Nietzsche: Life as Literature / Edition 1

by Alexander Nehamas

Overview

More than eighty years after his death, Nietzsche’s writings and his career remain disquieting, disturbing, obscure. His most famous views—the will to power, the eternal recurrence, the Übermensch, the master morality—often seem incomprehensible or, worse, repugnant. Yet he remains a thinker of singular importance, a great opponent of Hegel and Kant, and the source of much that is powerful in figures as diverse as Wittgenstein, Derrida, Heidegger, and many recent American philosophers.

Alexander Nehamas provides the best possible guide for the perplexed. He reveals the single thread running through Nietzsche’s views: his thinking of the world on the model of a literary text, of people as if they were literary characters, and of knowledge and science as if they were literary interpretation. Beyond this, he advances the clarity of the concept of textuality, making explicit some of the forces that hold texts together and so hold us together. Nehamas finally allows us to see that Nietzsche is creating a literary character out of himself, that he is, in effect, playing the role of Plato to his own Socrates.

Nehamas discusses a number of opposing views, both American and European, of Nietzsche’s texts and general project, and reaches a climactic solving of the main problems of Nietzsche interpretation in a step-by-step argument. In the process he takes up a set of very interesting questions in contemporary philosophy, such as moral relativism and scientific realism. This is a book of considerable breadth and elegance that will appeal to all curious readers of philosophy and literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674624269
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	10/15/1987
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.65(d)

About the Author

Alexander Nehamas is Professor Emeritus in the Humanities, Philosophy, and Comparative Literature at Princeton University. He is author of Nietzsche: Life as Literature, Virtues of Authenticity: Essays on Plato and Socrates, The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault, Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art, and On Friendship.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I. The World

1. The Most Multifarious Art of Style

2. Untruth as a Condition of Life

3. A Thing Is the Sum of Its Effects

4. Nature against Something That Is Also Nature

Part II. The Self

5. This Life—Your Eternal Life

6. How One Becomes What One Is

7. Beyond Good and Evil

A Note on Texts and Translations

Notes

Index

Editorial Reviews

This is the best and most important book on Nietzsche in English. Alexander Nehamas argues at a level of sophistication and provides a density of content which are very rare in this field.

Times Literary Supplement - Michael Tanner

Marvelous… Nehamas has written perhaps the best book yet on Nietzsche’s philosophy.

Philadelphia Inquirer - Robert C. Solomon

Anyone at all interested in Nietzsche will certainly want to read [this book]… Nehamas has applied his own theory of interpretation, and he has postulated an integrated, coherent ‘Nietzsche’ to whom no future reader of Nietzsche can remain indifferent.

London Review of Books - David Hoy

Philosophers and anyone interested in philosophy ought…to welcome Alexander Nehamas’s elegant and challenging interpretation of this most ‘writerly of philosophers’ …This unusually engaging book demands our attention.

Karsten Harries

This new study is fascinating for its portrayal of Nietzsche’s thought as ‘literary’ in a twofold sense: first, Nehamas argues that Nietzsche viewed the world as if it were a literary text; second, he claims that Nietzsche’s goal as an author was to create a specific literary character… The case is argued forcefully (and even with a touch of drama)… The writing is rich and allusive in a manner that is unusual in contemporary works of philosophy. It is a valuable contribution to our understanding of Nietzsche, one that adds substance to the often facile citing of Nietzsche in contemporary literary studies.

Poetics Today - Stephen N. Dunning

Nehamas evolves a wonderfully subtle and ingenious interpretation… [He has] produced something weighty, complex, distinctive—in its way, a work of art.

Village Voice Literary Supplement - George Scialabba

This new study is fascinating for its portrayal of Nietzsche's thought as 'literary' in a twofold sense: first, Nehamas argues that Nietzsche viewed the world as if it were a literary text; second, he claims that Nietzsche's goal as an author was to create a specific literary character...The case is argued forcefully (and even with a touch of drama)...The writing is rich and allusive in a manner that is unusual in contemporary works of philosophy. It is a valuable contribution to our understanding of Nietzsche, one that adds substance to the often facile citing of Nietzsche in contemporary literary studies.
— Stephen N. Dunning

Poetics Today

Marvelous...Nehamas has written perhaps the best book yet on Nietzsche's philosophy.
— Robert C. Solomon

Philadelphia Inquirer

Nehamas evolves a wonderfully subtle and ingenious interpretation...[He has] produced something weighty, complex, distinctive—in its way, a work of art.
— George Scialabba

Village Voice Literary Supplement

Anyone at all interested in Nietzsche will certainly want to read [this book]...Nehamas has applied his own theory of interpretation, and he has postulated an integrated, coherent 'Nietzsche' to whom no future reader of Nietzsche can remain indifferent.
— David Hoy

London Review of Books

Philosophers and anyone interested in philosophy ought...to welcome Alexander Nehamas's elegant and challenging interpretation of this most 'writerly of philosophers'...This unusually engaging book demands our attention.
— Karsten Harries

New York Times Book Review

This is the best and most important book on Nietzsche in English. Alexander Nehamas argues at a level of sophistication and provides a density of content which are very rare in this field.
— Michael Tanner

Times Literary Supplement

Deriving inspiration from both continental and American scholarship, Nehamas penetratingly discusses Nietzsche's style and his views on truth, knowledge, the will to power, morality, and the self. The unifying theme is provided by two central features of Nietzsche's work: his perspectivism (the view that there are only interpretations) and his ``aestheticism'' (the tendency to view the world as a literary text and people, including himself, as literary characters). It is the illuminating treatment of this latter theme that constitutes the book's chief novelty. But there are many other provocative interpretative claims: for instance, the denial that the notorious doctrine of the eternal recurrence is a cosmological thesis. This is a brilliant book; no one interested in Nietzsche will want to miss it. Richard Hogan, Philosophy Dept., Southeastern Massachusetts Univ., N. Dartmouth

Library Journal