In this book, one of the most distinguished scholars of German
culture collects his essays on a figure who has long been one of
his chief preoccupations. Erich Heller's lifelong study of modern
European literature necessarily returns again and again to
Friedrich Nietzsche.
Nietzsche prided himself on having broken with all traditional ways
of thinking and feeling, and once even claimed that he would
someday be recognized for having ushered in a new millennium. While
acknowledging Nietzsche's radicalism, Heller also insists on the
continuity of the story in which he does indeed occupy a central
place. By considering Nietzsche in relation to Goethe, Rilke,
Wittgenstein, Yeats, and others, Heller shows the philosopher's
ambivalence toward the tradition he inherited as well as his
profound effect on the thought and sensibility of those who
followed him. It is hardly an exaggeration to say, as Heller does
in his first essay, that Nietzsche is to many modern writers and
thinkers--including Mann, Musil, Kafka, Freud, Heidegger, Jaspers,
Gide, and Sartre--what St. Thomas Aquinas was to Dante: the
categorical interpreter of a world, which they contemplate
imaginatively and theoretically without ever much upsetting its
Nietzschean structure.
Thus it is Nietzsche's thought, so pervasively present in the
themes of modernity, that gives coherence and unity to Heller's
essays. What emerges from them is that, despite his iconoclastic
declarations and unorthodox philosophical practices, Nietzsche
deals with the human spirit's persistent concerns. His questions
remain urgent, and even the answers, in all their
contradictoriness, possess the commanding force of his inquiry. An
example is the incompatibility of the famous extremes, the teaching
of the "Ubermensch" and the Eternal Recurrence of All Things. These
cancel each other out and yet grow from the same intellectual and
spiritual roots, as is shown lucidly and cogently by one of
Heller's most forceful essays, "Nietzsche's Terrors: Time and the
Inarticulate." In fathoming the depth of this contradiction, Heller
at the same time reveals the importance of Nietzsche for those who
seek to understand the wellsprings of the epoch's disquiet,
turmoil, " and" creativity.
General
Imprint: |
University of Chicago Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
December 1988 |
First published: |
December 1988 |
Authors: |
Erich Heller
|
Dimensions: |
228 x 152 x 13mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback
|
Pages: |
199 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-226-32638-2 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
0-226-32638-1 |
Barcode: |
9780226326382 |
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