A Nietzsche Reader (Penguin Classics) by Friedrich Nietzsche

by Friedrich Nietzsche

Paperback

About the author

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture, who became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24, but resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties, with paralysis and probably vascular dementia. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900, after experiencing pneumonia and multiple strokes.
Nietzsche's work spans philosophical polemics, poetry, cultural criticism, and fiction while displaying a fondness for aphorism and irony. Prominent elements of his philosophy include his radical critique of truth in favour of perspectivism; a genealogical critique of religion and Christian morality and a related theory of master–slave morality; the aesthetic affirmation of life in response to both the "death of God" and the profound crisis of nihilism; the notion of Apollonian and Dionysian forces; and a characterisation of the human subject as the expression of competing wills, collectively understood as the will to power. He also developed influential concepts such as the Übermensch and his doctrine of eternal return. In his later work, he became increasingly preoccupied with the creative powers of the individual to overcome cultural and moral mores in pursuit of new values and aesthetic health. His body of work touched a wide range of topics, including art, philology, history, music, religion, tragedy, culture, and science, and drew inspiration from Greek tragedy as well as figures such as Zoroaster, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Wagner, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
After his death, Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth became the curator and editor of his manuscripts. She edited his unpublished writings to fit her German ultranationalist ideology, often contradicting or obfuscating Nietzsche's stated opinions, which were explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism. Through her published editions, Nietzsche's work became associated with fascism and Nazism. 20th-century scholars such as Walter Kaufmann, R.J. Hollingdale, and Georges Bataille defended Nietzsche against this interpretation, and corrected editions of his writings were soon made available. Nietzsche's thought enjoyed renewed popularity in the 1960s and his ideas have since had a profound impact on 20th- and early 21st-century thinkers across philosophy—especially in schools of continental philosophy such as existentialism, postmodernism, and post-structuralism—as well as art, literature, music, poetry, politics, and popular culture.

Reviews

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A HELPFUL COMPILATION, BY TOPIC

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher, cultural critic, poet and composer, most known for his statement, "God is dead." He suffered a mental collapse, and spent the last eleven years of his life in a psychiatric clinic. He wrote many other books. As a young man, he even tried his hand at composition [see his 'Complete Solo Piano Works'].

This book is “a selection from his major philosophical works … designed to give an overview of his thought, of his approach to the conventional problems of Western philosophy and of his own specific philosophy of the ‘will to power.’” It contains chapter divisions such as “Philosophy and Philosophers,” “Morality,” “Art and Aesthetics,” “Religion,” “Nihilism,” “Will to Power,” “Superman,” “Eternal Recurrence,” etc.

He said, “This … is how they go on: ‘…here is free-will, here there can be accusing, condemning, atonement and expiation: then let God be the sinner and man his redeemer: then let world-history be guilt, self-condemnation and suicide; thus will the offender become his own judge, the judge his own executioner.’ This Christianity stood on its head… is the final lunge in the struggle of the theory of unconditional morality with that of unconditional freedom… the philosopher has thus to say, as Christ did, ‘judge not!’ and the ultimate distinction between philosophical heads and the others would be that the former desire TO BE JUST, the others TO BE A JUDGE.” (Pg. 81)

He argues, “Thus the offender is punished because he employs ‘free-will’… because he acted without a reason when he ought to have acted in accordance with reasons. Why did he do this? But it is precisely this question that can no longer even be ASKED: it was a deed without a ‘for that reason’, without motive, without origin, something purposeless and non-rational---But such a deed too ought… not to be punished!... The offender certainly preferred the worse reasons to the better, but WITHOUT reason or intention: he certainly failed to employ his intelligence, but NOT FOR THE PURPOSE of not employing it…for an offense to be punishable its perpetrator must have intentionally acted contrary to his intelligence---it is precisely this presupposition which is annulled by the assumption of ‘free will’…” (Pg. 84)

He asserts, “The content of our consciousness is everything that was during the years of our childhood regularly DEMANDED of us without reason by the people we honoured or feared… The belief in authorities is the source of the conscience: it is therefore not the voice of God in the heart of man but the voice of some men in man.” (Pg. 85)

He states, “All the world still believes in the writings of the ‘Holy Ghost’ or stands in the after-effect of this belief: when one opens the Bible one does so to ‘edify’ oneself, to discover a signpost of consolation in one’s personal distress, great or small---in short, one reads oneself into and out of it. That it also contains the history of one of the most ambitious and importunate souls, of a mind so superstitious as it was cunning, the history of the apostle Paul---who, apart from a few scholars, knows that? But without this remarkable history, without the storms and confusions of such a mind, of such a soul, there would be no Christianity; we would hardly have heard of a little Jewish sect whose master died on the cross…” (Pg. 173-174) He adds, “the intoxication of Paul is at its height… and the intractable lust for power reveals itself as an anticipatory reveling in DIVINE glories---This is the FIRST CHRISTIAN, the inventor of Christianness! Before him there were only a few Jewish sectarians.” (Pg. 175-176)

He points out, “Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be a sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature---is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned!” (Pg. 177)

Even if you have read Nietzsche’s full-scale books, this reader is a helpful topical compilation; and for those who simply want an “overview” of his thought in a broad range of areas, this is an excellent volume.

[Nitin Goel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magnificent introduction to one of the greatest philosophers ever.