Customer Reviews

Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist

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I found this book to be a great aid in understanding Nietzsche. Professor Walter Kaufmann does an admirable job describing the evolution of Nietzsche's philosophy, his anti-system yet systematic approach, the will to power, eternal recurrence and much more. I recommend reading at least Beyond Good and Evil before taking this on in order to get a feel for Nietzsche and his ideas.

Walter Kaufmann was arguably the best translator of Friedrich Nietzsche into any language and is responsible to a large extent for his rehabilitation after World War II. In contrast to those who attempt to trash Kaufmann (see especially the reviews to Will To Power) he was better equipped to interpret Nietzsche than the vast majority of amateur Nietzscheans today. First Kaufmann was German-born, meaning that he had a native ability with that language. Normally when choosing a translator it is the normal requirement that the target language - in the case of Nietzsche's German, English is the target language - is handled by a native speaker. Kaufmann was an exception to this rule in that his English was exceptional; his writing is better than most native English speakers. In addition to that he had the intuitive feel for Nietzsche's German that only a native speaker of that language could have. Consider too the cultural context. His generation was closer to Nietzsche's than ours, he grew up in and knew intimately the culture that had produced Nietzsche. With all this in mind, for someone to then come along, say a 30ish American with perhaps a smattering of High School German, and attempt to trash Kaufmann (all the while using his translations which one would expect were tainted) shows a distinct lack of intellectual consistency. In other words if Kaufmann is wrong, don't rely on his translation, go back to the original German yourself to make your argument, or give up the effort.

However I expect that the main reason to attack Kaufmann is political. Today there are those who wish to reclaim Nietzsche for the Nazis even after Kaufmann decisively demolished the arguments for that connection. Those who wish to portray Nietzsche as a racist who focused on breeding and bloodlines ignore what the man actually wrote and betray more about their own opinions than Friedrich Nietzsche's. Far from being a proto-Nazi, Nietzsche in his own words comes across more as the Anti-Hitler or rather more to the point Hitler was the Anti-Nietzsche. Is it so surprizing that German culture was capable of producing both? Although in Hitler's case, I find him more a product of the times, than of any particular culture.

Much has been made of the fact of Hitler's fascination with Nietzsche. As a young soldier he most likely read Zarathustra, which was issued in mass to German troops in World War I along with the Bible. Like most readers who start with that book and read nothing else of Nietzsche, he understood little of the man's ideas. As Kaufmann mentions on page 292, the Nazis got their racial theories not from Nietzsche, but from Hans F.K. Günther who in turn was greatly influenced by the American racists Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard among others. Stoddard, a Harvard professor in the 1920's, is an interesting figure, in a certain perverse way, almost forgotten today except among white supremacists. His views (along with Grant's) on the Germans classified them as racially mixed with only a small quantity of superior "Nordic" blood. One wonders the influence this view had on Nazi policies and their fanatic and murderous efforts to "cleanse" foreign elements from their bloodlines. In fact Stoddard's influence on the Nazis clearly outweighs anything they got from Nietzsche, but while Stoddard is unacceptable today for mass consumption, Nietzsche's appeal goes on. Any attempt to link Nietzsche to the Nazis must be seen as the cheap political fascist trick it is.

As other reviewers have pointed out, with this book Walter Kaufmann almost single-handedly resuscitated Nietzche's reputation in the English-speaking world. And, Kaufmann's translations of Nietzsche's work are almost certainly the best available. This book is reasonably well written and lucid, and sets out a comprehensible interpretation of Nietzsche's work. If it weren't for H.L. Mencken's remarkably perceptive little book on Nietzsche published around the turn of the century (which I recommend), I'd say Kaufmann's book was the first really good thing on Nietzsche in English.

The polemics against other Nietzsche scholars are a little much. However, having read a number of the books of the Nietzsche-bashers Kaufman trashes, I tend to agree with him more than his critics, and in the context of the time they were written, I suppose they were not inappropriate.

Some reviewers have suggested Kaufmann lacks depth or sophistication, and there may be some truth in this. [Anecdote deleted which some of Kaufmann's admirers don't like. I am deleting it since the source will not permit his/her name to be used despite having told the story to a fairly large number of people]

It is mildly annoying that Kaufmann trashes every German edition of Nietzsche's work except the Musarion - a 1922 edition of which around 1,000 sets were printed. I was told only a hundred or so sets survived WWII and de-Nazification. I was fortunate enough to have access to it as graduate student at the University of California, but except for Kaufmann, I don't know of any sets in private hands. It is good, but almost inaccessible. I was the only one who had checked out several of the volumes, and in others I had to cut the pages.

While Kaufmann is a good introduction, as others have said, it's better to actually read Nietzsche yourself, preferably in German, because Nietzsche is one of the most exciting prose writers in German in the 19th century. Kaufmann's translations are accurate, and reasonable English, but cannot come close to the elegance of Nietzsche's German. I read Nietzsche mostly in German, but keep Kaufman's translations to hand when I have a question about the German.

I read this book in an attempt to start my education of Nietzsche and his philosophy. I thought, at first glance, that it was a biography and a great place to start. I may have been wrong.
This text is not a biography. It is not light reading. In fact, it was written by one of the foremost scholars on the life and philosophy of the difficult Nietzsche and Kaufmann is highly intelligent himself. Though I was able to slowly read through this text, and it did offer absolutely invaluable insights, I would not suggest it for the passive or novice reader.
The reader does get a sense of what kind of a person Nietzsche was but this book is mainly concerned with his writings and ideas. Many of the works Nietzsche wrote are highlighted and presented in depth. However, far beyond this discussion of the writings of Nietzsche is a discussion of his ideas and their relevance. In this case, Kaufmann attempts something rarely indulged--a discussion of the ideas and thoughts of one of the most brilliant and revolutionary philosophers of recent times.

This is meat not milk.

Walter Kaufmann wrote some of the best available translations of Nietzsche's work, most of which can only be appreciated by understanding how bad past scholarship was on Nietzsche. However, the issue for a book should be how well it speaks to us now, rather than how well it would have spoken to us then. How well suited is Kaufmann for this task?

First, Kaufmann has translated many poems, philosophers, and Nietzsche's work into English. This means he has intimiate familiarity with Nietzsche's use of various Germanic words.

Second, he was interested in existential philosophy in general. Kaufmann was also fascinated by many of the same people that Nietzsche found inspirational, particularly Goethe. While it is possible to accurately "translate" a text and give a meaning based upon pure linguistics and reading the text, an author that is able to place things within their proper historical standpoint shows a great deal more to the audience whenever ideas can be placed within other contexts.

Third, Kaufmann was a fan of Nietzsche. This is something important, as many philosophers butcher other philosopher's work that they do not like. Take, for example, Karl Popper's very famous misinterpretations of Hegel in "Open Society and Its Enemies".

Fourth, though he is often harsh towards other interpretators and commentators, (most often justifiably so), he has no doctrinal axe to grind. The most serious accusation is that he white-washed Nietzsche too much. I think most readers acquainted with Nietzsche will see where Kaufmann did this. Given that he was trying to remove the taint of the Nazis from Nietzsche, I can understand his white-washing, even if it's now antiquated.

Fifth, he has no real religious axe to grind. He was one of the first scholars to take Nietzsche's critique of religion and Christianity seriously. I say this in case some poor reviewer like one who did this book says that his "Christian" background interferes with his scholarship. (To give you an idea of how little this person knows Kaufmann, he conveted to Judaism at 11 and was agnostic for his adult life. Does one count his pre-natal years as a Christian influence?)

Anyone even remotely familiar with "Faith of A Heretic", "Critique of Religion and Philosophy", or "Religion in Four Dimensions: Existential, Aesthetic, Historical, and Comparative" will note that Kaufmann wrote many detailed and extensive critiques on religion and particularly Christianity. (He did seem to retain some fondness for Judaism, but that has no bearing on his interpretation of Nietzsche.)

Overall, he probably was more familiar with Nietzsche than any other scholar, and his command of English is impeccable. Nietzsche was a fascinating philosopher, and if it hadn't been for Kaufmann's work on him, most of us would never have heard anything about him except that he was a proto-Nazi.

I got this book after having finished reading the complete works of Nietzsche. Kaufmann has the best translations of most of N's works, save "Beyond Good and Evil" (Hollingdale is the way to go). However, Kaufmann didn't get around to translating many of N's early works, and we are poorer because of this. But, in this text, Kaufmann goes through these early works in his discussion of the development of N's thought. I found his comments on the Untimely Meditations very useful. I had read these texts in the older Oscar Levy translations, and found them hard to digest. For this reason alone, this book was useful to me.

The book in general is a good introduction to N. It spends a lot of time dispelling rumors which do not have the same currency as when the book was written. These misguided misinterprations still exist however, and it is good to be able to counter them. I general don't like secondary texts, but this is a good one. Get it if you are interested in N's life story, or in the basis of his ideas, and you will be very happy.

I like Kaufmann. I am Danish, but don't understand much German while I do know English well, so I have been able to read Kaufmann's English translations of Nietzsche which I highly value. Kaufmann does a good job of considering everything Nietzsche said on an issue in determining his interpretation. While he presents Nietzsche as soft and anti-revolutionary, there is much truth to Kaufmann's arguments, and I agree that Nietzsche was not the cruel philosopher of hardness that some make him out to be. However, Kaufmann's passion for Hegel, which I despise, might creep into his interpretation of Nietzsche too often. For instance, Kaufmann claims that Nietzsche is a dialectical monist as regards cosmology. The will-to-power has an impulsive side and a reasonable side, and when the impulsive is sublimated by the reasonable, the will-to-power has overcome itself. But how monistic is this really? Nietzsche tried to avoid dualism (Plato) at all costs and despised Hegel's dialectical procedure. However, there is much evidence for the truth of Kaufmann's view, and I don't mean to say that he is wrong, but only that he would do better to explain Nietzsche in less Hegelian terms. Overall though, the book is very good.

I have, and have come to love, Kaufmann's translations of Nietzsche in the Modern Library and Viking Portable editions (both highly recommended). His translations are extremely lucid, and his commentaries are very helpful. I came to this book with high expectations, and I was a bit disappointed.

The problem is that Kaufmann has really done his job too well. The book was originally written in a time when most of the English speaking world had an impression of Nietzsche as a proto-Nazi, a myth which Kaufmann nearly single handedly dispelled. It also served as a counterweight to the unreliable translations of Nietzsche into English. Since the first edition, Kaufmann has translated almost all of Nietzsche's oeuvre. All the problems this volume was meant to fix have since been fixed.

This book would still be a good purchase for some, those who need a gentle introduction to Nietzsche, those who are interested in Kaufmann as a philosopher, and Nietzsche competeists who want a thorough history of the Nietzsche legend. There is also a thorough treatment of The Untimely Meditations, which could prove useful read against the availible translation because Kaufmann never got around to translating those.

Kaufmann's favorite of Nietzsche's works is Ecce Homo. In his Nietzsche, Kaufmann echoes a lot ideas from that book. For those with some experience with Nietzsche, who are willing to put in a little more work reading into Nietzsche's prose, spend some time with that instead. Translated by Kaufmann. After all, if the point is Nietzsche, just read Nietzsche.

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This book is both beneficial to the study of Nietzsche and rather impressive. The 1974 edition has been updated and edited in it's fourth edition with prefaces from 1950, 1956, 1968 and 1974 and one can see with the extensive amount of footnotes through out the book that many changes, updates and corrections have been made over the years, as much thought and scholarship is contained in these pages. One can just imagine Kaufmann consulting various professors, and layman alike, receiving criticism, subsequently updating his extensive, yet non-exhaustive study and analysis of Nietzsche.

It must be said that this is a much more honest and well-rounded study than Heidegger, however Heidegger's theologian style I particularly love, as I am also a reader of theology, such as Paul Tillich. And I would recommend reading both author's analysis, as well as Karl Jaspers.

Kaufmann most certainly does an adequate explanation of Nietzsche's teachings and his falsely interpreted racism and anti-semitism so found in the exegesis of bias his sister and Nazi and nationalistic writers of the past. I think this is a fair assessment of Nietzsche, including his love and influence of Schopenhauer and Wagner, only to change course from both men in his objection to the racism, anti-semitism and pessimism of both and the subsequent idolatry of the Wagnerians and those romantics who fail in reason and those who reason who fail to attack their own convictions, as conviction act as mental prisons. (p. 355). Ultimately, Nietzsche perceived the greatness of men not in biological Darwinian terms, but of cultural terms, that in the philosopher, artists and saints.

Nietzsche was convinced that all life sprung from the one source (monism) - the Will to Power, which in turn contained both passion and reason, both form and chaos, both good and evil and it was not dualistic and to be extirpated or repressed as in Christianity, but rather to be re-directed, sublimated into self-mastery, self-overcoming into a created, controlled self, an Overman. (p. 251). However first he must brand himself (p. 253) - a war of the accepted, not creation." (p. 111) with values; self-positing, self-creating himself and then subliminating his directions, a creation, a "yes to Being." (p. 282). Kaufman calls this "monadological pluralism. (p. 243). Christianity was Not the flowering bud on the dung, as anti-semitic interpreters saw him, but rather "the miscarriage of Judaism."(pp. 299-300)

It's ironic how Nietzsche said greatness would consist in holding one's own in an unfinished system with free, unlimited views" as Leonardo da Vinici did, as systems act as blinders and bar many views, and yet one must have some type of finished system to analyze Nietzsche. (p. 87). Yet systems are good insofar as they reveal the character of a great thinker - independent of the truth of the system. (p. 81). And in this system one can find that the creativity, the Dionysus of Goethe which acts to absorb the Apollinian, which Apollinian is in self-mastery, self-overcoming (pp. 16, 242) of the Dionysus for "this is a man!," the passionate former of the chaos. (p. 410). Artists may be sick people (p.180) however; there is a sharp difference between the artist that is empty in hunger and that who in fullness overflows. (p. 375)

While Nietzsche recognized the emptiness of romanticism, the remedy of Socratic reason was only a temporal fix, as the time would come when such temporality would end into destruction, as "one had only one choice; either to perish or - to be absurdly rational" (p.406), In the wisdom of Socrates courage to die that for himself no ultimate cure is possible - except death itself. (p. 407) "The classical I call the healthy and the romantic I call the sick." (p. 380). The artist must first do as Oscar Wilde has stated; he must first melt down the bronze in order to create a new piece of art. The healthy man was the Apollinian over the Dionysian (pp. 131-132), and the Dionysian was not romanticism. (p. 138).

The entire book is worth the read, however the appendix is for the study of manuscripts and previous authors and more for a study of post-Nietzsche interpretations as opposed to the study of Nietzsche's thoughts themselves.

So much more can be said of Kaufmann's analysis and one must truly see this book as a wonderful means to the mind of Nietzsche.

Other reviews:
1.
"Kaufmann's primary objective is to simplify and twist Nietzsche's cosmically explosive thinking into highly accessible, pleasurable fluff. A disastrous example of awkward, politically-oriented dementia. Do not trust Kaufmann and his Christianized misinterpretations!!"

2.
"See, how repeatedly Kaufman fell under the spell of 'Thus spoke Zarathustra'-a book for everyone and no one, a book offers ultimate profundity, and ultimate safety that comes with it, a book proclaimed highest by Nietzche himself? My goodness! Do you really understand this bundle of puzzles? Be warned, Nietzche isn't a safe place like Hegel is, it does separate, it does rank. Herd doesn't separate, doesn't rank, it is ranked, as a group in its entire wholeness."

I have here taken excerpts from the lowest rated and lowest rating reviews of Kaufmann's "Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, AntiChrist" for the sake of balance, for what appears to be the echo of the choir back to the speaker.

Merits and Demerits of the Text:
Kaufmann writes well, more literary than philosophic or even academic. In the latter sense this is a relief from the stilted mental constipation of unsubtle but rigorous reflection (in sex and thinking, harder is not necessarily better), in the former it is a deficiency that is far too typical of the "existential" breeds, and the greatest objections to K. are often in superfluous multidisciplinary literary-psychological digressions, tangents and ill chosen metaphors (Nietzsche had something specifically to say on this). Kaufmann was very happy with the financial and academic success his translations brought him, and the self-promotion (i.e. ...see pg X of MY Portable Nietzsche, Viking ... ect.] present in his notation is self-evident. Too much of the time Kaufmann spends exploring parallels to Nietzche end up cannibalizing their purpose: explication of NIETZSCHE's ideas and when he succeeds, the volta turns out to be a superficial flourish.

Kaufmann:
Walter does have a sufficiently subtle understanding and reasonably nuanced understanding of Nietzsche to recognize pitfalls and other intellectual clap-traps most of which he succeeds in avoiding and demolishing in the course of the book. The amount of 'dross' as he would have it, that had to be negated limits the amount of actual exegesis possible on Nietzsche. There are MANY extended references to Hegel, some less helpful than others, and each walk the razor-blade thin distinction between useful and "fluff". For those with little prior knowledge of German history/philosophy, the gradual building up and winding down in the text's pacing is useful, otherwise it has its tedious moments for those with prior knowledge that would prefer it if WK would just get to the point. Kaufmann's interpretation sneaks in very stealthily at times, but on the whole he maintains his personal distance on the level of ideas and interpretation which in the introduction he specifically says that he is firstly concerned with Nietzsche's ideas and not his interpretation of them. The sections on Jesus and Socrates, along with the appendix on the history of the various versions of N's texts could have stood by themselves, and would still have made a substantial book. It happens to be however, that these are the very sections that he walks the razor blade mention above.

In relation to other texts:
Kaufmann and Heidegger as "traditional" interpreters outline the basic problems and starting points for interpretation quite well. Many of the "new" analytic and continental interpretations, seeking an out from K and H only succeed in doing so by myopic superficiality and unbalanced/selective quotation, without regard for refuting relevant passages supporting opposite theories, or by a certain intellectual autism by certain postmodern "idiots" which fiercely cling to an irrationalist, monumental version of Nietzsche.

Conclusion:
In relation to the quoted reviews 1 and 2 above, Kaufmann's faults are more than forgivable and his work admirable even if only as an "scholarly oxen", which is surely more noble than the pontificating snobbery and superficial apologetics of some "studious beavers" masturbating in ink to keep their cushy position in the international academic guild. As an Ox, Kaufmann at least stays relevant and does a good job of reading Nietzsche's Anti-Statism and opposition to conformity--to the herd, which if he is a part of, he was well in front, as there was no Nietzsche "scholarship" to speak of until he came along. Thank you Walter Kaufmann, you have done good.

In this book, Kaufmann remarks that Nietzsche is easier to read and harder to understand than nearly any other philosopher. This is probably the reason that Nietzsche, as he feared,is still terribly misunderstood. Kaufmann presents Nietzsche with such clarity and develops his arguments with such skill, that I found myself understanding a large part of Nietzsche philosophy COHERENTLY for the first time. I seriously recommend this book for anyone who wants understand this often mysterious man. I should also add that the first chapter of the book is an interesting 40 page biography, which does a lot to dispell many of the rumors surrounding Nietzsche's life, as well as telling how these rumors came about (you will find that the majority are the fault of his sister). Great Book.