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Nietzsche: Life as Literature | 
 enlarge | Author: Alexander Nehamas
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 301482
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0674624262
Dewey Decimal Number: 193
EAN: 9780674624269
ASIN: 0674624262
Publication Date: June 13, 2008
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Product Description
Argues that Nietzsche tried to create a specific literary character in his writings and discusses the paradoxes of his work.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 Underestimated Estimation of Nietzsche August 22, 2008
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.
 Nietzsche: cruel, heartless, disdainful, contemptuous...? January 3, 2005
26 out of 46 found this review helpful
Can anyone who concludes a scholarly work about Nietzsche by dismissing him as a "miserable little man" really be trusted to give a balanced assessment of the great philosopher? No, Alexander Nehamas can't.
To him, Nietzsche was "[c]ruel and heartless, neither protective nor respectful of the sensibilities of others." The pathetic curmudgeon was "[d]isdainful and contemptuous of the values and lives of most people....[and] has offended and hurt many and will doubtless continue to do so in the future." (Speaking of contempt, in a 1998 interview Nehamas struck another low blow against Nietzsche by deriding him as a "philosopher of adolescence.") In the last, schoolmarmish pages of this book, he continues to chide Nietzsche for his "cruelty, his attacks on many of our ideas and values, on our habits and sensibilities."
To whom is Nehamas referring when he pompously invokes this royal "our"? Did Nietzsche really hold all of his readers' ideas, values, habits, and sensibilities in contempt...or just those of certain readers like Nehamas and other sissified academic leftists of his ilk, whom he despised in his own day as careerists or worse?
Poor Prof. Nehamas. He apparently expects Nietzsche to have maintained a tone of measured politesse while single-handedly changing the course of moral philosophy and profoundly affecting the aesthetic milieu of the 20th century and beyond. I guess it wasn't easy for Nietzsche to remain sensitive to everyone's feelings when he was philosophizing with a hammer.
Nietzsche would no doubt be gratified that such whining--clear evidence of slave morality--comes from no less an eminence than the Edmund N. Carpenter II Class of 1943 Professor in the Humanities at Princeton. This in itself proves Nietzsche's prescience. He would point out that, for him, launching "attacks" on herd animals like Prof. Nehamas was both a cardinal pursuit and an exquisite pleasure. More than a century after his death, Nietzsche still has the power to upset the more weak-stomached of the scholarly horde.
Unless you're a Nietzsche-hater, avoid this unsympathetic, condescending tome!
 Some Content but Mostly Irrelevant July 8, 2003
16 out of 36 found this review helpful
This is one of the most well known hatchet jobs done on Nietzsche over the last two decades in hopes of selling the idea that Nietzsche is a postmodernist -- that is, a person who buys into the notion that the world is a text, or that text is everything, or that there is nothing outside the text, or some other grotesque expansion of the power of words. But Nietzsche is not one of those types. Indeed, 'there is nothing outside the text' is one of those pieces of philosophical insanity that can only be compared to other such pieces: like Parmenides belief that nothing moves, or Barkeley's belief that there is no such thing as matter, or Palto's belief that things do not have their properties, or Kant's belief that because we have categories we cannot know, and so on.
Nehamas and postmodernism are outgrowths of German Idealism. Nietzsche rejected that school. Almost everything he fought he called 'idealism' at one point or another in hiw career. He thought of German philosophy as a flight from reality, and a coward's philosophy designed to make a big show and distract everyone from how paltry and small minded one's German soul really was. The very notion of life as literature is self-contradictory. But, of course, like all postmodern theorists, Nehamas is un-selfcritical. His rectitude is all that matters. Like all postmodernists, he demands that we sacrifice our knowledge in order to accept an absurdity. His absurdity: that a pretend Nietzsche is of the same value as the real Nietzsche -- that imaginary and real are equal.
How NOT to read Nietzsche January 9, 2003
18 out of 36 found this review helpful
Strongly influenced by an analytical interpretation of Nietzsche from Danto's Nietzsche as Philosopher Nehamas does more harm to Nietzsche than good. Nehamas's own "creative" interpretation of Nietzsche is utterly irresponsible. Interpreting Nietzsche analytical only makes Nietzsche's moral properties run amok. Nehamas interprets Nietzsche like most Christians interpret the Bible: He takes away a few things he can use, dirties and confounds the remainder and reviles the whole. Nietzsche asserts, rather than believes, that "untruth" is indeed a condition of life. But he does not assert any kind of "theory of truth," as Nehamas would have us to believe. Nietzsche's moral philosophy is Descartian - doubting to believe to discover one's own perspective of truth - not a dogmatic religious truth! His intent is rather, to give us his perspective to help us discover truth in ourselves, not in Nietzsche, himself.
An excellent account. May 23, 2002
5 out of 19 found this review helpful
This is one of the best accounts of Nietzsche's philosophy for those thoroughly familiar with his body of work. Without such familiarity one could not appreciate the balanced and graceful way in which Nehamas resolves some of the apparent contradictions of that work. Some of the other reviewers suggest here that Nehamas disrespects Nietzsche, perhaps even denigrating his ideas. That is entirely false. In fact, he writes near the end of this book that Nietzsche's ideas in conjunction with the way he lived his life are "deeply admirable." Even if one doesn't agree with the central thesis of the book, that Nietzsche's ideas fit best into a literary model of the world, one can still come away with a much
clearer understanding of the philosopher and a greater appreciation for his thoughts.
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