Nietzsche: Life as Literature

Alexander Nehamas's book is motivated by an effort to confront and resolve the paradoxes of Nietzsche's thinking. Throughout he emphasizes the interpretive nature of his project, both challenging alternative interpretations and conceding the possibility of equally sound alternatives. While perhaps superficially implausible, a critical reading -- any reading, in my opinion -- of his interpretation reveals a compellingly detailed, dense, well-articulated and sophisticated argument. It is disappointing to find poor reviews of his book. While he sometimes (i.e. rarely, I think, but always honestly) esteems Nietzsche lowly, his overall argument attempts to improve Nietzsche's standing both philosophically and as a person, and he rightly dismisses both uncritical adoration and uninformed rejection. The reviews suggesting the irrelevance of Nehamas's argument to Nietzsche's intentions seem to me untrue. Nehamas is concerned with refuting (or at least exposing the improbability) of interpretations that, both he and I think, *mask* Nietzsche's intentions, that are suggestive and profound but incomplete or textually infelicitous. I feel that he both articulates my vague dissatisfactions with existing interpretations and integrates my fragmentary intuitions concerning Nietzsche in general. I think his book must be judged a success. While *some* of his interpretation *may* seem gratuitous (such an objection itself seems gratuitous, I think), its originality and penetration will compel anyone who gives it a good chance. We must remember, as I'm sure I've emphasized unduly, that Nehamas's book is an interpretation, that no interpretation is entirely faithful to its object, and that Nehamas explicitly admits this. Anyone interested in Nietzsche should read it and, unlike those who shallowly dismiss Nietzsche's thought, withhold judgment until after a thorough, critical and honest engagement.

While Michael Tanner's criticism of this book in his Nietzsche is valid (Nehamas does quote way too much from The Will to Power), it is by far the only book on Nietzsche that I own that actually suggests how to use Nietzsche's philosophy in life. Who cares that the world is the will to power is a fact? This book suggests that perspectivism, will to power and surviving the thought of eternal recurrence are ways of thinking in which we can enhance our lives.

Nietzsche's "aestheticist" turn, in Alexander Nehamas's ingenious exposition, is twofold. First, he interpreted the entire world as an enormous literary text. Secondly, he was preoccupied by creating, through the medium of his texts, a specific personality, which as Nehamas contends, was Nietzsche himself. He argues that Nietzsche's key ideas, such as the will to power, nihilism, his view of truth, his ideas on cruelty, the overman and the dreadful doctrine of the eternal recurrence (which Nehamas interprets as a psychological, as opposed to cosmological, conception) were all fused into Nietzsche's aestheticist model of "self-creation". In a move of apocalyptic boldness, Nehamas claims that the figure of the overman which Nietzsche held in such high regard, was actually Nietzsche himself as he fashioned himself through his texts, a unique individual who affirmed the sum-total of life, which includes, of course, the suffering entailed in living. The literary analogues that Nehamas uses to illustrate Nietzsche's fundamental concepts are highly illuminating. Above all, Nehamas implies that theoretical knowledge is empty compared to the radical philosophy pursued by Nietzsche, which resulted in a synthetic merging of life with art. This philosophy, combining self-reference with self-creation was why Nietzsche was, and is, "the first Modernist as well as the last Romantic." Along with Walter Kaufmann's "Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Anti-Christ", this book is possibly the best book on Nietzsche available in English.

I am not a philosopher by training, but have read some of the classics in the field by sheer enjoyment, some Plato, some Aristotle, others also. But none impressed me more than Nietzsche, from whose opera I have savored many books: Genealogy of Morals (fantastic), Zarathustra (enigmatic), Antichrist (outraging), Twilight of the Idols, Ecce Homo, Birth of Tragedy, Beyond Good and Evil (don't die without reading this; if you don't read German, try Walter Kaufman's translations), and some parts of Dawn, Gay Science and Human-all-too-Human. I also read a couple of biographies. FN was a profound thinker, one of the most brilliant of all time, IMHO. And he was also a sad, lonely and pathetic man, a kind of Van Gogh in Philosophy. And this turns him also into an exceedingly interesting character. The central thesis of Nehamas book is that FN tried to build a character out of himself through his multi-style books. This character, a "free spirit", a "philosopher" in a very particular sense, or the übermensch if you will, is the common voice behind the many different literary styles he used, from the academic to the poetic to the prophetic. Nehamas wrote a very interesting book. I enjoyed it a lot and I thank him for giving me a new and surprising perspective on one of my preferred authors. And his prose does not lack a touch of drama, which is adequate to his subject, but is also unexpected in a technical book about modern philosophy. I recommend Nehamas strongly to anyone interested in Nietzsche.