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 Western philosophy.
Responding to the powerful myths and countermyths that had
sprung up around Nietzsche, Kaufmann offered a patient, evenhanded
account of his life and works, and of the uses and abuses to which
subsequent generations had put his ideas. Without ignoring or
downplaying the ugliness of many of Nietzsche's proclamations, he
set them in the context of his work as a whole and of the
counterexamples yielded by a responsible reading of his books. More
positively, he presented Nietzsche's ideas about power as one of
the great accomplishments of modern philosophy, arguing that his
conception of the "will to power" was not a crude apology for
ruthless self-assertion but must be linked to Nietzsche's equally
profound ideas about sublimation. He also presented Nietzsche as a
pioneer of modern psychology and argued that a key to understanding
his overall philosophy is to see it as a reaction against
Christianity.
Many scholars in the past half century have taken issue with
some of Kaufmann's interpretations, but the book ranks as one of
the most influential accounts ever written of any major Western
thinker. Featuring a new foreword by Alexander Nehamas, this
Princeton Classics edition of Nietzsche introduces a new generation
of readers to one the most influential accounts ever written of any
major Western thinker.
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