Nietzsche and Postmodernism

If each age has its founding prophet, then Nietzsche occupied that role for our postmodern world. No other 19th Century thinker foreshadowed the collapse of the Enlightenment project with such grandeoise eloquence. Nietzsche himself prophesised that he was writing for a future audience since his contemporaries were still looming in notions of Truth, Objectivity, and Universal morality -- "Christian dogmatic entrails", as he once rudely put it. It is no surprise that today Nietzsche enjoys such wide appeal, since we are his anticipated audience.If you know nothing about Nietzsche and/or postmodernsim, then Robinson's book is a good, concise and simple introduction. Robinson successfully shows how some of the most significant ideas of many major 20th Century philosophers -- ideas that pertain to language, power and politics -- were actually extensions of Nietzsche's own intuitions which he only alluded to but never fully developed in his own works. In this sense Nietzsche was like the seed from which the branches of postmodernity have sprung.The book is extremely short and can be read in a few hours. It is not highly academic and avoids technical jargon. There is also a useful glossary at the back. The only problem is that sometimes the book becomes a little too simplistic. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it can be counterproductive to explaining philosophy. Barebones sketches of Nietzsche are particularly difficult since his writings evade systematization. But you can use Robinsion's work as a spring board to plunge directly into Niezsche's own writings. If you've already read quite a bit of Nietzshce, then the book can still be useful for understanding his influence on such writers as Foucault, Derrida, Rorty and Lyotard.