Nietzsche

Berliner Zeitung

A graceful and elegant book [and] a successful reappraisal of Nietzsche.

Thomas Nagel

A balanced and illuminating portrait...should interest scholars as well as a general audience.
—The New Republic

From The Critics

As an artist-nomad, tortured genius and, finally, pathetic madman, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) is a tabloid biographer's dream. Safranski records Nietzsche's obsessive travels, erotic travails and decade of insanity in a twenty-page appendix to 350 pages of "philosophical biography," a life of ideas. Safranski begins with a discussion of Nietzsche's autobiographies and moves on to supplement his subject's numerous published works with massive archival research, tracing Nietzsche's early development from eccentric classical philologist to student of Arthur Schopenhauer, from proponent of Richard Wagner's music to adherent of Darwinian science. Safranski usefully quotes Nietzsche's many aphorisms and ably explicates his major works. The last chapter skillfully documents Nietzsche's remarkable twentieth-century influence (on Thomas Mann, Martin Heidegger and Michel Foucault, among others) and debunks myths about his association with Nazi militarism and anti-Semitism. The book is accessible to a general audience, but some may want more on how Nietzsche's physical life—his multiple illnesses and sexual failures—affected his philosophy of life.
—Tom LeClair

Publishers Weekly

This book is not a traditional philosopher's biography offering an even balance of life and thought, but rather a rich interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy as it evolved during his life, with a coda tracing his influence after his death. Biographical details are sparing: neither Nietzsche's birth nor death is described, and there are few juicy bits about his passion for Lou Salom . Most of the book is a reading of Nietzsche's developing ideas, beginning with his autobiographical sketches in high school and continuing chronologically from his early attachment to Schopenhauer through his hopes for and disappointment in Wagner's music drama, such great achievements as Daybreak and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and his last works before his descent into madness. To close, there is a chapter on the different ways Nietzsche influenced 20th-century artists, the Nazis, Heidegger, Foucault, Rorty and others. Throughout, certain themes recur, elucidated sympathetically but with "ironic reserve," including the death of God, the divided self, the will to power, eternal recurrence, philosophy as art and truth as power play. Safranski (Heidegger: Between Good and Evil), in clear English from Rutgers University Germanist Frisch, brings out contradictions and tensions in Nietzsche's thought without dismissing him; on the contrary, Safranski sees Nietzsche as a thinker "who organized his gardens of theory in such a way that anyone on the lookout for their central arguments would almost inevitably fall flat on his face," but who leads one to return profitably to "[o]ne's own thinking." The author offers no summary conclusions, preferring to leave Nietzsche's philosophical biography open, as "a story withoutan end." Safranski has made a worthwhile contribution to that story, though it will be of interest mainly to those with an interest in engaging the work directly. (Dec. 3) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

With brilliant insights and impressive scholarship, Safranski, who has previously written about Heidegger and Schopenhaurer, here makes a major contribution to understanding and appreciating the lasting significance of Friedrich Nietzsche (l844-l900). From his passion for Greek antiquity to his disappointment with the Bayreuth premiere of the Ring tetralogy, Nietzsche is presented as a tragic hero who advocated overcoming cultural mediocrity and simplistic materialism while rigorously pursuing intellectual enlightenment and new values. Safranski emphasizes the philosopher's Heraclitean-Dionysian worldview of ongoing flux and pervasive change. This comprehensive study analyzes the influences of music, mythology, Schopenhauer, Wagner, and Darwin on the development of Nietzsche's iconoclastic ideas and challenging perspectives. Safranski devotes sections to a critical discussion of the future overman and the cosmic will to power. Particularly important is Chapter 10, which focuses on Nietzsche's central idea of the eternal recurrence of the same universe. Nietzsche himself incorporated his bold vision into an affirmation of life in terms of human creativity within creative nature. Safranski's outstanding, level-headed, and unique philosophical biography of Nietzsche is strongly recommended for all academic and public libraries. H. James Birx, Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.