The Portable Nietzsche (4 page)

Some studies of Nietzsche are listed here; editions of Nietzsche's writings, both in the original and in English, are listed at the end of this volume, beginning on page 688.

The comprehensive but incomplete
International Nietzsche Bibliography
, ed. Herbert W. Reichert and Karl Schlechta (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960) lists close to 4000 items in 27 languages. The bibliography in the 3rd rev. ed. (1968) of Kaufmann's
Nietzsche
(see below) includes well over a hundred studies, as well as a detailed account of the various collected editions of his works.

 

Binion, Rudolph.
Frau Lou
. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968. Supersedes all previous studies of Lou Andreas-Salomé and of her relationship to Nietzsche.

Brandes, Georg.
Friedrich Nietzsche
. Tr. from the Danish by A. G. Chater. London: Heinemann, 1914. Four essays by the critic who “discovered” Nietzsche, dated 1889, 1899, 1900, and 1909.

Brinton, Crane.
Nietzsche
. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1941; New York: Harper & Row, Torchbook ed. with new preface, epilogue, and bibliography, 1965. In the new edition, the numerous errors of the original edition remain uncorrected, but in a short preface Brinton disowns the chapter “Nietzsche in Western Thought.” The rev. bibliography adds serious new errors.

Camus, Albert. “Nietzsche et le nihilisme” in
L'homme révolté
. Paris: Gallimard, 1951, pp. 88—105. “Nietzsche and Nihilism” in
The Rebel
, Engl. tr. by Anthony Bower. New York, Vintage Books, 1956, pp. 65—80. This essay throws more light on Camus than on Nietzsche.

Danto, Arthur C.
Nietzsche as Philosopher
. New York: Macmillan, 1965. A hasty study, full of old misconceptions, new mistranslations, and unacknowledged omissions in quotations. The context of the snippets cited is systematically ignored, and no effort is made to consider even most of what Nietzsche wrote on any given subject.

Drimmer, Melvin.
Nietzsche in American Thought: 1895—1925.
Ph.D. thesis, The University of Rochester (N.Y.), 1965. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, Inc.,
727
pp., includes Bibliography, 634—727.

Heidegger, Martin. “Nietzsches Wort ‘Gott ist tot'” in
Holzwege
.
Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1950.

————. “Wer ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?” in
Vorträge
und
Aufsätze.
Pfullingen: Neske, 1954. English translation by Bernd Magnus in
Lectures and Addresses.
New York: Harper & Row, 1967.

————.
Nietzsche
. 2 vols. Pfullingen: Neske, 1961. One of the major efforts—certainly the bulkiest one—of the later Heidegger: important for those who would understand
him
.

Hollingdale, R. J.
Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965. Sympathetic, informed, and well written; the best biography in English, but the account of Nietzsche's relationships to Salomé and Rée is dated by Binion's book. Nietzsche's philosophy is discussed in the context of his life.

Jaspers, Karl.
Nietzsche: Einführung in das Verständnis seines Philosophierens
. Berlin and Leipzig: De Gruyter, 1936 (2nd ed., 1947, “unchanged,” but with a new preface). Engl. tr. by Charles F. Wallraff and Frederick J. Schmitz,
Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity
. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1965

———.
Nietzsche und das Christentum.
Hameln: Verlag der Bücherstube Fritz Seifert, n.d. (“This essay was written as the basis for a lecture which was delivered . . . May 12, 1938. It is here printed without any changes or additions. . . .”) Engl. tr. by E. B. Ashton,
Nietzsche and Christianity.
Chicago: Henry Regnery, Gateway Editions, 1961. A miniature version of the approach encountered in Jaspers' big
Nietzsche
.

———. “Kierkegaard und Nietzsche” in
Vernunft und Existenz.
Groningen: J. W. Wolters, 1935. Engl. tr. by William Earle in
Reason and Existenz.
New York: Noonday Press, 1955. Reprinted in Walter Kaufmann,
Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre
. New York: Meridian Books, 1956, pp. 158—84.

Kaufmann, Walter.
Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist
,
Antichrist
. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950. 2nd rev. ed., New York: Meridian Books, 1956. 3rd rev. ed. (with substantial additions, including a comprehensive bibliography, a long appendix dealing with recent German editions of Nietzsche, and a detailed discussion of Nietzsche's relationship to Paul Rée and Lou Salomé), Princeton: Princeton University Press, and New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1968.

————. Five chapters on Nietzsche in
From Shakespeare to Existentialism
. Boston: Beacon Press, 1959; rev. ed., Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1960.

————. Articles on Nietzsche in
Encyclopedia Americana; Encyclopaedia Britannica; Collier's Encyclopedia; Grolier Encyclopedia; The Encyclopedia of Philosophy
.

———.
Tragedy and Philosophy
. Garden City, N.Y.: Double-day, 1968.

————. Exposes of
My Sister and I
as a forgery, falsely attributed to Nietzsche, in
Milwaukee Journal,
February 24, 1952; in
Partisan Review
, vol. XIX no. 3 (May/June 1952), 372—76; and of the rev. ed. in
The Philosophical Review
, vol. LXIV no. 1 (January 1955), 152f.

Klages, Ludwig.
Die Psychologischen Errungenschaften Nietzsches.
Leipzig: Barth, 1926.

Löwith, Karl.
Von Hegel bis Nietzsche.
Zürich and New York: Europa, 1941. Engl. tr. by David E. Green,
From Hegel to Nietzsche
. New York: Holt, 1964; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1967. Includes eight sections on Nietzsche.

Love, Frederick R.
Young Nietzsche and the Wagnerian Experience
. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963. A good monograph that takes into account Nietzsche's compositions, including unpublished items in the archives in Weimar. It is full of pertinent, but untranslated, German quotations. The break with Wagner is not included. Love shows how Nietzsche. never was “a passionate devotee of Wagnerian music.”

Morgan, George A., Jr.
What Nietzsche Means
. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1941. Reprinted, unrev., New York: Harper & Row, Torchbooks, 1965. An exceptionally careful study very useful as a reference work.

Vaihinger, Hans.
Die Philosophie des Als-Ob.
Leipzig: Meiner, 1911. Eng. tr. by C. K. Ogden,
The Philosophy of ‘As If.'
New York: Harcourt Brace, 1924. The chapter “Nietzsche and His Doctrine of Conscious Illusion (The Will to Illusion),” pp. 341—62, remains one of the most interesting studies in any language of Nietzsche's theory of knowledge.

(Bonn, 1865)

. . . As for your principle that truth is always on the side of the more difficult, I admit this in part. However, it is difficult to believe that 2 times 2 is
not
4; does that make it true? On the other hand, is it really so difficult simply to accept everything that one has been brought up on and that has gradually struck deep roots—what is considered truth in the circle of one's relatives and of many good men, and what, moreover, really comforts and elevates man? Is that more difficult than to strike new paths, fighting the habitual, experiencing the insecurity of independence and the frequent wavering of one's feelings and even one's conscience, proceeding often without any consolation, but ever with the eternal goal of the true, the beautiful, and the good? Is it decisive after all that we arrive at
that
view of God, world, and reconciliation which makes us feel most comfortable? Rather, is not the result of his inquiries something wholly indifferent to the true inquirer? Do we after all seek rest, peace, and pleasure in our inquiries? No, only truth—even if it be the most abhorrent and ugly. Still one last question: if we had believed from childhood that all salvation issued from someone other than Jesus—say, from Mohammed—is it not certain that we should have experienced the same blessings? . . . Faith does not offer the least support for a proof of objective truth. Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire. . . .

(1867)

. . . The errors of great men are venerable because they are more fruitful than the truths of little men. . . .

(I, 393)
¹

(1868)

Schopenhauer's ethics is often criticized for not having the form of an imperative.

What the philosophers call character is an incurable disease. An imperative ethics is one that deals with the symptoms of the disease, having the faith, while it fights them, that it is getting rid of the real origin, the basic evil. Anyone who would base practical ethics on aesthetics would be like a physician who would fight only those symptoms which are ugly and offend good taste.

Philosophically viewed, it makes no difference whether a character expresses itself or whether its expressions are kept back: not only the thought but the disposition already makes the murderer; he is guilty without any deed. On the other hand, there is an ethical aristocracy just as there is a spiritual one: one cannot enter it by receiving a title or by marriage.

In what way, then, are education, popular instruction, catechism, justified and even necessary?

The unchangeable character is influenced
in its expressions
by its environment and education—not in its essence. A popular ethics therefore wants to suppress bad expressions as far as possible, for the sake of the general welfare—an undertaking that is strikingly similar to the police. The means for this is a religion with rewards and punishments: for the expressions alone matter. Therefore the catechism can say: Thou shalt not kill! Thou shalt not curse! etc. Nonsensical, however, is an imperative: “Be good!” as well as, “Be wise!” or, “Be talented!”

The “general welfare” is not the sphere of truth; for truth demands to be declared even if it is ugly and unethical.

If we admit, for example, the truth of the doctrine of Schopenhauer (but also of Christianity) concerning the redemptive power of suffering, then it becomes regard for the “general welfare” not only not to lessen suffering, but perhaps even to increase it—not only for oneself but also for others. Pushed to this limit, practical ethics becomes ugly—even consistent cruelty to human beings. Similarly, the effect of Christianity is unnerving when it commands respect for every kind of magistrate, etc., as well as acceptance of all suffering without any attempt at resistance.

(I, 404
f.
)

A state that cannot attain its ultimate goal usually swells to an unnaturally large size. The world-wide empire of the Romans is nothing sublime compared to Athens. The strength that really should go into the flower here remains in the leaves and stem, which flourish.

(III, 384)

(1872)

When one speaks of
humanity,
the idea is fundamental that this is something which separates and distinguishes man from nature. In reality, however, there is no such separation: “natural” qualities and those called truly “human” are inseparably grown together. Man, in his highest and noblest capacities, is wholly nature and embodies its uncanny dual character. Those of his abilities which are terrifying and considered inhuman may even be the fertile soil out of which alone all humanity can grow in impulse, deed, and work.

Thus the Greeks, the most humane men of ancient times, have a trait of cruelty, a tigerish lust to annihilate—a trait that is also very distinct in that grotesquely enlarged mirror image of the Hellenes, in Alexander the Great, but that really must strike fear into our hearts throughout their whole history and mythology, if we approach them with the flabby concept of modern “humanity.” When Alexander has the feet of Batis, the brave defender of Gaza, pierced, and ties him, alive, to his carriage, to drag him about while his soldiers mock, that is a revolting caricature of Achilles, who maltreats Hector's corpse in a similar fashion at night; and even this trait is offensive to us and makes us shudder. Here we look into the abyss of hatred. With the same feeling we may also observe the mutual laceration, bloody and insatiable, of two Greek parties, for example, in the Corcyrean revolution. When the victor in a fight among the cities executes the entire male citizenry in accordance with the laws of war, and sells all the women and children into slavery, we see in the sanction of such a law that the Greeks considered it an earnest necessity to let their hatred flow forth fully; in such moments crowded and swollen feeling relieved itself: the tiger leaped out, voluptuous cruelty in his terrible eyes. Why must the Greek sculptor give form again and again to war and combat in innumerable repetitions: distended human bodies, their sinews tense with hatred or with the arrogance of triumph; writhing bodies, wounded; dying bodies, expiring? Why did the whole Greek world exult over the combat scenes of the
Iliad?
I fear that we do not understand these in a sufficiently “Greek” manner; indeed, that we should shudder if we were ever to understand them “in Greek.”

But what lies
behind
the Homeric world, as the womb of everything Hellenic? For in that world the extraordinary artistic precision, calm, and purity of the lines raise us above the mere contents: through an artistic deception the colors seem lighter, milder, warmer; and in this colorful warm light the men appear better and more sympathetic. But what do we behold when, no longer led and protected by the hand of Homer, we stride back into the pre-Homeric world? Only night and terror and an imagination accustomed to the horrible. What kind of earthly existence do these revolting, terrible theogonic myths reflect? A life ruled only by the children of Night: strife, lust, deceit, old age, and death. Let us imagine the atmosphere of Hesiod's poem, already hard to breathe, made still denser and darker, and without all the mollifications and purifications that streamed over Hellas from Delphi and from numerous abodes of the gods; let us mix this thickened Boeotian atmosphere with the gloomy voluptuousness of the Etruscans; then such a reality would wring from us a world of myth in which Uranos, Cronos, Zeus, and the wars with the Titans would seem like a relief: in this brooding atmosphere, combat is salvation; the cruelty of victory is the pinnacle of life's jubilation.