This classic is the benchmark against which all modern books about Nietzsche are measured. When Walter Kaufmann wrote it in the immediate aftermath of World War II, most scholars outside Germany viewed Nietzsche as part madman, part proto-Nazi, and almost wholly unphilosophical. Kaufmann rehabilitated Nietzsche nearly single-handedly, presenting his works as one of the great achievements of Wes…
No other modern philosopher has proved as influential as Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and none is as poorly understood. In the first new biography in decades, Rüdiger Safranski, one of the foremost living Nietzsche scholars, re-creates the anguished life of Nietzsche while simultaneously assessing the philosophical implications of his morality, religion, and art. Struggling to break away fr…
A comprehensive general introduction to Nietzsche and summary interpretation of his thought. A vast array of scholarship has been compressed here in service of an argument that is important for readers of Nietzsche at any level. The book contextualizes the thinker in terms of his life, his self-understanding, his concerns as he himself most directly expressed them, and much recent scholarship…
Michel Haar assesses the overcoming of metaphysics urged by Nietzsche. Pointing out that Nietzsche's overcoming must be conceived as a task both critical and reconstructive, Haar shows how Nietzsche criticizes philosophical concepts as being traceable to a process of simplification and identification, thus subverting traditional categories and identities. Haar presents Nietzsche as an aestheti…
Nietzsche's vision of the 'overman' continues to haunt the postmodern imagination. His call that 'man is something that must be overcome' can no longer be seen as simple rhetoric. Our experiences of the hybrid realities of artificial life have made the 'transhuman' a figure that looks over us all. Inspired by this vision, Keith Ansell Pearson sets out to examine if evolution is 'out of control'…