Living with Nietzsche: What the Great "Immoralist" Has to Teach Us
Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most popular and controversial philosophers of the last 150 years. Narcissistic, idiosyncratic, hyperbolic, irreverent--never has a philosopher been appropriated, deconstructed, and scrutinized by such a disparate array of groups, movements, and schools of thought. Adored by many for his passionate ideas and iconoclastic style, he is also vilified for his lack of rigor, apparent cruelty, and disdain for moral decency. In Living with Nietzsche, Solomon suggests that we read Nietzsche from a very different point of view, as a provocative writer who means to transform the way we view our lives. This means taking Nietzsche personally. Rather than focus on the "true" Nietzsche or trying to determine "what Nietzsche really meant" by his seemingly random and often contradictory pronouncements about "the Big Questions" of philosophy, Solomon reminds us that Nietzsche is not a philosopher of abstract ideas but rather of the dazzling personal insight, the provocative challenge, the incisive personal probe. He does not try to reveal the eternal verities but he does powerfully affect his readers, goading them to see themselves in new and different ways. It is Nietzsche's compelling invitation to self-scrutiny that fascinates us, engages us, and guides us to a "rich inner life." Ultimately, Solomon argues, Nietzsche is an example as well as a promulgator of "passionate inwardness," a life distinguished by its rich passions, exquisite taste, and a sense of personal elegance and excellence.
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Living with Nietzsche: What the Great "Immoralist" Has to Teach Us
Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most popular and controversial philosophers of the last 150 years. Narcissistic, idiosyncratic, hyperbolic, irreverent--never has a philosopher been appropriated, deconstructed, and scrutinized by such a disparate array of groups, movements, and schools of thought. Adored by many for his passionate ideas and iconoclastic style, he is also vilified for his lack of rigor, apparent cruelty, and disdain for moral decency. In Living with Nietzsche, Solomon suggests that we read Nietzsche from a very different point of view, as a provocative writer who means to transform the way we view our lives. This means taking Nietzsche personally. Rather than focus on the "true" Nietzsche or trying to determine "what Nietzsche really meant" by his seemingly random and often contradictory pronouncements about "the Big Questions" of philosophy, Solomon reminds us that Nietzsche is not a philosopher of abstract ideas but rather of the dazzling personal insight, the provocative challenge, the incisive personal probe. He does not try to reveal the eternal verities but he does powerfully affect his readers, goading them to see themselves in new and different ways. It is Nietzsche's compelling invitation to self-scrutiny that fascinates us, engages us, and guides us to a "rich inner life." Ultimately, Solomon argues, Nietzsche is an example as well as a promulgator of "passionate inwardness," a life distinguished by its rich passions, exquisite taste, and a sense of personal elegance and excellence.
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Living with Nietzsche: What the Great

Living with Nietzsche: What the Great "Immoralist" Has to Teach Us

by Robert C. Solomon
Living with Nietzsche: What the Great

Living with Nietzsche: What the Great "Immoralist" Has to Teach Us

by Robert C. Solomon

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Overview

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most popular and controversial philosophers of the last 150 years. Narcissistic, idiosyncratic, hyperbolic, irreverent--never has a philosopher been appropriated, deconstructed, and scrutinized by such a disparate array of groups, movements, and schools of thought. Adored by many for his passionate ideas and iconoclastic style, he is also vilified for his lack of rigor, apparent cruelty, and disdain for moral decency. In Living with Nietzsche, Solomon suggests that we read Nietzsche from a very different point of view, as a provocative writer who means to transform the way we view our lives. This means taking Nietzsche personally. Rather than focus on the "true" Nietzsche or trying to determine "what Nietzsche really meant" by his seemingly random and often contradictory pronouncements about "the Big Questions" of philosophy, Solomon reminds us that Nietzsche is not a philosopher of abstract ideas but rather of the dazzling personal insight, the provocative challenge, the incisive personal probe. He does not try to reveal the eternal verities but he does powerfully affect his readers, goading them to see themselves in new and different ways. It is Nietzsche's compelling invitation to self-scrutiny that fascinates us, engages us, and guides us to a "rich inner life." Ultimately, Solomon argues, Nietzsche is an example as well as a promulgator of "passionate inwardness," a life distinguished by its rich passions, exquisite taste, and a sense of personal elegance and excellence.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780190289522
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: 08/21/2003
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
File size: 1 MB

About the Author

Robert C. Solomon is Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Philosophy and Business and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of more than twenty-five books including Passion for Wisdom (OUP, 1999), The Joy of Philosophy (OUP, 1999), What Nietzsche Really Said (2000), Introducing Philosophy (OUP, 2002), What is an Emotion? (OUP, 2002), Spirituality for the Skeptic (OUP, 2002), and Not Passion's Slave (OUP, 2002).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Living with Nietzsche3
What Are We to Make of Nietzsche?5
Nasty Nietzsche7
Nietzsche's Virtues10
How Should We Read Nietzsche?12
What Would Nietzsche Make of Us? (An "Existential" Approach)14
Thinking through Nietzsche16
1.Nietzsche ad Hominem19
Philosophy ad Hominem: Exemplary Virtues (and Vices)19
Nietzsche's Style and Nietzsche's Philosophy22
In Defense of ad Hominem Arguments26
Ecce Homo: "Nietzsche Was Mad, Wasn't He?"30
Nietzsche's Perspectivism and the Perspectives of Morality35
Confessions and Memoirs: A Plea for the Personal in Philosophy42
2.Nietzsche's Moral Perspectivism44
Nietzsche's Moral Perspectivism46
Genealogy as ad Hominem Argument: Resentment as a Diagnosis of Morality51
Is Genealogy a Genetic Fallacy?53
Perspectives on Responsibility: Nietzsche's "Blaming" Perspective59
3.Nietzsche's Passions63
Nietzsche on "Deep" Emotions65
The Truth of an Emotion as Its Meaning67
In Defense of the Passions: Nietzsche on Human Nature70
Nietzsche's Physiological Psychology74
Nietzsche on the Emotions as Strategies79
Life-Enhancing and Life-Stultifying Passions81
The Will to Power and the Passionate Life85
4.Nietzsche on Resentment, Love, and Pity89
What Is Wrong with Resentment?91
Nietzsche on Love and Pity93
Ressentiment Reexamined101
Eagles and Lambs: Metaphors of Strength and Weakness105
Masters, Slaves, and the Origins of Justice109
5.Nietzsche's Affirmative Ethics160
Nietzsche in the Tradition: Nihilism For and Against117
Nietzsche, Kant, and Aristotle121
The Meanings of Morality124
Virtue Ethics: Nietzsche and Aristotle128
Aristotle's Polis, Nietzsche's Problem132
6.Nietzsche's Virtues: What Would He Make of Us?137
After Virtue ("The Revaluation of Values")140
Virtue by Example142
How Are We Virtuous? Let Me Count the Ways145
Nietzsche's Aristotelian Virtues147
Distinctively Nietzschean Virtues158
Nietzsche's Crypto-Virtues166
The Ubermensch: A Cubist Portrait173
7.Nietzsche's Existentialism175
Nietzsche's Fatalism, Determinism, and Destiny177
Nietzsche on Freedom and Fatalism: Paradox or Perspectives?181
Nietzsche's Classical Fatalism183
"Become Who You Are"187
Making Good Sense of Fatalism189
What Is Self-Creation? (Does It Require "Free Will"?)192
Nietzsche on Responsibility198
Existential Life-Affirmation and Eternal Recurrence, Again201
Conclusion: Is Nietzsche an Existentialist?206
Notes209
Selected Bibliography227
Index235
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