Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography

A good start and perspective to Nietzsche's thinking

�What meaning would our whole being have if it were not that in us that will to truth has become conscious of itself _as a problem_ within us?� --*On the Genealogy of Morals*Nietzsche lived the life of an ascetic priest who tried to pull Dionysus *inward*, internalizing the Graeco-Gnostic night journey of transformative self-enhancement, lifelong psychic combat at the frontiers of metaphor and expression. There is so much rebellious kicking and thrashing in N.�s collected works, a witch�s wind of wild conjecture emanating from a chthonic whirlpool, that a long, embattled tradition of miscomprehension, accusation, and resentment was bound to ferment in its wake.... In the final year before his breakdown, N.�s landlady heard strange noises coming from his room, and sneaked upstairs to peek through the keyhole. The sight of N. dancing naked like the Hindu god Shiva, teetering on a ground-swell of hysteria, is a popular image (second only to that of a stonefaced, embittered loner pouring scorn on �the herd� from the separatist darkness of his cold rented room) that Rudiger Safranski aims to dignify, flesh out, qualify, and redact. In this regard, *Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography* is a boon and a delight, a sure-handed trump to all who doubt the centrality of N.�s thought (most American philosophy departments, monopolized by logicians of the �analytical� school, do not offer a course on Nietzsche).Safranski�s biography hits hermeneutic pay-dirt, delivers all the important playlets and dramas of N.�s strange and embittered life, the byzantine reversals, the ascetic hardships, the wild years of thought-experiment and self-overcoming as this great thinker pioneered the course of non-analytic philosophy in the 20th century. N.�s passion for conjecture inspired him to structure his life so as to yield Dramatis Personae for thought, a vast cosmological theater of monstrous forces and sibylline potency blazing trails through psychology, aesthetics, philosophy of science, moral theory, and (most disastrously) politics. All philosophical thinking that measures its worth against the great Tolstoyan question �How should one live?� will ultimately circle back to Nietzsche.Tactfully, Safranski skimps on the details, focusing on N.�s intellectual development, bringing anecdotal data to bear at strategic moments to help qualify the radical contradictions (and/or developmental reversals) of N.�s ever-flowing deluge of path-breaking insights. When the biographer gets his blood up, his pages glimmer with concise, penetrating analogies, quicksilver correspondences, and (most importantly) stark, evenhanded censure whenever N.�s blazing hubris gets ahead of itself, as in the notorious dogmatic triptych of Ubermensch, Eternal Recurrence, and Will to Power -- a thunderous, fulminating triad of doom-eager pomposity, the fulcrum of N.�s last-ditch hysterics and tragic mental collapse.What moves this reader most (apart from Safranski�s sparkling analytic concordance) is the story of N.�s transformative self-dramatizing putting him further and further outside the loop of human relatedness (even as he penetrated deeper into the chthonic underside of morality, desire, and the historical formation of contingent knowledge-structures). The Nietzsche Syndrome has become an occupational hazard for all lonely, dejected, ego-intensive scholars -- a millstone of toxic self-importance contaminating interpersonal nuance and making the most routine human contact an act of heavy lifting. �I feel as though I am condemned to silence or tactful hypocrisy in my dealings with everybody.� The chapter focusing on N.�s anguished courtship of Lou Andreas-Salome� is powerfully instructive. Here we see the proud egomaniac so befuddled by his philosophic fantasies (and their ruthless misapplication) that the lonely human being fulminating at their center can no longer break bread with the rest of the species. �My soul was missing its skin, so to speak, and all natural protections.� N.�s failure to heed Zarathustra�s doctrine that disciples should abandon their teachers as soon as they have �found� their teachings brought N. �to the brink of insanity�(253) in his yearning for Salome�, who, once she understood him, left N.�s side for new intellectual horizons. (In an unsent letter, anguished love-trauma turns to squalid, adolescent rancor: �This scrawny dirty smelly monkey with her fake breasts -- a disaster!�) N. had put so much of himself into speculative thought that the intricate eroto-politicking of courtship and love had become flat-out culture-shock, a strange netherworld of alien ritual and occult formality (exacerbated by a string of spontaneous marriage-proposals to various women during periods of depression and self-doubt).N.�s corpus of thought became, in many respects, a resentful war-machine geared to take imaginary revenge on the European culture that ignored his writings (while he lived), rebuffed his passion for radical redirection and reform, and refused to validate his Ubermenschian self-image as apocalyptic cultural messiah. We all know the story of N.�s betrayal of his earlier anti-essentialism for �the will to power,� his grasping for the brass ring of Metaphysics, for the Type A theoretical entity that would circumnavigate and contain the Universe in its pan-relational sightlines. As Safranski notes, Heidegger would condemn the Nietzschean will-to-power as the last metaphysical gasp of a resentful philosophic priest (an allegation that would close the karmic circle via Derrida�s critique of Heidegger�s *own* late theorizing). N. was a new Prometheus who sought to reclaim the religious creativity of the Graeco-Christian world and restructure the soul of humanity with a renewed spiritual vigor (played against a neo-Darwinist backdrop of cold-water atheism to keep thinking �grounded� in a steely empirical pragmatism). Safranski�s text conflates every major biographical and critical analysis into a compact, razorbacked, 400-page monster head-trip written to challenge, delight, amuse, and inspire all comers. His suspenseful and compelling portrait reminds us all of why we got into philosophy in the first place.This is a restorative text, a ritual reminder of philosophy�s manifold glories and fallibilities, and a meal served in flames.

This book took some time to read. The last few weeks I have been reading a lot on Nietzsche and this book took the longest to get through. This book is not meant to be a weekend read, this is a heavier read and should be read in a slower manner. He brings up a lot of information about the life and works of Nietzsche and how they intersected together. For the type of book this is, this is a highly recommended book to have on your bookshelf.If one is interested in a biography and wants to know what his works are and what they are about, this is the book to get. It is a great introduction to both at the same time.The life of Nietzsche is very well document by many authors, so if you have read a lot of bio's on Nietzsche, and tend to get bored with hearing or reading the same info over and over again, this might not be the book for you. If you are interested in Nietzsche and want to have a good overview of his life and works, this is the book to pick up. Those who are familiar with Nietzsche, this book does source some material not found, as I understand it, in the English community. So you might find some gems here.As far as I am concerned, this is one of the most detailed books on his life and his works together. I was hoping to read "Nietzsche" by Lou Salome and contrast the two books, but I have yet to get to that point.

Safranski devotes no more than four pages to a discussion of Nietzsche's homosexuality, as though it was of little consequence for a philosophical biography. I believe that underestimating the role that homosexuality played in Nietzsche's extremely troubled life makes it much harder to understand certain aspects of his philosophy and his life events. It is quite possible that his life-long struggle to hide and deny his sexual orientation led to his insanity. The repression of homosexuality is a common cause of schizophrenia. Nietzsche's hatred of Christianity may have been exacerbated by this religion's condemnation of homosexuality. Nietzsche's frequent trips to Italy might have been motivated by this country not criminalizing homosexuality, whereas it was punishable for up to five years in prison in Germany. Nietzsche's homosexuality can also shed light on his pathological misogyny. At least Safranski admits that Nietzsche was a homosexual, unlike other famous biographers like Walter Kaufman and Irvin Yalom. Until quite recently it was considered impossible that a homosexual could be a brilliant philosopher.