Nietzsche: Life as Literature [Paperback]

Alexander Nehamas (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0674624262 | ISBN-13: 978-0674624269 | Publication Date: October 15, 1987

Argues that Nietzsche tried to create a specific literary character in his writings and discusses the paradoxes of his work.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Deriving inspiration from both continental and American scholarship, Nehamas penetratingly discusses Nietzsche's style and his views on truth, knowledge, the will to power, morality, and the self. The unifying theme is provided by two central features of Nietzsche's work: his perspectivism (the view that there are only interpretations) and his ``aestheticism'' (the tendency to view the world as a literary text and people, including himself, as literary characters). It is the illuminating treatment of this latter theme that constitutes the book's chief novelty. But there are many other provocative interpretative claims: for instance, the denial that the notorious doctrine of the eternal recurrence is a cosmological thesis. This is a brilliant book; no one interested in Nietzsche will want to miss it. Richard Hogan, Philosophy Dept., Southeastern Massachusetts Univ., N. Dartmouth
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

This is the best and most important book on Nietzsche in English. Alexander Nehamas argues at a level of sophistication and provides a density of content which are very rare in this field.
--Michael Tanner (Times Literary Supplement )

Philosophers and anyone interested in philosophy ought...to welcome Alexander Nehamas's elegant and challenging interpretation of this most 'writerly of philosophers'...This unusually engaging book demands our attention.
--Karsten Harries (New York Times Book Review )

Anyone at all interested in Nietzsche will certainly want to read [this book]...Nehamas has applied his own theory of interpretation, and he has postulated an integrated, coherent 'Nietzsche' to whom no future reader of Nietzsche can remain indifferent.
--David Hoy (London Review of Books )

Nehamas evolves a wonderfully subtle and ingenious interpretation...[He has] produced something weighty, complex, distinctive--in its way, a work of art.
--George Scialabba (Village Voice Literary Supplement )

Marvelous...Nehamas has written perhaps the best book yet on Nietzsche's philosophy.
--Robert C. Solomon (Philadelphia Inquirer )

This new study is fascinating for its portrayal of Nietzsche's thought as 'literary' in a twofold sense: first, Nehamas argues that Nietzsche viewed the world as if it were a literary text; second, he claims that Nietzsche's goal as an author was to create a specific literary character...The case is argued forcefully (and even with a touch of drama)...The writing is rich and allusive in a manner that is unusual in contemporary works of philosophy. It is a valuable contribution to our understanding of Nietzsche, one that adds substance to the often facile citing of Nietzsche in contemporary literary studies.
--Stephen N. Dunning (Poetics Today )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (October 15, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674624262
• ISBN-13: 978-0674624269
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #292,222 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #9 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( N ) > Nietzche, Friedrich

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ingenious reformulation of Nietzsche's key ideas, April 23, 2001

By 

TheIrrationalMan - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Paperback)

Nietzsche's "aestheticist" turn, in Alexander Nehamas's ingenious exposition, is twofold. First, he interpreted the entire world as an enormous literary text. Secondly, he was preoccupied by creating, through the medium of his texts, a specific personality, which as Nehamas contends, was Nietzsche himself. He argues that Nietzsche's key ideas, such as the will to power, nihilism, his view of truth, his ideas on cruelty, the overman and the dreadful doctrine of the eternal recurrence (which Nehamas interprets as a psychological, as opposed to cosmological, conception) were all fused into Nietzsche's aestheticist model of "self-creation". In a move of apocalyptic boldness, Nehamas claims that the figure of the overman which Nietzsche held in such high regard, was actually Nietzsche himself as he fashioned himself through his texts, a unique individual who affirmed the sum-total of life, which includes, of course, the suffering entailed in living. The literary analogues that Nehamas uses to illustrate Nietzsche's fundamental concepts are highly illuminating. Above all, Nehamas implies that theoretical knowledge is empty compared to the radical philosophy pursued by Nietzsche, which resulted in a synthetic merging of life with art. This philosophy, combining self-reference with self-creation was why Nietzsche was, and is, "the first Modernist as well as the last Romantic." Along with Walter Kaufmann's "Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Anti-Christ", this book is possibly the best book on Nietzsche available in English.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Unorthodox Nietsche Commentary, April 20, 2009

By 

Mr. Steiner (New York) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Paperback)

Granted, Nehamas' reading of Nietzsche's corpus as a literary 'text,' yields a number of interesting results, particularly in his analysis of Nietzsche's conception of 'How to Become What One Is.' But I wonder just how interested in literature Nehamas really is here-he spends the bulk of this volume discussing Nietzsche's perspectivism (which is an unusually elegant and clear explication) and his distrust of traditional conceptualizations of truth. Yet he wavers on key positions, such as the eternal return and will to power. Nehamas fails to push the perspective of Zarathustra as a literary creation far enough. Nietzsche's positive reevaluation of all values lies in the possibility of artistic creation as an overcoming of nihilism. His analysis degenerates into uninteresting snobbery in the section on Beyond Good and Evil where he describes Nietzsche as a 'monstrosity,' and 'vague.' This is simply the inability on Nehamas' part to unify the thoughts of a thinker whose work so consistently resists unification.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dionysiac, September 27, 2011

By 

Gherardini "Gherardini" (Heraclitusville) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Paperback)

What's objectionable about this book? It doesn't intelligently express the Dionysiac effect of Nietzsche's thought only but whets the mind's appetite for more also. So I give it a four-star rating.