Customer Reviews

Nietzsche for Beginners (Beginners Series)

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

The Beginners series is overall a good thing, with many excellent introductory level editions on thinkers. Most, like the ones on Satre, Kierkegaard and Heidegger are excellent (especially since reading those authors primary works is difficult if not impossible). Thats why I am so saddened by this terrible introduction on old Fred. First of all, the art is pretty bad. Second of all, it makes no real attempt to explain what Nietzche said and wrote. Instead it is full of out of context qoutes with little or no analysis and/or explanation. Very poorly done.

Nietzcsche for Beginners, compared with Sartre for Beginners is highly disjointed, contains distracting grammatical errors, and does not give the beginning reader a solid sense of Nietzche's ideas. Terms are poorly explained, pictures are often apparently irrelevant or tangential to accompanying text, and ideas do not appear to logically build upon each other. I am a graduate doctoral student in clinical psychology and I found this book marginally useful and ill suited for true beginners.

"Nietzsche for Beginners" is a petty, mendacious, disrespectful and philosophically dubious little book.

Love him or hate him, agree or disagree with him, Nietzsche is almost without argument the most important philosopher of the last century. He deserves far better than Saudet's treatment. This book does not even come close to treating Nietzsche's philosophy in an informed, critical or educational manner. Rather, it succumbs to the old, and I thought long refuted, Anglo-American portrayal of Nietzsche as some kind of tortured, nearly psychotic, cryto-fascist pseudo-philosopher -- without ever seriously addressing his philosophy which has had such a deep influence on Western thought in this century (Sartre, Freud, Mann, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze to name just a few in Nietzsche's debt...)

Frankly, I am disgusted that this book was even published! It contributes nothing to a greater understanding of Nietzsche's thought; it does, instead, exactly the opposite. Do not bother with this book... there are so many better introductions out there...

One thing that continually goes through my mind while reading the "Beginners" Series is that these books must have been originally written in another language (French? Spanish) and translated to English. A translator is listed in the credits. Anyway, the translation is HORRIBLE. The sentence structure is all messed up -- and I continually find myself re-reading the same sentences over and over just trying to get the gist of it. The book is horribly disorganized. Just got the book two nights ago -- and gave up on it. I'll buy another Nietzsche book and toss this one. ALSO: Philosphy for Beginners sucks just as bad -- with the added bonus that it is riddled with misspellings and typos.

I guess this is an okay book to start your Nietzsche education with. It does tend to gloss over or mock his philosophy at times, and there are quite a few illustrations that don't emphasize the point and that won't help you remember, that just seem to be there to fill space. But it does give the basics of his philosophy and the time he lived in. I wouldn't try to substitute this for reading the actual works written by him, but it can't hurt you. Nietzsche is tough reading, and this can only help.

There is so much of Nietzsche that I can't promise a good starting point for any individual. There is hardly any standard which might work for such great complexity. The use of cartoons in this book hardly makes it any less heavy than the textual approach which was philosophy's standard format in the age of print. So many readers have learned what they think they know about Nietzsche from little quotes which are simpler than the contents of the typical page in this book that it is not surprising that some people who try learning from this book are stymied by the complexity presented here. By the time I bought this, I didn't expect it to increase my knowledge of philosophy. My first big surprise was Nietzsche thinking "With Lange I'm Made" on page 22. Lange's HISTORY OF MATERIALISM is not a popular book now, but it had a scope and multiple editions which made its coverage of Charles Darwin and David F. Strauss contemporaneous with Nietzsche's own consideration of the most popular public opinion leaders of his day. The summaries of Lange (1828 - 1875) and Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860) on pages 24 & 25 set the context for Nietzsche's thinking on the pretensions of materialism in a world in which "to want is to suffer." The high point of the book for me was the imperialist threat on page 50 and the revolutionary threat on page 52. Those particular problems receive a fair amount of attention in the ensuing discussion of Nietzsche's work, and my recommendation of this book is based mainly on that approach. This philosophy needs these problems to overcome the aversion of the pious.

I have read several other books of the "For Beginners" series: Lacan, Derrida, Foucalt and this one. I found Nietzsche to be a very flimsy summary, perhaps too cartoonish. I finished it without feeling the same depth of understanding I feel that I gained from the other books in this generally great series. This book tried to explain the philosophical relationships that existed between Neitzsche and his contemporaries such as Wagner, but this relationship could have been more effectively explained.

If you never have read Nietzsche, but are curious, then this is the book for you! Its not a Cliff's Notes, but its a concise comic story of the life and philosophy of Nietzsche. Written by Marc Sautet, this book will give the beginner a tactile version of his work, as well as something which one can have somne adequate and fundamental knowledge of who Nietzsche was. Reccomended for the beginner absolutely!

I really like these comic books. They provide an easy way to access different thinkers. I picked this up at the library while browsing and read it in two days. It helps put Nietzsche in his historical, philosophical, and geographical setting. I learned of his relationship with Wagner and see him more as an iconoclast.

Remember the Reformation? Many people interpreted Luther to mean that they must now destroy all the statues in the Catholic churches. Nietzsche was born in Saxony close to where Luther came from. He was highly influenced by German higher criticism (Wellhausen etc.) He learned from his study of philology to distrust the Bible. But who to trust? First he was a nationalist. Then he thought art was it (Wagner). Eventually, he ended up destroying all the "idols" he had erected.

He came to similar conclusions as the Buddha (nihilism) but ended up losing his mind and spent the last decade of his life insane. He is famous for the saying, "God is dead, and we killed him." Nietzsche helps us realize what happens when we kill God by our own fallen reason.

This book doesn't attempt to try to explain Nietzsche's philosophy. Furthermore you're left confuse since there is a lot of ideas, people and event that are not fully explain but instead it just throws these thinks at you and also tries a lame attempt in being funny and all you're left with is disappointment of ever buying this book.