Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (Princeton Classics) - Softcover

Kaufmann, Walter A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691160260 ISBN 13: 9780691160269

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2013

Synopsis

This classic is the benchmark against which all modern books about Nietzsche are measured. When Walter Kaufmann wrote it in the immediate aftermath of World War II, most scholars outside Germany viewed Nietzsche as part madman, part proto-Nazi, and almost wholly unphilosophical. Kaufmann rehabilitated Nietzsche nearly single-handedly, presenting his works as one of the great achievements of Western philosophy.


Responding to the powerful myths and countermyths that had sprung up around Nietzsche, Kaufmann offered a patient, evenhanded account of his life and works, and of the uses and abuses to which subsequent generations had put his ideas. Without ignoring or downplaying the ugliness of many of Nietzsche's proclamations, he set them in the context of his work as a whole and of the counterexamples yielded by a responsible reading of his books. More positively, he presented Nietzsche's ideas about power as one of the great accomplishments of modern philosophy, arguing that his conception of the "will to power" was not a crude apology for ruthless self-assertion but must be linked to Nietzsche's equally profound ideas about sublimation. He also presented Nietzsche as a pioneer of modern psychology and argued that a key to understanding his overall philosophy is to see it as a reaction against Christianity.


Many scholars in the past half century have taken issue with some of Kaufmann's interpretations, but the book ranks as one of the most influential accounts ever written of any major Western thinker. Featuring a new foreword by Alexander Nehamas, this Princeton Classics edition of Nietzsche introduces a new generation of readers to one the most influential accounts ever written of any major Western thinker.

About this title

About the Author

Walter A. Kaufmann (1921-1980) was professor of philosophy at Princeton University and a world-renowned scholar and translator of Nietzsche.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Nietzsche

PHILOSOPHER, PSYCHOLOGIST, ANTICHRIST

By WALTER KAUFMANN

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2013 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-691-16026-9

Contents

Foreword by Alexander Nehamas..............................................
v
Preface to the Fourth Edition (1974).......................................
xi
Preface to the Third Edition (1968)........................................
xiii
Preface to the Second Edition (1956).......................................
xix
Preface to the First Edition (1950)........................................
xxi
A Note on the Citations....................................................
2
Prologue: The Nietzsche Legend.............................................
3
Part I: BACKGROUND.........................................................
1. Nietzsche's Life as Background of His Thought...........................
21
2. Nietzsche's Method......................................................
72
3. The Death of God and the Revaluation....................................
96
Part II: THE DEVELOPMENT OF NIETZSCHE'S THOUGHT............................
4. Art and History.........................................................
121
5. Existenz versus the State, Darwin, and Rousseau.........................
157
6. The Discovery of the Will to Power......................................
178
Part III: NIETZSCHE'S PHILOSOPHY OF POWER..................................
7. Morality and Sublimation................................................
211
8. Sublimation, Geist, and Eros............................................
228
9. Power versus Pleasure...................................................
257
10. The Master Race........................................................
284
11. Overman and Eternal Recurrence.........................................
307
Part IV: SYNOPSIS..........................................................
12. Nietzsche's Repudiation of Christ......................................
337
13. Nietzsche's Attitude toward Socrates...................................
391
Epilogue: Nietzsche's Heritage.............................................
412
Appendix: Nietzsche's "Suppressed" Manuscripts.............................
424
Four Letters: Commentary and Facsimile Pages...............................
459
Bibliography and Key to Abbreviations......................................
483
Index......................................................................
511

CHAPTER 1

NIETZSCHE'S LIFE AS BACKGROUNDOF HIS THOUGHT

Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peaceof soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be adevotee of truth, then inquire.—LETTER TO HIS SISTER,June 11, 1865.

I am impassioned for independence; I sacrifice all for it... and am tortured more by all the smallest stringsthan others are by chains.—XXI, 88.

I

Nietzsche's family background offers a striking contrast to hislater thought. It is tempting to construe his philosophy as a reactionagainst his childhood: his attitudes toward nationalism,Luther, Christianity, small-town morals, and the Germans mayseem easily explicable in such terms. Yet this approach, while frequentlyadopted, bars any adequate understanding of Nietzsche'sphilosophy. The thought of a philosopher may be partlyoccasioned by early experiences, but the conception of strictcausality is not applicable here. A problem, once suggested, carriesits own impetus; and the thinker is driven on by it to newproblems and solutions. To understand these, we must follow thedevelopment of his thought—and that is best done separatelyfrom the survey of his life, as any joint treatment will almostinevitably suggest a false notion of causal relationship betweenlife and philosophy.

Nietzsche was born in Röcken, in the Prussian province ofSaxony, on October 15, 1844. His father, Ludwig Nietzsche, aLutheran minister and the son of a minister, was thirty-one, andhis mother, the daughter of a Lutheran minister, was eighteen.His paternal grandfather had written several books, includingGamaliel, or the Everlasting Duration of Christianity: For Instructionand Sedation ... (1796). Many of Nietzsche's ancestorshad been butchers; none of them seem to have been Polishnoblemen, as he believed. His father christened him FriedrichWilhelm after King Friedrich 'Wilhelm IV of Prussia, on whosebirthday he was born. The king became mad a few years later,and so did Nietzsche's father. Nietzsche later shed his middlename, along with his family's patriotism and religion, but inJanuary 1889 he, too, became insane.

In an early autobiographical sketch Nietzsche wrote, "In September1848 my beloved father suddenly became mentally ill."When Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche published this sketch in her biographyof her brother (1895), she changed the wording to read,"... suddenly became seriously ill in consequence of a fall." Infact, the doctor's diagnosis was softening of the brain (Gehirnerweichung),and after Ludwig Nietzsche's death in 1849, his skullwas opened, and this diagnosis was confirmed. Nevertheless, mostexperts agree that the philosopher's later insanity was not inherited.

In January 1850, Nietzsche's widowed mother lost her youngestson, born in 1848, and moved her family to Naumburg. HereNietzsche spent the rest of his childhood as the only male in ahousehold consisting of his mother, sister, father's mother, andtwo maiden aunts.

In 1858 he entered the old boarding school of Pforta on afull scholarship. For six years he was subjected to the exactingdiscipline and traditions of the school which Klopstock andNavalis, Fichte and Ranke, as well as the brothers Schlegel, hadattended before him. He did exceptionally good work in religion,German literature, and classics, and poor work in mathematicsand drawing.

In 1861 he wrote an enthusiastic essay on his "favorite poet,"Friedrich Hölderlin, "of whom the majority of his people scarcelyeven know the name." Hölderlin had spent the last decades ofhis life in hopeless insanity, but sixty years after Nietzsche wrotehis essay, Hölderlin was widely recognized as Germany's greatestpoet after Goethe. The teacher wrote on the paper, "I must offerthe author the kind advice to stick to a healthier, clearer,more German poet."

The medical records of the school contain an entry, recordedin 1862: "... shortsighted and often plagued by migraine headaches.His father died early of softening of the brain and wasbegotten in old age [actually, when his father was fifty-seven, hismother thirty-five]; the son at a time when the father was alreadysick [most experts deny this]. As yet no grave signs are visible,but the antecedents require consideration."

In 1864 Nietzsche graduated with a thesis on Theognis. Beforehe left for the university of Bonn, he stated in his curriculumvitae that Plato's Symposium was his Lieblingsdichtung.

At Bonn he joined a fraternity but soon found himself revoltedby its lack of sophistication and the very unclassical, beer-drinkingpatriotism of his fraternity brothers. He made a quixoticattempt to raise their level to his own—and then resigned. Itwas also as a student at Bonn that Nietzsche, in June 1865, wrotehis sister a letter that is noteworthy because it anticipates thetemper of Human, All-Too-Human and the other works writtenafter the break with Wagner.

... As for your principle that truth is always on the side of themore difficult, I admit this in part. However, it is difficult to believethat 2 times 2 is not 4; does that make it true? On the otherhand, is it really so difficult simply to accept everything that onehas been brought up on and that has gradually struck deep roots—what is considered truth in the circle of one's relatives and ofmany good men, and what moreover really comforts and elevatesman? Is that more difficult than to strike new paths, fighting thehabitual, experiencing the insecurity of independence and thefrequent wavering of one's feelings and even one's conscience,proceeding often without any consolation, but ever with the eternalgoal of the true, the beautiful, and the good? Is it decisiveafter all that we arrive at that view of God, world, and reconciliationwhich makes us feel most comfortable? Rather, is notthe result of his inquiries something wholly indifferent to thetrue inquirer? Do we after all seek rest, peace, and pleasure inour inquiries? No, only truth—even if it be most abhorrent andugly. Still one last question: if we had believed from childhoodthat all salvation issued from another than Jesus—say, from Mohammed—isit not certain that we should have experienced thesame blessings? ... Every true faith is infallible inasmuch as itaccomplishes what the person who has the faith hopes to find init; but faith does not offer the least support for a proof of objectivetruth. Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strivefor peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to bea devotee of truth [ein Jünger der Wahrheit], then inquire.

At first Nietzsche had studied theology and classical philology,but in 1865 he gave up theology and followed his favoriteteacher, Friedrich Ritschl, to Leipzig.

His friend Paul Deussen (1845–1919), who later acquiredfame as one of the foremost translators and interpreters of Indianphilosophy, had shared Nietzsche's experiences at Pforta and atBonn; but now he went on to Tübingen. Even so, he remaineddose to Nietzsche and shared the latter's enthusiasm for Schopcnhauer.It was in Leipzig that Nietzsche accidentally picked up acopy of Schopenhauer's Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung in asecond-hand bookstore—not to lay it down again until he hadfinished it. Deussen remained more faithful to Schopenhauerthan did Nietzsche: he dedicated his System des Vedanta to thegreat pessimist who had been one of the first to try to draw theattention of Europe to the wisdom of the Upanishads; and Deussencrowned his monumental history of philosophy, which takesthe reader from ancient India to modern Europe, with anelaborate presentation of Schopenhauer's thought in which hefound the ultimate synthesis of Orient and Occident. ThoughNietzsche later outgrew his early infatuation with Schopenhauer,Deussen remained his faithful friend until the end.

Less fortunate in this respect was Nietzsche's friendshipwith Erwin Rohde (1845–1898). As fellow students at Leipzigthey were drawn to each other by a common enthusiasm forancient Greek culture and became the closest of friends. ProfessorRitschl called them "the Dioscuri," and they seemed inseparable.It was not a shift in interests' that finally led them apart: Nietzschenever renounced "Dionysus"; and the work which laterestablished Rohde's fame as a classical philologist, Psyche,dealt with Greek conceptions of the soul in the same light inwhich the "Dioscuri" had approached antiquity at Leipzig—yetRohde's many pages about Dionysus were not to contain asingle reference to the author of The Birth of Tragedy. It wasa divergent development of character that precipitated the endof the friendship. Nietzsche's publication of the enlightenedand critical Human, All-Too-Human struck Rohde as a scarcelycredible betrayal of their youthful and romantic Wagner worship.Later Rohde married and began to raise a family, while Nietzscheturned to Zarathustra. Now Rohde felt increasingly provoked byhis friend's excessive self-esteem, and some of his letters suggestthat his annoyance may have cloaked doubts whether it was nothe himself who had undergone a change rather than Nietzsche,whose fire seemed to feed on itself. Having settled down, the successfulprofessor could not share the loneliness in which his uncomfortabletwin conducted his persistent inquiries and uninhibitedattacks in book after book. One of Rohde's letters to FranzOverbeck, occasioned by the publication of Beyond Good andEvil, shows especially well how utterly unsympathetic Rohde hadbecome. The final break, a year before Nietzsche's collapse, waslittle more than a formality. But much later, when Nietzschehad become famous, Rohde made a belated and impossibleattempt to make up with his former friend. He yielded to theinsistent entreaties of Frau Förster-Nietzsche—who probablyplayed on cherished memories—and, without actively collaborating,he gave his backing and sanction to her work. If this actionwas typical of others who had had no sympathy for Nietzschein his later years, it seems clear that Rohde did not consciouslybetray a trust: he had never understood Nietzsche's books afterthe break with Wagner. The professors at Basel, however, keptbetter faith with Nietzsche.

His call to the university of Basel came as a surprise toNietzsche, who had not yet received his doctorate though hehad published some fruits of his research in a scholarly journal.He had actually considered giving up philology for science when,on Ritschl's recommendation, he was appointed a professor ofclassical philology at Basel, and Leipzig hurriedly conferred thedoctorate without examination. Thus Nietzsche was a professorat twenty-four, and his unusual success does not seem to havehumbled him.

At Basel he taught for ten years, from 1869 till 1879, whenhe retired because of poor health. This illness may have beenconnected with his brief military service in 1870, during theFranco-Prussian War. His previous military training in 1867 hadbeen cut short by injuries contracted through a fall from hishorse, and by 1870 he was a Swiss citizen. When the war broke out,however, he volunteered for service as a medical orderly. Whileministering—in a boxcar, and unrelieved for three days and nights—to six men who were severely wounded and also sick withdysentery and diphtheria, Nietzsche caught both diseases and,after delivering his charges to a field hospital, required medicalattention himself. "Moreover"—he wrote his friend Gersdorff—"theatmosphere of my experiences had spread around me like agloomy fog: for a time I heard a sound of wailing which seemedas if it would never end." One gathers that he may have had aphysical and nervous breakdown. Yet a month later he is back atthe university in Basel, perhaps quite eager to drown in adouble load of work his recent experiences and the uncomfortableknowledge that the war is still going on and that other men arestill being maimed and disfigured in ways of which he has inextinguishablememories. Thus he plunges into two new lecturecourses as well as seminars and the Greek lessons which he hasagreed to give at the local Pädagogium. He also writes of committeemeetings and a social life—and all of these matter muchless to him than his work on his first book and his frequent visitsto the house of Richard Wagner. The relation of a possiblyincomplete recovery from his illness to the continued spells ofmigraine headaches and painful vomiting which made Nietzschemiserable during the next ten years has never been clarifiedconclusively. His last disease will be considered later.

In 1872 Nietzsche published his first book, The Birth ofTragedy. It was not what a university would expect from a youngphilologist who has yet to establish his reputation as a scholar:there were no footnotes, references, or Greek quotations; Schopenhauer'sphilosophy had tinged some of the contentions; and thestyle was, where not beautiful, flamboyant. Moreover, as Nietzschehimself recognized in his preface to the second edition, he hadweakened his case by appending to the fifteen sections whichcomprised his main thesis about ancient tragedy another tenwhich utilized these considerations for a poorly written eulogyof Wagner. This conclusion gave the entire work the appearanceof a none too well considered but impassioned editorial. Amongthe many critics of the book who were entirely blind to its meritswas Wilamowitz-Moellendorf (1848–1931), who later became anoutstanding philologist, though his translations of Aeschylus andSophocles into colloquial German hardly demonstrate the mostsubtle understanding of tragedy. Rohde, then still Nietzsche'sclosest friend, countered Wilamowitz's criticisms with a deadlypolemic to which Wilamowitz replied. All three pamphlets arenasty to the point of being funny.

Not entirely sympathetic with Nietzsche's tone and quitecontemptuous of Wagner, but nevertheless in accord with muchthat Nietzsche had to say of ancient Greece, was Jacob Burckhardt(1818–1897), who was Nietzsche's elder colleague at Basel. In hismaturity, his outward sober calm and dignity, and his Olympianreserve, he reminds one of the old Goethe—and like Goethe hedid not share the enthusiastic notions of some of the younger menof genius who came within his orbit. Perhaps Burckhardt, likeGoethe, looked back upon the storm and stress of his own youth,sensed in himself a still dangerous medley of passions that couldbe controlled only by maintaining a subtle equilibrium, anddeliberately refused to become involved in the younger man'scomet-like career which for Burckhardt could mean only destruction.While Goethe, however, deeply wounded men like Hölderlinand Kleist—the poets whose meteoric lives, ending respectivelyin insanity and suicide, invite comparison with Nietzsche's—Burckhardtmanaged to let Nietzsche feel his sympathy; and theyounger man was frequently less struck by the ironical reserveof Burckhardt's letters to him than we are today.

Nietzsche attended some of Burckhardt's lectures at Basel,though not regularly; and in some of his letters to friends he refersto them with great enthusiasm. Occasionally he met the greathistorian socially, he even took a few walks with him, and thetwo men had some long conversations. The similarity of some oftheir ideas has inevitably raised the question, who influencedwhom—especially as regards their interpretations of classicalGreek culture. This problem has never been solved conclusively—but it is hardly very important: for it appears that neither ofthem was detracted from his own path or greatly helped by theother, and the ideas of each can be explained in terms of his ownbackground. Nietzsche's juvenilia which plainly contain the seedsof much of his later thought are of special value in this respect.One may conclude that the two men, who differed so widely inage and temperament, were probably attracted to each other—insofaras Burckhardt may be said to have been attracted toNietzsche—by common conceptions and perspectives no less thanby their common interest in ancient Greece and RenaissanceItaly. Agreement may be due less to any influence than to anaffinity. There is thus no need for digression into Burckhardt'sideas about ancient Greece, Christianity, or history.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Nietzsche by WALTER KAUFMANN. Copyright © 2013 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691160260
• ISBN 13: 9780691160269
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 560