Fighting a Philosophy [microform]

by William Archer

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36 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1914

About the author

William Archer was a Scottish writer and theatre critic, based, for most of his career, in London. He was an early advocate of the plays of Henrik Ibsen, and an early friend and supporter of George Bernard Shaw.

In 1878, in accordance with his father's wishes, he moved to London to train as a barrister. He was uninterested in the law, and was by now fascinated with the theatre. He qualified for the bar in 1883, but never practised. He supported himself by working as dramatic critic of The London Figaro, and after he finished his legal studies he moved to The World, where he remained from 1884 to 1906. In London he soon took a prominent literary place and exercised much influence.

Reviews

[Διόνυσος Ελευθέριος · Rating 1 out of 5]

Fighting a Philosophy is a pamphlet written during the early years of World War I. I'm not entirely clear on who—specifically—the author is (for there are several William Archers of the period), but I suspect it is the William Archer of Scotland (1856-1924), who received his M.A. from the University of Edinburgh in 1876. That William Archer was a writer for publications such as the Edinburgh Evening News, the London Figaro and the World and that William Archer also wrote critical commentaries on subjects such as theater. Unlikely as that might initially seem to make that William Archer the writer of this pamphlet, that William Archer also appears to have been the editor of an anthology, Gems (?) of German Thought (1917), seems to have translated several works from German into English, and wrote a play War is War in 1919, providing the elements necessary to support the possibility of his authorship of a polemic on the German philosopher Nietzsche and the perceived role that Nietzsche had in the war. In support of this supposition is also the introduction to Gems (?) of German Thought in which German nationalism, Nietzsche, and Treitschke (I believe he refers to the nationalist German historian Heinrich Gotthard von Treitschke) all prominently appear, and all three of which are primary themes in this pamphlet. In this pamphlet, Archer makes the claim that Nietzsche is largely responsible for Germany's attitude during the war. He views Nietzsche as a grave threat to the times and invokes passages from Nietzsche's corpus to support the claim that Nietzsche, without considering the consequences of his own writing, brought about reckless German nationalism and militarism. He also attacks Nietzsche personally, claiming the existence of a link between Nietzsche's ultimate madness and his writing, between his poor health and the apparent cruelty found in his writing, and Archer even claims that Nietzsche was himself a teacher of revenge. What Archer claims can be found in Nietzsche is little more than a "transcript of character" (20)—and a warped one at that—, ambiguity, and contradiction. Though a complete misapprehension of Nietzsche in almost every possible respect, this pamphlet is interesting for the insight it can give into some of the earliest days of Nietzsche's reception, some elements of which persist even to this day (perhaps the most basic of which is that Nietzsche's philosophy is merely a philosophy with which one might interact—whether in fighting or honoring—instead of recognizing it for what it is—the philosophy of our age).