REVIEWS

A selection of the best from recent issues of the Philosopher

 
Heavenly spheres Nietzsche's Umbrella

The Philosopher's verdict: The search for knowledge of Nietzsche drives us towards our downfall
Nietzsche: Writing From The Early Notebooks, edited by Raymond Geuss and Alexander Nehamas
Cambridge (2009)  ISBN 978-0-52167180-4 (pp 274 with index)

Two thirds of Nietzsche's writings are in the form of unpublished notes, - drafts for essays and books - and that's not counting letters and correspondence. This provides a treasure trove of Nietzchean aphorisms and quotes for specialists and non-specialists alike.

Take, for instance Notebook 5[30]:

'I dream of a collective of men who are absolute, who know no consideration, and who want to be called 'destroyers'.'
The notes are from Nietzsche's university period, from his appointment as Professor Classical Philology at Basel, in Switzerland, in 1868 (at the age of 24) to his 'early retirement' in 1879, due to deteriorating health. During this period Nietzsche published The Birth of Tragedy, the four Untimely Meditations and Human, All Too Human.

The books and the notes are preoccupied with the same themes:  the role and conception of tragedy in Ancient Greece; the importance of art, music and culture to society and life; the nature and task of the genius or 'higher specimens'. The notes throw light on Nietzsche's ambivalent attitude towards specific individuals - notably Socrates, Schopenhaur and his fellow countryman, Richard Wagner - and on Nietzsche's developing scepticism towards the traditional philosophical search for knowledge, truth and goodness. 

ï Knowledge, sought by the scientists, drives us towards our 'downfall';

ï  Truth is an obstacle, instead 'The philosopher seeks not the truth but the metamorphosis of the world into man: he struggles for an understanding of the world with self-awareness.'

ï As for goodness, Notebook 33 offers 'Against Socrates, it can now be said that human virtue is nothing,  but human wisdom a great deal'.

The difficulty of making sense of Nietzsche's fragmented and often contradictory notes has created a small industry of Nietzsche analysis. Martin Heidegger's 'monumental study'  (published in Germany in 1961) was followed by Derrida's 'Spurs: Nietzsche's Style' which focussed on one jotting in particular, where Nietzsche says enigmatically:
'I have forgotten my umbrella'
which appears - in quotation marks, mind you - in the notebooks for 1881-2. From this Derrida obtains a complex justification for treating all Nietzsche's writings as 'indeconstructible', so to speak. That is to say, impossible to analyse.

Note

This book is the companion volume to Cambridge's Writings from the Late Notebooks (2003) which THE PHILOSOPHER reviewed here, and contains a lucid and informative introduction by Alexander Nehamas.

Readers may also be interested in Roger Caldwell's essay on 'the umbrella', here.
 

Never mind what The Philosopher says -
Take me to the bookshop!
Reviewed by Martin Cohen