Nietzsche Life As Literature

More than eighty years after his death, Nietzsche's writings and his career remain disquieting, disturbing, obscure. His most famous views--the will to power, the eternal recurrence, the bermensch, the master morality--often seem incomprehensible or, worse, repugnant. Yet he remains a thinker of singular importance, a great opponent of Hegel and Kant, and the source of much that is powerful in figures as diverse as Wittgenstein, Derrida, Heidegger, and many recent American philosophers. Alexander Nehamas provides the best possible guide for the perplexed. He reveals the single thread running through Nietzsche's views: his thinking of the world on the model of a literary text, of people as if they were literary characters, and of knowledge and science as if they were literary interpretation. Beyond this, he advances the clarity of the concept of textuality, making explicit some of the forces that hold texts together and so hold us together. Nehamas finally allows us to see that Nietzsche is creating a literary character out of himself, that he is, in effect, playing the role of Plato to his own Socrates. Nehamas discusses a number of opposing views, both American and European, of Nietzsche's texts and general project, and reaches a climactic solving of the main problems of Nietzsche interpretation in a step-by-step argument. In the process he takes up a set of very interesting questions in contemporary philosophy, such as moral relativism and scientific realism. This is a book of considerable breadth and elegance that will appeal to all curious readers of philosophy and literature.

An advanced introduction for students and a re-orientation for Nietzsche scholars and intellectual historians on the development of his thought and the aesthetic construction of his identity as a philosopher. Nietzsche looms over modern literature and thought; according to Gottfried Benn, "everything my generation discussed, thought through innerly; one could say: suffered; or one could even say: took to the point of exhaustion -- allof it had already been said . . . by Nietzsche; all the rest was just exegesis." Nietzsche's influence on intellectual life today is arguably as great; witness the various societies, journals, and websites and the steady stream ofpapers, collections, and monographs. This Companion offers new essays from the best Nietzsche scholars, emphasizing the interrelatedness of his life and thought, eschewing a superficial biographical method but taking seriously his claim that great philosophy is "the self-confession of its author and a kind of unintended and unremarked memoir." Each essay examines a major work by Nietzsche; together, they offer an advanced introduction for students of German Studies, philosophy, and comparative literature as well as for the lay reader. Re-establishing the links between Nietzsche's philosophical texts and their biographical background, the volume alerts Nietzschescholars and intellectual historians to the internal development of his thought and the aesthetic construction of his identity as a philosopher. Contributors: Ruth Abbey, Keith Ansell-Pearson, Rebecca Bamford, Paul Bishop, Thomas H. Brobjer, Daniel W. Conway, Adrian Del Caro, Carol Diethe, Michael Allen Gillespie and Keegan F. Callanan, Laurence Lampert, Duncan Large, Martin Liebscher, Martine Prange, Alan D. Schrift. Paul Bishop is William Jacks Chair of Modern Languages at the University of Glasgow.

Nietzsche had a particular interest in the relationship between art and life, and in art's contribution to his philosophical aims—to identify the conditions of the affirmation of life, cultural renewal, and exemplary human living. These new essays demonstrate that understanding his engagement with art is essential for understanding his philosophy.

NEW YORK TIMES Editors’ Choice • THE TIMES BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR • WINNER OF THE HAWTHORNDEN PRIZE A groundbreaking new biography of philosophy’s greatest iconoclast Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most enigmatic figures in philosophy, and his concepts—the Übermensch, the will to power, slave morality—have fundamentally reshaped our understanding of the human condition. But what do most people really know of Nietzsche—beyond the mustache, the scowl, and the lingering association with nihilism and fascism? Where do we place a thinker who was equally beloved by Albert Camus, Ayn Rand, Martin Buber, and Adolf Hitler? Nietzsche wrote that all philosophy is autobiographical, and in this vividly compelling, myth-shattering biography, Sue Prideaux brings readers into the world of this brilliant, eccentric, and deeply troubled man, illuminating the events and people that shaped his life and work. From his placid, devoutly Christian upbringing—overshadowed by the mysterious death of his father—through his teaching career, lonely philosophizing on high mountains, and heart-breaking descent into madness, Prideaux documents Nietzsche’s intellectual and emotional life with a novelist’s insight and sensitivity. She also produces unforgettable portraits of the people who were most important to him, including Richard and Cosima Wagner, Lou Salomé, the femme fatale who broke his heart; and his sister Elizabeth, a rabid German nationalist and anti-Semite who manipulated his texts and turned the Nietzsche archive into a destination for Nazi ideologues. I Am Dynamite! is the essential biography for anyone seeking to understand history's most misunderstood philosopher.

While most recent studies of Nietzsche's works have lost sight of the fundamental question of the meaning of a life characterized by inescapable suffering, Bernard Reginster's book The Affirmation of Life brings it sharply into focus. Reginster identifies overcoming nihilism as a central objective of Nietzsche's philosophical project, and shows how this concern systematically animates all of his main ideas.

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

Reading Nietzsche's works as the "political biography of his soul," Leslie Thiele presents an original and accessible essay on the great thinker's attempt to lead a heroic life as a philosopher, artist, saint, educator, and solitary. He takes as his point of departure Nietzsche's conception of the soul as a multiplicity of conflicting drives and personae, and focuses on the task Nietzsche allotted himself "to make a cosmos out of his chaotic inheritance." This struggle to "become what you are" by way of a spiritual politics is demonstrated to be Nietzsche's foremost concern, which fused his philosophy with his life. The book offers a conversation with Nietzsche rather than a consideration of the secondary literature, yet it takes to task many prevalent approaches to his work, and contests especially the way we often restrict our encounter with him to conceptual analysis. All deconstructionist attempts to portray him as solely concerned with the destruction of the subject and the dispersion of the self, rather than its unification, are called into question. Often portrayed as the champion of nihilism, Nietzsche here emerges as a thinker who saw his primary task as the overcoming of nihilism through the heroic struggle of individuation.

This influential book was the first comprehensive study of Nietzsche's earliest work, The Birth of Tragedy (1872).

In this wide-ranging, brilliantly written account, Nehamas provides an incisive reevaluation of Socrates' place in the Western philosophical tradition and shows the importance of Socrates for Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault.

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.