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Nietzsche: A Selected Annotated Bibliography Understanding NietzscheMore than any other philosopher, Nietzsche has been read in vastly different and contradictory ways. He has been appropriated by both the right and the left; read as a fascist and a socialist, a conservative and a revolutionary, a religious thinker and an atheist. And interpretations of him continue to multiply. “Thus the contemporary world is characterized by apparently mutually incompatible claims as to whose Nietzsche is the ‘true’ Nietzsche.” 5 Ironically, one difficulty with understanding Nietzsche is that he is too easy to read. Readers are easily carried away by his brilliant style, by the way he dramatizes and personalizes ideas, and by his passionate intensity. Nietzsche cautioned, with little effect, against reading him quickly: he wrote, I am “a teacher of slow reading… Nowadays it is not only my habit, it is also to my taste…no longer to write anything which does not reduce to despair every sort of man who is ‘in a hurry.’…it is more necessary than ever today…in the midst of an age of ‘work’, that is to say of hurry…which wants to ‘get everything done’ at once…learn to read me well!” 6 The biggest obstacle, however, to understanding Nietzsche is that his ideas were never systematically developed (he distrusted all systems), but are scattered thoughout his writings and often seem to contradict each other. As Jaspers writes, “For nearly every single one of Nietzsche’s judgments, one can find an opposite. He gives the impression of having two opinions about everything. Consequently it is possible to quote Nietzsche at will in support of anything one happens to have in mind.” 7 Add to that, Nietzsche’s exaggerated rhetoric, “exaggeration or hyperbole [is the] single most pervasive feature of his writing…” 8 and the result are texts with seemingly endless possible meanings and interpretations. Consequently, any interpretation of Nietzsche needs to confront the problem of Nietzsche’s many contradictory views. Many have tried to harmonize these contradictions by organizing Nietzsche’s work around a central idea. For Ernst Behler, whether Nietzsche’s thought can be systematized is the “central question that perhaps every interpretation of Nietzsche must raise; namely, whether the philosopher’s aphoristic and fragmentary text, which apparently rejects final principles and systematic coherence, nevertheless can be read in the style of traditional metaphysics.” 9 The attempt to systematize Nietzsche’s thought is best exemplified by Heidegger, who based his interpretation of Nietzsche on the idea of the will to power (as do Schacht and Kaufmann, although their interpretations are vastly different). Other scholars have tried to organized Nietzsche’s thought around nihilism (Danto), or eternal recurrence (Lowith, Magnus). The French Nietzscheans, e.g., Foucault, Derrida, Kofman, Deleuze, and their followers, by contrast, tend to resist this effort to unify his thought, arguing that Nietzsche’s shifting meanings and contradictions resist systematization. “[M]uch of the French work on Nietzsche can be seen as a refutation of Heidegger’s [metaphysical] interpretation by insisting on the metaphorical character of Nietzsche’s writings, his style, his irony, and his masks.” 10 How Nietzsche writes, his use of aphorisms, metaphors, and wide range of literary styles is seen as important as what he writes about. Nietzsche’s style is not seen as obscuring or concealing his meaning, as has often been argued, but as inseparable from and expressive of it. Nietzsche’s style expresses, in an important way, his philosophy. For example, Alexander Nehamas argues that Nietzsche “depends on many styles in order to suggest that there is no single, neutral language in which his views, or any others can ever be presented.” 11 Yet, I would argue, there is a unity or a narrative to Nietzsche’s thought. Central to his thinking is the idea of the “death of God” and the impending cultural catastrophe, which he called nihilism, that is its consequence. Nietzsche devoted much of his life to thinking through the consequences of “this greatest event in history.” As Löwith argues, “Nietzsche’s actual thought is a…system, at the beginning of which stands the death of God…the ensuing nihilism, and at its end the self-surmounting of nihilism in eternal recurrence.” 12 The problem for Nietzsche, and one that exemplifies the contradictory character of his thought, is that although he argues that belief in God has devalued this world, the death of God leads to the belief that life is meaningless. As Walter Kaufmann writes, “To escape nihilism-which…involved both asserting the existence of God and thus robbing this world of ultimate significance, and also in denying God and thus robbing everything of meaning and value-that is Nietzsche’s greatest and most persistent problem.” 13 ------------------- 5. Tracy Strong, “Nietzsche’s Political Misappropriation,” Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche. (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 129. 6. Friedrich Nietzsche Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) preface, 5. 7. Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1965) 10. 8. Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature. (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1985) 22. 9. Ernst Behler, Confrontations: Derrida, Heidegger, Nietzsche. (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press) 10. 10. Ernst Behler, “Nietzsche in the Twentieth Century,” The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche. (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 316. 11. Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life As Literature (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1985) 37 12. Karl Löwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth Century Thought. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991) 193. 13. Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968) 102. |