den Kaiser, denn das Volk schien ihm recht zu haben, aber er dachte bei sich: 'Nun muß ich aushalten.' Und die Kammerherren gingen und trugen die Schleppe, die gar nicht da war."