How To Read Nietzsche

Paying particular attention to the issue of how to read Nietzsche, this book presents a series of accessible essays on the work of this influential German philosopher. The contributions include many of the leading Nietzsche scholars in the United States today - Frithjof Bergmann, Arthur Danto, Bernd Magnus, Christopher Middleton, Lars Gustaffson, Alexander Nehamas, Richard Schacht, Gary Shapiro, and Ivan Soll - and the majority of the essays have never been published. Works discussed include On the Genealogy of Morals, Beyond Good and Evil, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Twilight of the Idols, and The Will to Power.

Introduction by Peter Gay Translated and edited by Walter Kaufmann Commentary by Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, and Gilles Deleuze One hundred years after his death, Friedrich Nietzsche remains the most influential philosopher of the modern era. Basic Writings of Nietzsche gathers the complete texts of five of Nietzsche’s most important works, from his first book to his last: The Birth of Tragedy, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, The Case of Wagner, and Ecce Homo. Edited and translated by the great Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann, this volume also features seventy-five aphorisms, selections from Nietzsche’s correspondence, and variants from drafts for Ecce Homo. It is a definitive guide to the full range of Nietzsche’s thought. Includes a Modern Library Reading Group Guide

'My humanity is a constant self-overcoming' Friedrich Nietzsche Nietzsche's thinking revolves around a new and striking concept of humanity - a humanity which has come to terms with the death of God and practises 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 ofhis best-known but often ill-understood ideas, including eternal recurrence and the superman, the death of God and the will to power, and 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.

"Beyond Good and Evil" is a concise and comprehensive statement of Nietzsche's mature philosophy and is an ideal entry point into Nietzsche's work as a whole. Pithy, lyrical and densely complex, "Beyond Good and Evil" demands that its readers are already familiar with key Nietzschean concepts - such as the will-to-power, perspectivism or eternal recurrence - and are able to leap with Nietzschean agility from topic to topic, across metaphysics, psychology, religion, morality and politics. "Reading Nietzsche" explains the key concepts, the range of Nietzsche's concerns, and highlights Nietzsche's writing strategies that are the key to understanding his work and processes of thought. In its close analysis of the text, "Reading Nietzsche" reassesses this most creative of philosophers and presents a significant contribution to the study of his thought. In setting this analysis within a comprehensive survey of Nietzsche's ideas, the book is a guide both to this key work and to Nietzsche's philosophy more generally.

Friedrich Nietzsche believed his own work represented the dawning of a new historical era, and, despite the fact that he lived most of his sane life suffering in obscurity, it is not an exaggeration to say that his vision helped lay the foundations for modernism in style, substance and attitude. Nietzsche was himself devoted to the modern, for he reinterpreted every philosophy, every historical figure and event, every movement that came before him. This reconceptualization of the past through new, modern eyes opened up Nietzsche's thinking to exploring daring possibilities for the future. This prophetic boldness, which is so unique to his style, seduced the modernist generation across the spectrum. He was read by early Zionists as well as by Nazi racial theorists; by Thomas Mann and as well as by Salvador Dali. His influence stretched from psychoanalysis to anarchist politics. Understanding Nietzsche, Understanding Modernism traces the effect of Nietzsche's thinking upon a diverse set of problems: from ontology, to politics, to musical and literary aesthetics. The first section of the volume is a series of essays, each exploring a major work of Nietzsche's, explaining its significance while contributing new interpretations of the text. The middle portion connects Nietzsche's thought to the various strands of modernism in which it reveals itself. The final section is a glossary of key terms that Nietzsche uses throughout his works. An excellent resource for any scholar attempting to conceptualize the foundations of modernism or the historical importance of Nietzsche, this volume seeks to outline the philosopher's works and their reception amongst the generations that immediately followed his passing.

The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was almost wholly neglected during his sane life, which came to an abrupt end in 1889. Since then he has been appropriated as an icon by an astonishingly diverse spectrum of people, whose interpretations of his thought range from the highly irrational to the firmly analytical. Thus Spoke Zarathustra introduced the 'superman' and The Twilight of the Idols developed the 'Will to Power' concept; these term, together with 'Sklavenmoral' and 'Herrenmoral', became confused with the rise of nationalism in Germany. Idiosyncratic and aphoristic, Nietzsche is always bracing and provocative, and temptingly easy to dip into. Michael Tanner's readable introduction to the philosopher's life and work examines the numerous ambiguities inherent in his writings. It also explodes the many misconceptions fostered in the hundred years since Nietzsche wrote, prophetically: 'Do not, above all, confound me with what I am not!' ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

An important figure in the development of Nietzsche scholarship, Mazzino Montinari (1928-86) dedicated himself to the detailed study of the philosopher's writings. This lifetime of scholarship crystallized in Montinari's work as coeditor of the critical edition of Nietzsche's collected writings. Reading Nietzsche, now available in English for the first time, is a group of essays that grew out of this monumental work. In Reading Nietzsche Montinari tackles such subjects as the relationship between Nietzsche and Wagner, early drafts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and the philosopher's reputation among the Nazis and Marxists of the 1930s and 1940s. He also deals authoritatively with a number of figures who have had an unfortunate influence upon the way Nietzsche has been understood, from the chief Nazi interpreter of Nietzsche, Alfred Bäumler, to the chief Marxist interpreter, Georg Lukàcs, to Nietzsche's sister, Elisabeth.

Nietzsche, the philosopher seemingly opposed to everyone, has met with remarkably little opposition himself. He remains what he wanted to be— the limit-philosopher of a modernity that never ends. In this provocative, sometimes disturbing book, Bull argues that merely to reject Nietzsche is not to escape his lure. He seduces by appealing to our desire for victory, our creativity, our humanity. Only by ‘reading like a loser’ and failing to live up to his ideals can we move beyond Nietzsche to a still more radical revaluation of all values—a subhumanism that expands the boundaries of society until we are left with less than nothing in common. Anti-Nietzsche is a subtle and subversive engagement with Nietzsche and his twentieth-century interpreters—Heidegger, Vattimo, Nancy, and Agamben. Written with economy and clarity, it shows how a politics of failure might change what it means to be human.

The works of Friedrich Nietzsche have fascinated readers around the world ever since the publication of his first book more than a hundred years ago. As Walter Kaufmann, one of the world’s leading authorities on Nietzsche, notes in his introduction, “Few writers in any age were so full of ideas,” and few writers have been so consistently misinterpreted. The Portable Nietzsche includes Kaufmann’s definitive translations of the complete and unabridged texts of Nietzsche’s four major works: Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, Nietzsche Contra Wagner and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In addition, Kaufmann brings together selections from his other books, notes, and letters, to give a full picture of Nietzsche’s development, versatility, and inexhaustibility. “In this volume, one may very conveniently have a rich review of one of the most sensitive, passionate, and misunderstood writers in Western, or any, literature.” —Newsweek

Nietzsche's friend, the philosopher Paul Rée, once said that Nietzsche was more important for his letters than for his books, and even more important for his conversations than for his letters. In Conversations with Nietzsche, Sander Gilman and David Parent present a fascinating selection of eighty-seven memoirs, anecdotes, and informal recollections by friends and acquaintances of Nietzsche. Translated from the definitive German collection, Begegnungen mit Nietzsche, these biographical pieces--some of which have never before appeared in English--cover the entire span of Nietzsche's life: his boyhood friendships, his arrival at the University of Bonn, his appointment to professor at Basel at age twenty-four, the impact of The Birth of Tragedy, his friendship with Wagner, his life in Italy, his confinement at the Jena Sanatorium, and his death. They present the philosopher in dialogue with friends and acquaintances, and provide new insights into him as a thinker and as a commentator on his times, recounting his views on some of the greats of history, including Burckhardt, Goethe, Kant, Dostoevsky, Napoleon, and numerous others. In his selections, Gilman has carefully balanced documents concerning Nietzsche's personal life with others on his intellectual development, resulting in an entertaining and informative book that will appeal to a wide audience of educated readers.