The Portable Nietzsche (Portable Library)
by Friedrich Nietzsche
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Book Summary Information
Author: Friedrich NietzscheTranslator: Walter Kaufmann
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1977-01-27
ISBN: 0140150625
Number of pages: 704
Publisher: Penguin Books
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780140150629
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of The Portable Nietzsche (Portable Library)
Book Review: God is dead, the `Ûbermensch' should live
Summary: 5 Stars
This collection contains all Nietzsche's most important texts, except `Beyond Good and Evil'.
In those texts, Nietzsche shouts, exhorts, explains or translates via metaphors, poems, pastiches, maxims and aphorisms in a manic delirious style his vision on life, man and woman, good and evil, freedom, `natural' laws and abject institutions (State and Church).
Extreme disappointment in mankind
In `Thus spoke Zarathustra', Nietzsche clamors, that `God died, and that now we want the `Ûbermensch' to live.' But, why not man?
Nietzsche is extremely disappointed by man's refusal to live a `natural' life, instead of that of a slave: `I walk among men as among the fragments and limbs of men - but no human beings.'
`Man is something that must be overcome.' We must prepare the emergence of `Ûbermenschen'.
One of the few `Ûbermenschen' he saw around him (Richard Wagner) turned at the end of his life with his opera `Parsifal' into an `Orpheus of secret misery', defending `Rome's faith without the text'.
What is this `natural' life?
`Natural' life is unfettered freedom. Man should create his own laws of good and evil: `Can you be your own judge and avenger of your law?'
Life is selfishness, the will to assume responsibility for oneself, the lust to rule, to live `with the manly instincts which delight in war and victory.' To be one who is prepared to sacrifice human beings for one's own cause.(!)
Culprits
The culprits of the fact, that mankind lives in fetters, are Christianity, the philosophers of reason, the defenders of equal rights for everyman and the State.
Christianity
The Christian morality is anti-natural, because it is against the body, the senses, the instincts. It is the negation of the will to live, reducing mankind to a kind of self-violation.
The doctrine of personal immortality places life`s centre of gravity not in life, but in the `beyond'. One should strangle the `strangler that is called `sin'. Christianity turns man into a domestic sick animal.
Against reason
The morality of reason (rationality at any price) suppresses the dark appetite, the instincts, the unconscious. Nietzsche shouts against Kant that `every man has to invent his own categorical imperative'. The world doesn't form a unity, a `spirit' (Hegel), so that nobody is held responsible any longer.
Inequality
Against the French revolutionaries, `preachers of equality, the tyrannomania of impotence', he clamors: `Men are not equal. Nor shall they become equal! And they should have no right to want to be equal.' `The inequality of rights is the first condition for the existence of any rights at all.'
State
`State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters, a hypocritical hound.'
Misogyny, eternal recurrence
Women are still cats and birds, or at best, cows. They should be educated for the recreation of the warriors.
Nietzsche's theory of eternal recurrence is in contradiction with his wish of the emergence of the `Ûbermensch'.
Unacceptable
Nietzsche was a fundamental anti-democrat. His eugenic propositions (extermination of the weak) are a slap in the face of mankind.
His admiration of war is, today more than ever, an insult of humanity. His heroes, Napoleon and Julius Caesar, were two war criminals.
His misogyny is abject: `the agony of women giving birth must be there eternally'.
Influence
The Nazis adopted his racist (`if one wants slaves, then one is a fool to educate them to be masters') and eugenic views.
Carl Schmitt founded his theory of nation building on Nietzsche precept that a `Reich needs enemies'.
His influence on world literature cannot be underestimated (a few names: D.H. Lawrence, E. Jünger, G. Benn, G. d'Annunzio, K. Hamsun).
With his exceptional polemic talent (`Seneca, the toreador of virtue') and a sometimes unforgiving, arrogant, haughty, foaming and aggressive voice, Nietzsche wrote a formidable Homeric battle for the freedom of man against those who (continue to try to) put him in fetters. Of course, some of his viewpoints are unacceptable. But, all in all, these are still profoundly disturbing texts.
A must read.
Summary of The Portable Nietzsche (Portable Library)
The works of Friedrich Nietzsche have fascinated readers around the world ever since the publication of his first book more than a hundred years ago. As Walter Kaufmann, one of the world?s leading authorities on Nietzsche, notes in his introduction, ?Few writers in any age were so full of ideas,? and few writers have been so consistently misinterpreted.
The Portable Nietzsche includes Kaufmann?s definitive translations of the complete and unabridged texts of Nietzsche?s four major works: Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, Nietzsche Contra Wagner and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In addition, Kaufmann brings together selections from his other books, notes, and letters, to give a full picture of Nietzsche?s development, versatility, and inexhaustibility.
?In this volume, one may very conveniently have a rich review of one of the most sensitive, passionate, and misunderstood writers in Western, or any, literature.? ?Newsweek
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