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Nietzsche (Arguments of the Philosophers)

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Richard Schacht's "Nietzsche" represents the next generation of Nietzsche interpretation after Walter Kaufmann's groundbreaking study, "Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist." Schacht's book is far more philosophically sophisticated than was Kaufmann's. In it, Nietzsche gives surprising answers and new insights into the classical problems of philosophy (the theory of knowledge, metaphysics, value, morality, aesthetics, etc.). The book seems geared for a reader with some background in western philosophy, but not necessarily a background in Nietzsche. I have two criticisms: first, that Schacht's use of Nietzsche unpublished notebooks is unjustifiable and in many cases uncharitable. We should use the words Nietzsche himself decided to publish in determining his final views. The second criticism is that when Nietzsche is interpreted as an academic philosopher--as Schacht interprets him--we "lose the woods for the trees", so to speak, and are inclined to forget the Nietzsche that reminded us of our nihilistic predicament after the death of God, and that its remedy is in action, not words. Overall this book is essential for anyone interested in knowing how Nietzsche's mind came to bear on the classical problems of western philosophy.

Perhaps you are a grad student or professor looking for a structural aid to your Nietzsche class, or perhaps your simply, like myself, someone very interested in Nietzsche studies; either way, i think that you should ask yourself before buying this book, is Nietzsche really so difficult to read? If your goal is to extract theses from broad Nietzschean themes, as this book sets out to do, the answer should be a resounding "no." Prima facie, Nietzsche is relatively simple. Moreover, it wouldn't take you much longer to read, or re-read, Nietzsche's entire oevre, than it would to read this dry, dense text. But, the selling point, the project and prospect of Schacht's book, is to reorient a confused and disjoint Neitzsche into a coherent systematic thinker. Nevermind, Nietzsche's disdain for empty formalism or his mocking criticisms of the grand hubris entailed by any "first philosophy." The best intentions of this book are undoubtedly in the Kaufmannian tradition of Nietzsche interpretation, but, unlike the case in Kaufmann's time, these days there is absolutley no need for such a plain-faced interpretation.

One book jacket quotation from a review claims that although some people may be put off by a less "high-flying" Nietsche interpretation, Schacht's Nietzsche, avoids leaving all the personal residue that those interpretations tend to mask Nietzsche in (i.e. Heidegger's, Deleuze's, Derrida's, Klossowski's, Jasper's, Bataille's, et al). My objection is simply that Schacht's Nietzsche, despite being more boring than the ones mentioned, is no closer to whatever "actual Nietzsche" we might imagine. To abstract the common theses of Nietzsche's writings, and amalgamate them into the context of some organized metaphysical system doesn't bring any us closer to an accurate Nietzsche reading than piecemealing Nietzsche ideas and incorporating them into a new philosophical stance. Both involve a recontextualization. The only difference between the two lies in that Schacht brings Nietzsche into a context in which he is more familiar to us, that of traditional systematic philosophical argumentation, and thus loses a great deal of Nietzsche that was singular to the history of philosophy.

I found this book to be an excellent overview and commentary on Nietzsche's thinking, ranking only behind Kaufmann's book on Nietzsche. Anyone wanting to gain insight into the real Nietzsche will not go wrong by starting with Kaufmann and Schacht, who I take to be the two most reliable guides to Nietzsche's thinking.

If there is a comprehensive survey of Nietzsche's philosophy, this is not it. It definitely wants to be comprehensive. It covers Nietzsche's views in most of the important areas of philosophy (with the suspicious exception of his politics). But it is not a *survey*, because it fails to offer anything like an integrated perspective on a whole -- just the sort of thing Nietzsche would have asked for, right?

To begin with, the prose is at times utterly inpenetrable. Vague pronoun references abound: he'll begin sentences talking about "these considerations" and "these reasons." My favorite is the beginning of a section on page 224:

"There are several sorts of considerations which are highly relevant to the comprehension of the lines along which Nietzsche seeks to direct our thinking by means of these notions."

Which notions? Which considerations? Oh, you mean the previous 223 pages.

Schacht also revels in his talk of "sorts" and "kinds" of things. He never talks about the things themselves: "And the sort of 'value' of which he speaks when viewing them from this perspective is one which he considers, in contrast to them, to have a kind of validity which they lack" (348). That was picked at random. No doubt this is partially Nietzsche's fault, who loves to talk about his "kind of philosopher." But Schacht takes "sort" and "kind" talk to new heights, perhaps offering some explanation of the unfortunate tendency in everyday parlance to use "kind of" and "sort of" as indications of uncertainty: "Yeah, I kind of want to go to the movies, but Nietzsche says that life is chaotic struggle, so I can't be sure if that's what I'll end up doing."

More important, however, is not the style of the book but the content. Of course, the sometimes unintelligble prose makes the content difficult to grasp at all: "The 'power-relationship' of which he speaks are to be thought of in terms of the establishment and modification of relations among the latter which reflect the specific character of whatever transformations of this sort have occurred among them" (228). Huh?

But then there is the content the book leaves out. The absence of any discussion of Nietzsche's politics is the most telling: much of the book is, after all, a whitewash of Nietzsche's many contradictions and shortcomings: Schacht works his hardest to eliminate all such contradictions by splitting hairs over language in a way that would make even Austin role over in his grave. And since Nietzsche's politics are probably most embarrassing to the left-wing intellectuals who wish to make him their postmodern vanguard, leaving them out is obviously the convenient thing to do. One looks in vain even for one mention of a concrete example of *the kind* (!) of man Nietzsche regarded as like unto the ubermensch (Napoleon, Alexander, Caeser Borgia, et al). Of course, concrete examples of just about *anything* are lacking from the rest of the book too, so maybe this is less an issue of intellectual dishonesty than it is of sloppy thinking.

It's funny that the major criticism Nietzsche scholars may be apt to make of this book is that it's too academic, an attempt to present Nietzsche's philosophy too systematically and too logically. Well, if this is systematic and logical according to those scholars, I'd hate to have to use their kitchen.