Nietzsche: Writings from the Late Notebooks (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy) [Paperback]

Friedrich Nietzsche (Author), Rüdiger Bittner (Editor), Kate Sturge (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 10, 2003 | Series: Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy

This volume offers, for the first time, accurate translations of a selection of writings from Nietzsche's late notebooks, dating from his last productive years between 1885 and 1889. Many of them have never before been published in English. They are translated by Kate Sturge from reliable texts in the Colli-Montinari edition, and edited by RÜdiger Bittner, whose introduction analyzes them in the context of Nietzsche's philosophy as a whole. This volume will be widely welcomed by all those working in Nietzsche studies.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Book Description

This present volume offers, for the first time, accurate translations of a selection of writings from Nietzsche's late notebooks, dating from his last productive years between 1885 and 1889. Many of them have never before been published in English. They are translated by Kate Sturge from reliable texts in the Colli-Montinari edition, and they are edited by RÜdiger Bittner, whose introduction places them in the context of Nietzsche's philosophy as a whole. This volume will be widely welcomed by all those working in Nietzsche studies.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 332 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (March 10, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521008875
• ISBN-13: 978-0521008877
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #143,382 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sturge v. Hollingdale, December 9, 2008

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Alaric - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Nietzsche: Writings from the Late Notebooks (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy) (Paperback)

Kate Sturge's translations are competitive with Hollingdale's, and her rendering of the textual emphases are quite effective; it's a shame she was not contracted to translate the rest of FN's published works starting from where Hollingdale left off for the Cambridge series.

The editor's introduction is academic on par with Maudmarie Clark. It is less helpful than useful, and less useful than accurate: it amounts to a smug repudiation of the WTP, and gloats at FN's 'failure' to translate it into a 'consistent' epistemological-ontological account. Skip it. It can only prejudice a beginner, and those familiar with the material will likely find it to be much ado on next to nothing in terms of thought.

The other reviews are mostly correct regarding the lack of citations as to which passages appeared in the WTP. A non-Kaufmann interfered, existentialised (read: bastardized) translation is much appreciated by this reviewer though. And the excuse for leaving out comments on women is a thoroughly stupid move, not a single thought towards regarding 'them' as an ideogram for Romanticism-Christianity-Socialism ect. and instead following their knee-jerk bourgeois reactions to guide editorial selection.

In short: great translation, reasonable selections of the otherwise yet to be translated into English Nachlass, facile and haughty introduction, access to specifics on Order Of Rank, detailed groundwork for BGE-GOM-AC-TW, and crucial political-economy questions, including those of 'breeding'. A great read and stimulating material, with some minor objections.

4 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Leaves out comments about women, Germans, February 16, 2007

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Bruce P. Barten (Saint Paul, MN United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Nietzsche: Writings from the Late Notebooks (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy) (Paperback)

Modern readers are so picky in what they are willing to read that it is amazing so much has been picked from Nietzsche's late notebooks for our consideration. I even found something that I thought was good because it conforms entirely with my own way of thinking, when I am not thinking about women and Germans.

Just checking in WRITINGS FROM THE LATE NOTEBOOKS, which only has 2 pages mentioned in the index for superman, the idea seemed to apply to anyone whom Nietzsche did not consider part of the herd. It came up in his consideration of beauty:

The beautiful exists as little as does the good, the true. Each separate case is again a matter of the conditions of preservation for a particular kind of man: thus the value feeling of the beautiful will be aroused by different things for the man of the herd and for the exceptional and super-man. (p. 202).

Generally Nietzsche associates the superman with the secretion of a luxurious surplus from mankind, rather like Marx's theory of capitalists living off the surplus value of factory labor made possible by whoever owns the factory. For Nietzsche, the superman is only a metaphor for a stronger species, a higher type. To quote:

To show that an ever more economical use of men and mankind, a `machinery' of interests and actions ever more firmly entwined, necessarily implies a counter-movement. I call this the secretion of a luxurious surplus from mankind, which is to bring to light a stronger species, a higher type, the conditions of whose genesis and survival are different from those of the average man. As is well known, my concept, my metaphor for this type is the word `superman'. (p. 177).
That first path, which can now be perfectly surveyed, gives rise to adaptation, flattening-out, higher Chinesehood, modesty in instincts, contentment with the miniaturization of man -- a kind of standstill in man's level. Once we have that imminent, inevitable total economic administration of the earth, mankind will be able to find its best meaning as a piece of machinery in the administration's service: as a tremendous clockwork of ever smaller, ever more finely `adapted' cogs; as an ever-increasing superfluity of all the dominating and commanding elements; as a whole of tremendous force, whose individual factors represent minimal forces, minimal values. Against this miniaturisation and adaptation of men to more specialised usefulness, a reverse movement is required -- the generation of the synthesising, the summating, the justifying man whose existence depends on that mechanisation of mankind, as a substructure upon which he can invent for himself his higher way of being . . . (p. 177).
Just as much, he needs the antagonism of the masses, of the `levelled-out', the feeling of distance in relation to them; he stands upon them, lives off them. The higher form of aristocratism is that of the future. -- In moral terms, this total machinery, the solidarity of all the cogs, represents a maximum point in the exploitation of man: but it presupposes a kind of men for whose sake the exploitation has meaning. Otherwise, indeed, it would be just the overall reduction, value reduction of the human type -- a phenomenon of retrogression in the grandest style. (p. 177).
It can be seen that what I'm fighting is economic optimism: the idea that everyone's profit necessarily increases with the growing costs to everyone. It seems to me that the reverse is the case: the costs to everyone add up to an overall loss: man becomes less -- so that one no longer knows what this tremendous process was for. A `What for?', a new `What for? -- that is what mankind needs. . . (pp. 177-178).

10 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nietzsche's Immoral Psychology, February 24, 2004

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Jeffrey Rubard (Beaverton, OR US) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Nietzsche: Writings from the Late Notebooks (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy) (Paperback)

Translator Kate Sturge gives us the Nietzsche our times deserve in this, a new edition of notes from the 1880s *Nachlass*. Based on the Colli-Montinari critical edition of Nietzsche's works, this book is not quite the "more accurate" portrayal of Nietzsche's late thought it claims to be: while Colli-Montinari vol. VIII offers both "pomes" and sketches for a reconstruction of society, for the most part we have here only Nietzsche's more traditionally "philosophical" thoughts. From the perspective of assessing the "uprightness" of the man, this is slightly unfortunate; although Nietzsche could genuinely claim to have predicted contemporary European economic and social integration, there is still truly much about his views that ought not to have been "rehabilitated" (e.g., defenses of slavery are thick on the ground). Praise of Nietzsche often serves as a sort of shell game, covering up revolting prejudices with more palatable criticisms: familiarizing oneself with Nietzsche's "detritus" is an important way to establish how far one can go with such sentiments. So this book will not serve all needs.

But setting this aside, the thoughts we are given are fine ones; and although Nietzsche's works on morality are usually viewed as examples of a Foucauldian "felicitous positivism", the picture of the mind offered here actually serves in many ways as a foundation for Nietzsche's view of ethics and society. Slogans are expanded upon: the cryptic "Truth is a kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live" gets an extensive gloss in terms of a theory of concepts as necessary simplifications of flux, and there are illuminating sections explaining just how "the prison-house of language" constrains our thought by inventing doers for deeds, and introducing a personalizing causality into natural phenomena. The selections made are full, relevant, and for the most part not available elsewhere: a fine introduction by Rudiger Bittner helps contextualize them. In fact, there is probably more about the will to power here than in *The Will To Power*; and all of what is in it is presented a more attractive and durable format, although it competes with that Vintage paperback in price.

In short: a must for anyone interested in Nietzsche's later thought.