How to Read Nietzsche [Paperback]

Keith Ansell Pearson, Professor of Philosophy and the Director of Graduate Research at The University of Warwick, United Kingdom, has written a succinct, lucid introduction to Nietzsche's philosophy. In only 131 pages (ten enlightening chapters), Dr. Pearson surveys key ideas of Nietzsche's corpus: the death of God, the Superman, the eternal recurrence, the will to power, nihilism, and many others.

The chapter headings are: "The Horror of Existence," "Human, All Too Human -- Historical versus Metaphysical Philosophy," "Nietzsche's Cheerfulness," "On Truth and Knowledge," "On Memory and Forgetting," "Life is a Woman, or the Ultimate Beauties," "The Heaviest Weight," "The Superman," "Nihilism and the Will to Nothingness," and "Behold the Man."

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) is "the great anti-Platonist" and by extension a fearsome opponent of Christianity, which he regarded as "Platonism for the people." On this subject, Pearson writes: "At the centre of Nietzsche's mature work is an attack on modes of thought, such as Platonism, which posit a dualism between a true world and a merely apparent one. [According to Platonic and Christian thought] The true world is held to be outside the order of time, change, plurality and becoming--it is a world of being--while the world of change, becoming and evolution is held to be a false world, one of error and mere semblance. . . . He argues that the peculiar idiosyncrasy of philosophers in general is their lack of historical sense and their hatred of the idea of becoming, what he calls their Egypticism: philosophers dehistoricise things and int he process mummify the concepts they are using to comprehend them. What has not been adequately dealt with are processes of life, such as death, change, procreation, growth, so that whatever truly has being is held not to become and what becomes is held to be nothing real and to lack being." Well explicated, Dr. Pearson!

One other excerpt from "How to Read Nietzsche" will give the reader a sample of the author's style: "It is clear that Nietzsche feared that a widespread state of apathy and indifference towards life would emerge in the wake of God's death. The thought of eternal return is designed to combat this. . . . With the thought of eternal return Nietzsche is inviting us to unlearn the metaphysical universe so that we direct our energies on what is closest to us. It would be absurd to take it as offering a 'solution' to the problems of life. It necessarily has its limits and is a thought to be experimented with--creatively and conscientiously."

Undergraduate students especially will profit from studying "How to Read Nietzsche," and even more advanced scholars will be pleased with the facility with which the author deals with weighty subjects.

In an e-mail that I received from him, Professor Pearson writes: "I am delighted to hear you esteem Nietzsche so much.I have loved him for many years now and hope some of my passion comes across in the little book. The last two chapters of it were difficult to write, I still feel very ambivalent about them, but at the same time I felt a pedagogic responsibility to voice a few warning signs so as to ward off any 'fanatical' appropriation of him. I regard Nietzsche as one of the greatest human beings that have ever lived, as well as one of the greatest liberators of the modern period. I'll have more books published on him in the coming years, I haven't quite finished yet! With this little one it's heartening to hear that it has resonated with a reader and had an impact of some sort. As an author one never knows or very rarely, especially an 'academic' author, and with this book I didn't wish to write solely or even largely for a professional academic audience. It was a lot of fun to do . . . "

The much romanticized Friedrich Nietzsche, writer of thousands of short aphorisms as well as essays and poetry, remains ominously difficult to summarize. Any short book that attempts to introduce this wildly diverse thinker will inevitably miss important aspects of his thought. Though this applies to "How to Read Nietzsche," the breadth and depth of this short book more than makes up for any missing elements. As it stands, the book provides apt coverage of Nietzsche's major ideas. Those covered include: "The Birth of Tragedy," historical versus metaphysical philosophy, Nietzsche's "cheerfulness," the "death of God," truth, memory and forgetting, eternal recurrence, "the beauties," the Superman, and nihilism. Each one receives a chapter that applies that idea to Nietzsche's entire oeuvre. For example, eternal recurrence isn't only discussed as it appeared in "The Gay Science," but also in his late notebooks. Most introductory books stop after a definitional exposition of the concept. This one looks at how the concept developed with Nietzsche's thought. Biography, when relevant, also weaves through the philosophical discussion, but the focus remains on the ideas listed above.

The book even covers some of the objections to Nietzsche's thought. This gives the discussion an extra dimension not seen in most introductions. For example, did Nietzsche simultaneously eschew metaphysics while creating his own via the eternal recurrence and the Superman? Also, how important is it that Nietzsche more or less ignored the social or economic strata of society? The author considers this a major oversight and claims that Nietzsche's "thinking can only instruct us so far."

"How to Read Nietzsche," complete with its neo-1950s textbook cover, provides an excellent introduction to a much discussed, but infrequently read, thinker. Though geared towards a philosophical audience, the text should remain accessible to general readers (those with no background whatsoever may struggle here and there). Also, passages from Nietzsche's works accompany each chapter, making each section a mini-exegesis extracted straight from the source. By the end of this text, newcomers will have in depth knowledge of many of Nietzsche's major ideas and also understand why no "Nietzschean" exist. Nonetheless, echoing Foucault, they will have a better idea of what use Nietzsche's thought can be put to.

In the Introduction,the author Keith Ansell Pearson gives us two reasons why we have to read Nietzsche today: 1) his works belong to the most beautifully written texts in the history of Western philosophy, and 2) he is one of the most important, and thought-provoking, philsosophers who probed the predicaments and pitfalls of modernity. Then he points out one peculiarity shared by many Nietzsche readers. While they may admire his works and avidly read them, they don't agree with all the points he makes. In fact, considering that aspects of his philosphy were often found quite troubling by many serious Nietzsche commentators, Pearson suggests, it would be safe to assume that there is no single "core" to be identifed, and designated, as "Nietzschean" in his thinking.

Hence, without having a "core" to be processed and packaged, what he thinks is the best way to introduce Nietzsche is to examine the tasks he bequeathed to us. They are: "practising 'the gay science' and cultivating philosophical 'cheerfulness', getting to grips with the problem of nihilism and conceiving in new ways the art and science of living well (the task of superman)."

I think this was an excellent choice, since it binds the author and reader alike to engage in philosophizing with history in mind, as Nietzsche himself would recommend. The result, however, is somewhat unfortunate in this regard. Chapters following the Introduction are usually organized in this order: 1) excerpts from Nietzsche, 2) historical background, which mixes biography and history, 3) Pearson's exegesis, and 4) views from other commentators. In other words, engagement with Nietzsche's ideas that might have been made much more interesting and relevant, with the question "Why read him now?" in mind, is really done in an all too familiar format of many introductory books.

Still, to me, this is one of the best of its kind I have come across. Pearson obviously not only reads and studies Nietzsche but feels the rhythm and temperature of his thought. Introduction to the views of commentators of our time is quite succint and useful as well.