I have to confess I thought Young’s reading of Nietzsche was awful. But that’s because I loved Deleuze’s interpretation of Nietzsche, and even more so Klossowski’s ‘Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle’. Young reduces Nietzsche to a humdrum Existentialist, and completely misses the most radical elements in his thought.
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What would be the criteria for wrong interpretations? And more reasonable interpretations?
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Interesting. For me, the primary value in reading biography is to get an understanding of Nietzsche more as a man than as a philosopher. I tend to zone-out a bit when a biographer begins to offer interpretations of ideas from the writings rather than facts about the context in which the writings were created.
For example, my understanding of The Birth of Tragedy is deepened far more by what the biographer has to say about what was going on in Nietzsche’s life at the time of the writing than the biographer’s interpretation of the ideas therein.
Indeed, the biographical context that gives birth to The Birth of Tragedy suggests the book would not have been written had Nietzsche never met Wagner. And the contingent nature of their meeting renders all even more fascinating.
Similarly and in the absence of biography, how would one know that the influence of Schopenhauer upon Nietzsche would go beyond Schopenhauer’s metaphysics and into Schopenhauer’s advice as to how a man should live his life, i.e., solitary, ascetic, disciplined, reading, writing.
The below is also an excellent biography:
S.Prideaux (2010) I am Dynamite!: A Life of Nietzsche, Penguin Random House LLC, New York 434 p.
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Perhaps insufficient knowledge, inaccurate knowledge, known knowledge left unpresented, logically invalid arguments, unsound arguments, and even discipline of writing and application of writing style. But I am just spit balling here. I suspect your answers are at least as good as mine.
I agree. But on that score, Young has been accused of plagiarizing from Curtis Cate’s biography of Nietzsche.
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One reason I liked Young’s book on N’s aesthetics is that we get a narrative of Nietzsche’s changing positions. A central issue is how and when Nietzsche assumes a “true reality.” Nietzsche uses “truth” in many and sometimes dissonant ways.
Haven’t read Klossowski. I’ve read some Deleuze, from several texts, and I grant that something is there. But Deleuze hasn’t won me over yet.
Anyway, perhaps you can elaborate on the quote above. What is a “humdrum existentialist” for you ? What’s Klossowski’s deal ? Why good ?
A ‘hum drum’ existentialist makes existence the burden of a subject possessed of a will, on which basis they are free to construct their own meanings and purposes. This thinking places identity before difference, reason before affect.
I notice that in your comments about Feuerbach you wrote “He meant “matter” in terms of sensation and feeling. He criticized other thinkers for trying to make the world “all thought.” But he saw the power of thought.” Nietzsche reverses the priority of terms, grounding identity in difference, knowledge in affect. In different ways, writers like George Bataille, Brook Ziporyn, Klossowski, Deleuze, Heidegger, Foucault and Derrida begin from this transformed understanding.
With Bataile, we see the self as instrumental abstraction dissolved into meaningless excess through eroticism, in Foucault we get the idea of the subject as merely an effect of the circulation of power in cultural systems, in Heidegger a critique of humanism, in Deleuze an anonymous pre-personal realm of desiring machines, of which the self is a contingent byproduct, in Derrida a deconstruction of Heidegger’s ‘who’ into a ‘what’, and in Nietzsche himself not only the death of god but the death of man.
Klossowski focuses on Nietzsche’ Eternal Return, interpreting it not as a cosmological principle of repetition, but as the return of the same absolutely different. He chronicles Nietzsche’s desperate attempt to keep his sense of self from fragmenting as the implications of his ideas became apparent to him.
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That is an interesting question. Nietzsche had terrible eyesight. And reading or writing for an extended period often resulted in migraines. Also, Nietzsche was fond of long walks and he took them daily and would always have notebooks with him for the sole purpose of writing down ideas. But he would toss the idea around in his head so as to distill it and write it down in the fewest possible words. In that sense, his use of an aphoristic style was somewhat of a necessity. And he also had friends who would assist him in preparing manuscripts for publication.
I myself am sceptical of the value of notes that did not work their way into the writings assembled and sent for publication by Nietzsche. We all have ideas that we end up rejecting but Nietzsche did not intentionally throw any notes away. And we can only speculate as to why some notes were left unused.
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Don’t all existentialists make existence the burden of a subject possessed of a will?
Ah, I definitely misread the situation. But you’re right, we can see here Nietzsche says it’s most common that some idealist has claimed to understand something in Nietzsche, but how could they when their experience is that of an idealist?
One must have experience with what he speaks about to take anything from it at all. Rsther than having to sit about and ponder some metaphysics, although BoT is metaphysical language he clarifies that in WtP.
Spiiting 
over here. Not sure why there isn’t a fire emoji reaction…
Honestly, it’s not a bad recommendation, but I feel there is no real place to start. I found my start in Zarathustra, put it down after part one then reqched out to Ecce Homo, then it was BGE, then back more into Zarathustra etc etc. Kinda all over the place. That’s the best thing about his style its all collected from his fragments and many of his thoughts are repeated in the next book over or a few books over just more refined into the discussion he’s yappin about at the time.
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Me too. And yet here we are still talking about him. I wonder if anyone will be talking about any of us 125 years from now?
Well the thing is, I have started several of his books. Got significantly through Zarathustra, but got nothing from it, not even entertainment. Have read chunks of some others - Ecce Homo and Human, All Too Human, mostly Kaufmann translations. Found a recommended translation of On the Genealogy of Morality (Clark and Swenson). I just don’t care for it and the grandiose prose is mildly irritating. But I’m nuanced enough to know this is on me, not the author. I’m happy just to understand something of the themes Nietzsche raises and get a feel for his ideas without being a critic. I had read some of The Gay Science (or The Joyful Science, depends on the translation - do people like the R. Kevin Hill version? ) and was curious how Jordan Peterson seems to have repeatedly hijacked and misread “the death of God”. Not that Peterson counts as a philosopher, but he did seem to be a gateway drug for soft-cock, Jungian Christianity at some point.
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So I expected something like that. But I wanted the details. Thanks !
What does grounding identity in difference mean to you ? I might suggest that they are entangled. Like my take on Plato’s unwritten doctrine.
The self can be dissolved, yes, sort of.
I’d also ground knowledge in affect. That’s basically Feuerbach’s “materialism.”
If value and content are bestowed upon sensuousness by the Idea, sensuousness is pure luxury and trumpery – only an illusion which thought practices upon itself. But it is not so. The demand that the Idea realise itself, that it assume sensuousness arises from the fact that sensuous reality is unconsciously held to be the truth which is both prior to and independent of thought. Thought proves its truth by taking recourse to sensuousness; how could this be possible if sensuousness was not unconsciously held to be the truth?
Taken in its reality or regarded as real, the real is the object of the senses – the sensuous. Truth, reality, and sensuousness are one and the same thing. Only a sensuous being is a true and real being. Only through the senses is an object given in the true sense, not through thought for itself. The object given by and identical with ideation is merely thought.
An object, i.e., a real object, is given to me only if a being is given to me in a way that it affects me, only if my own activity – when I proceed from the standpoint of thought – experiences the activity of another being as a limit or boundary to itself.
And dig this from the mostly forgotten “materialist,” who started off as a strange death mystic, after all..
Only in feeling and love has the demonstrative this – this person, this thing, that is, the particular – absolute value; only then is the finite infinite. In this and this alone does the infinite depth, divinity, and truth of love consist. In love alone resides the truth and reality of the God who counts the hairs on your head. The Christian God himself is only an abstraction from human love and an image of it. And since the demonstrative this owes its absolute value to love alone, it is only in love – not in abstract thought – that the secret of being is revealed.
Is this related to "Dasein is not in time but time itself " ?
Agreed. The primary framework of BoT is not metaphysics. Instead, the primary framework is clearly the emergence of tragedy within the Greek theater. And there is no better world view to explain the emergence of tragedy within the Greek theater than the then prevailing Greek world view, which is idealist.
You don’t have to share the idealist Greek world view to know the Greek world view is likely to explain the evolution of Greek culture. Good luck to anyone who thinks they can explain the emergence of Greek tragedy within the Greek theater with a realist framework.
People can be so silly.
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For Nietzsche, power is a feeling.
I don’t think that creativity, self-overcoming, and the affirmation of life is a feeling. I think it’s something that you do, and it’s not easy. In fact, it’s very difficult.
I agree. But you are confusing will with power. The activities you describe are exercises of will rather than power and the reason one undertakes them is the expectation that they will enhance one’s sense of power in some meaningful way.
The fact that the activities you describe are “not easy” and are “very difficult” is exactly why one must summon up the “will” to undertake them. But it is the desire for an enhanced sense of power that is the organizing principle for channeling the will.
Nietzsche’s most significant period begins with Thus Spoke. Twilight of the Idols is a concise presentation of his worldview of this last phase of his writing. In his own word he presented his philosophy in a positive manner in Thus Spoke. Writings after that are (re-actively or negatively) concentrating on the critique of “cultural mentality” that seeks to repress the Zarahustrian-Dionysian personality. Problem with his main opus is that it is not written in an understandable essay form like his later writings. He merely refers metaphorically into his thoughts. It is often very difficult to interpret his intentions in this artistic form. It helps when one studies his worldview presented in later writings. So, Nietzsches “mature” philosophy is contained in Beyond, Genealogy, Twilight (overview), Antichrist and Ecce (last three are short booklets or pamphlets). In 1885, after Thus Spoke Z, N. wrote prefaces to many his earlier publications. These are good short introductions into his “aristocratic” world. He also added an important last part on Joyous Science (other chapters still represent N:s previous “sceptically enlightened” phase.)
N:s non published notebooks 1885-1888 are of course very important. That is, chronologically as such (Colli & Montinari edition) and not as an edition of the alleged “planned book” entitled Will to Power, which doesn’t exist.
Personally, I don’t find his (“energetic-physiologistic”) ideas particularly convincing. He is fun to read now and then though.
His basic “fatalistic” idea: we are not healthy because we (consciously) eat healthy but we (or some of us) eat healthy because we (i.e. our bodies) are (already, instinctively) healthy. Our constitution determines us.
For Feuerbach difference is a difference between already-given presences, as individual things or persons. For Deleuze et al, there are not presences which then differ from each other. There are only differences of differences of differences. Nothing transcends this play of differences in order to ground it from above or behind (memory). For Feuerbach difference is phenomenological and relational. I encounter what is other than me. Heidegger, Deleuze et al mean something more radical. Difference is not just what appears between beings, but what constitutes beings, identity, subjectivity, and thought themselves. Feuerbach puts sensuous presence before thought, but difference is prior to sensuous presence.
Feuerbach replaces God with love, species-being, and human communion.But why is love , compassion and reconciliation privileged over a panoply of other affective attunements? Rather than grounding truth in loving relation, Nietzsche, Deleuze and Foucault ground truth-effects in struggle among forces. This is also why Heidegger places anxiety as more primordial than love. Love is a deficient mode of uncanniness, not-being-at-home and radical alterity. Affecting and being affected does not begin with things ( that which comes into presence and then has an influence on something else) , sensuous or otherwise, but with displacement.
It’s not clear if you agree or not.
You say that power is a feeling, and that it is the desire for an enhanced sense of power that is the organizing principle for channeling the will. I don’t see how feelings and desires constitute power. It seems to me that the capacity to create, organize, overcome, interpret, shape, resist, transform, impose form, etc. is power.