Customer Reviews

Nietzsche's Dangerous Game: Philosophy in the Twilight of the Idols (Modern European Philosophy)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is not well researched. It is based on a couple dozen short snippets of Nietzsche's work that Conway uses over and over again. The rest of what the other reviewer who gave it only one star said is correct. The whole point of Conway's book is to say that Nietzsche was vain, wanted nothing more than to control his followers, and that his readers are all fools -- which must surely include Conway. Conway is a postmodernist whose prose is mostly unreadable. His political orientation is Hegelian. But Nietzsche was free of the Hegelian nonsense. Conway rejects the individual. But the individual is the central concept of Nietzsche's political thought. Conway believes in totalitarianism, like Marx. He has no faith in people, only in groups and their leaders. Conway wants the PoMo future: utter ignorance and strong arm leaders who are allegedly benevolent because they have been freed of the fetters of law and existing contracts. Conway thinks Nietzsche is an irrationalist, but Nietzsche ridiculed irrationalism throughout his career. Conway and his postmodern moralist cohorts believe 'it is a sin against everything of value to become scientific' to cite just one bit of Nietzsche's mockery that fits the PoMo mind frame (CW Postscript 1). This book is worth almost no one's time, and all students should avoid it.

This book is clever and well-written and thoroughly researched. In this sense it is a solid academic book. But it is superficial and immature, delighting in self-reference and merely reading Nietzsche against Nietzshe ('if everything is untrue is this claim also untrue?') without recognizing Nietzsche's response to this sort of thing. Rather than trying to show that he betters his subject matter, the author would have done well to consider, as any number of Continental philosophers have already done, how Nietzshce and Nietzscheans have responded to this criticism, and thus why Nietzsche is not playing a game at all.