Customer Reviews

Nietzsche as Philosopher

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There are some wild readings of Nietzsche out there (nothing wrong with that), but in this book Danto works out of the British/American more conservative school of philosophy and tries to discover if there is a logical system to Nietzsche's works. Danto is one of the most readable philosophers out there, and is sensitive to the problems of systemizing Nietzsche. Overall a nice antidote to give to overzealous intellectuals who read a little Nietzsche and then feel qualified to start calling themselves one of the ubermensch.

Two hundred six pages of Danto's explication of Nietzsche illuminate more than the remaining 19. So Danto himself sheds more light than dark on Nietzsche and therefore points a way out of the "will-to-truth" (or the "myth of the given") to the "will-to-power."

Arthur C. Danto's forte is clearly academic art criticism and theory.
This volume (1965) was clearly an effort to 'cash in'.
The laziness in extracting anglo-american analytic theories and applications begs the question "Was writing this book an inconvenience for you, Artie?" and amounts to no more than: wellp, basically Berkely and Richard Rorty but undisciplined and irresponsibly fascistically enthused, hurp durp.

The prose is nearly unreadable, the arguments are assembled like lincoln logs, and Danto's omnipresent belletrism betrays the most physically repugnant stench of conceit and self-satisfaction imaginable. He plods unit-by-rhetorically questioning-unit on for what seems like eons only to deliver, "well, that's what he's saying, more or less, minus the Teutonic obtuseness." Just don't bother with this book, it is Actively unhelpful.

J.P. Stern for all his faults, being a litterateur type as Danto, is greatly preferable as a commentator to this ressentiment laden screech ape. Did I mention the analytic philosophy reputation associated with this volume is largely unearned?

Save your money, avoid this baby-boomer tripe, and invest in a volume on Nietzsche by Graham Parkes instead.