I picked up this casette because I've long wanted to know more about the underpinnings of western philosophy--why we think the way we do--what came before and shaped 20th century thought? But who has time to read the great books in a day--or to take extensive coursework in philosophy? This tape was just about the best thing I could have asked for. It took the last 3000 years and rolled them up in a comprehensive and understandable ball. I now stand on a sturdier platform to be able to ask more cogent questions. And I gained this stance by listening during my commute, which is normally a waste of time. (Incidentally, I am now a huge tape fan, and I believe there are about 6 others in the series). Indeed "the unexamined life is not worth living," and now I am clearer on why, but most importantly, who said it.

A wonderful overview of Philosophy, covering the likes of Plato, Aristotle and the rest of the boys. Packed with information, but very comprehensible. Makes you want to learn more about each philosopher. The degree to which certain famous philosophers differ is facinating. I get something out of this audio tape everytime...

The German version of this book, published in 1894, about 108 years ago, was among the first books written about the books of Nietzsche. The photograph on the cover was taken in May, 1882 and a portion of it (as shown on p. 132) appeared in her book with the caption, "Friedrich Nietzsche, formerly professor and now a wandering fugitive" (p. ix), as Nietzsche had described himself in a letter to the third person in the picture in 1879, "referring to the severance from his ten-year position at the University of Basel." (p. ix). These people are all dead now. When she was 20, Lou wrote a poem "To Sorrow" (pp. xlviii-xlix) which praises it as "the pedestal for our soul's greatness." (p. xlix).

Lou reported a conversation about the changes in his life in which Nietzsche raised the question, "When everything has taken its course--where does one run to then?" and told her, "In any case, the circle could be more plausible than a standing still." (p. 32). She described his books as the product of "his last period of creativity, Nietzsche arrived at his mystical teaching of the eternal recurrence: the picture of a circle--eternal change in an eternal recurrence--stands like a wondrous symbol and mysterious cypher over the entrance to his work." (p. 33).

This book does not have an index, and the notes on pages 160-8 merely clarify a few things, such as the date of the letter from Nietzsche to Lou at the beginning of Part III Nietzsche's "System" on page 91 which Lou used without the final comment, "be what you must be." The possibilities might not be considered so great. "In that regard, if the sickliness of man is, so to speak, his normal condition or his specific human nature itself, and if the concepts of falling ill and of development are seen as almost identical, then we will naturally encounter again the already mentioned decadence at the culmination of a long cultural development." (p. 102). The ascetic ideal "is also a third kind of decadence which threatens to make the described illness incurable and threatens the possibility of recovery. And that form of decadence is embodied in a false interpretation of the world, an incorrect perception of life encouraged by that suffering and illness. . . . every kind of intellectualism extols thinking at the expense of life and supports the ideal of `truth' at the expense of a heightened sensation of living." (p. 103). "In respect to Nietzsche's own psychic problem, it is of less interest to determine correctly the historicity of master morality and slave morality than it is to ascertain the fact that in man's evolution he has carried these contrasts, these antitheses, within himself and that he is the consequent sufferer of this conflict of instincts, embodying double valuations." (p. 113). Ultimately, "Nietzsche's thought of the Dionysian orgy as the means for release of the emotions" (p. 127) are considered "the necessary conditions for the creative act out of which one shapes the luminous and godly." (p. 127). Nietzsche and Schopenhauer are tied to "the deeply pessimistic nature of the Greeks because their innermost life, as revealed through the orgiastic, was one of darkness, pain, and chaos." (p. 127). Art is the answer, here. "The highest or the most religious art is the tragic because within it the artist delivers beauty from the terrifying." (p. 128). Modern society can hardly be comprehended without accepting that much of what is popular is produced in the attempt to satisfy that desire for art.

To scholars and admirers of Nietzsche, Lou Andreas-Salome has always been seen as his Irene Adler, the intellectual equal who got way or was driven away, depending on one's point of view. Although their affair lasted for only a few months, it left an indelible mark on both, for it came at a turning point in Nietzsche's life where he would leave the realtively safe nests of academia and the Wagners for a peripatetic life in the Eupopean Alps.

Over the years we have heard from almost everyone who was anyone in Nietzsche's life, except Lou Salome. This makes the published reprint of her 1894 even more important for those involved in Nietzsche studies. To say that Salome brings a unique perspective to her work is a bit of an understatement, but those who simply expect this to be memoir of the man she knew will be, I think, somewhat joyfully disappointed. Instead she has written what well may be the first attempt to view the persona behind the works. After giving us an excellent analysis of Nietzsche's philosophy, she comes to the conclusion that perhaps Nietzsche's madness was the inevitable result of his philosophy. Was this, as Nietzsche's sister said, merely a fantasy of female revenge? Then simply compare the last page of her book with the events of Nietzche's last days in Turin, events which she cannot have known. Hers is a provactive and illuminating look at Nietzsche, made more powerful by the fact that she was first to the gate and that the strength of her book is the analysis, not the memories.

As with any book on Nietzsche that comes to us in a foreign language, translation is most important if we are to have not only a working understanding, but also a deeper understanding than we would ordinarily expect. That the translator should be the late Siegfried Mandel is only to the reader's advantage. His translation is crisp and clear. His excellent introduction makes it all the more clear to me that this man is, or should be at least considered, one of the formost Nietzschean scholars of his time. (For further reference, see his excellent "Nietzsche and the Jews.")

This is a book every serious student of Nietzsche should have in his or her library and a book that may contribute to a new vision of the tortured harbinger of the overman.

Siegfried Mandel's Nietzsche and the Jews is a title which either attracts instantly or detracts instantly. In my case I was a little put off by the title, for it almost sounds like a parody. When I began to read I noticed the book takes a biographical path with regard to its subject matter, tracing Nietzsche's exposure to anti-Semitism throught his years. I have read many, too many in fact, biographies of Nietzsche and was about ready to '86 this one. I'm glad I didn't, for when I got to the chapters concerning Wagner and Nietzsche, the book suddenly came alive with little known facts based on terrific research. Nietzsche's relationships with Richard and Cosima Wagner, Peter Gast, Paul Ree and Franz Overbeck are examined against the background of German anti-Semitism and Nietzsche's reaction to it.

Also, whereas most books center on sister Elizabeth and Lou Salome when discussing Nietzsche and women, Mandel provides a deep look at the relationship between Nietzsche and Helen Zimmern, his first translator and herself a Jew. Scattered in between are some revealing tidbits about Nietzsche and sexuality rarely revealed in other studies.

Another strong point is the chapters on Jewish scholars and disciples interested in Nietzsche, such as poet Siegfried (Solomon) Lipiner, scientist Josef Paneth, and journalist Paul Lansky. The chapter on critic Georg Brandes is an absolute gem.

Two Appendix chapters on Nietzsche's thought concerning the Jews contain an excellent analysis of Nietzsche's often confusing writings on the subject.

If you are looking for a serious book on this subject, or if you are looking for just a good book on Nietzsche, this one is definitely one to add to your collection.

On such a weird set of subjects, I should limit myself to the remarks on humor. Not listed in the index, but noted in Appendix II on page 321, Nietzsche praised American laughter, as "in the fashion of Mark Twain. I've not been able to laugh along with anything said by Germans." Mark Twain gets credit for having written "Our heavenly father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey." (p. 321) The rest of this book is pretty serious, and it's also well written.

This is one of the best books on Nietzsche and Jung. It argues very effectively that Nietzsche was not a simple atheist but had his own religious quest. The book is very clearly written despite the difficulty of its subjects. The scholarship is luminous on every page. I've studied Nietzsche and Jung for over twenty years but found myself learning many new things. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in either Nietzsche and Jung. Despite the high price of the book it will be a splendid addition to your library.

Dixon has resolved the conflicting views of two modern geniuses on the lack of wholeness in modern technological culture. This is as current as the madness in Kosovo and Littleton. She cuts throught the jargon, lays out their real, common, and divergent viewpoints, and links them to classical Christian and Grecian thinking. Much of Nietzsche's writings has been totally misread, for several reasons. Buttressed by vast references she explains why, rebuts the errors and reveals an astonishing concurrence between Philosophy and Psychology. She is amazing and very readable while maintaining the highest scholarship.

I have only read the first two pages of this book, but I already give it five stars for the joke on page two. In his critique of Kaufmann's (whom he calls a soft Nietzschean) critique of Nietzsche, Green says something to the effect that one gets the idea from Kaufmann that the overman could very well be a Princeton philosophy professor! I have still not quit laughing.
I just hope the rest of the book is this good!

Green's work deserves a prominent place in contemporary Nietzsche scholarship for several reasons. Firstly, he refuses to shrink back from the many weird or odd things that Nietzsche says; Green isn't interested in "domesticating" Nietzsche so that he sounds just like another analytic philosopher. Secondly, he insists on the connections between Nietzsche's thought and the philosophy and science (both natural and social) of his day, thereby making Nietzsche look like less of a Wunderkind and more like a serious philosopher, deeply engaged with the thinkers and issues of his day. Thirdly, by placing Nietzsche's epistemology in relation to Kant and neo-Kantianism, Green succeeds in showing both that Nietzsche does in fact have an epistemology (which both traditional analytic philosophers and more "postmodern" thinkers have doubted) and that his epistemology has little in common with the "pragmatism" and "empiricism" with which English-speaking philosophers are comfortable. In short, Green demonstrates that Nietzsche not only believed very strange things, but that he had excellent reasons for doing so, and those of us who are attracted to both Kantianism and to naturalism should follow Nietzsche's lead in working through the consequences of these positions.

My primary criticism of this work would be that "the French Nietzscheans" (i.e. Derrida, Foucault, and above all, Deleuze) are rudely dismissed early on. Green implies that Nietzsche should be read as a "naturalist" and not as a "postmodernist". But why accept this false dichotomy? Given the ways in which Nietzsche radicalizes traditional (i.e. Kantian) categories by way of his Heraclitean naturalism, it at least seems plausible that the post-structuralists are following Nietzsche's lead quite faithfully. One of the origins of "postmodernism" would then be seen to lie in the conflict between Kantianism and naturalism that animates Nietzsche's work.

In this book, Kaufmann remarks that Nietzsche is easier to read and harder to understand than nearly any other philosopher. This is probably the reason that Nietzsche, as he feared,is still terribly misunderstood. Kaufmann presents Nietzsche with such clarity and develops his arguments with such skill, that I found myself understanding a large part of Nietzsche philosophy COHERENTLY for the first time. I seriously recommend this book for anyone who wants understand this often mysterious man. I should also add that the first chapter of the book is an interesting 40 page biography, which does a lot to dispell many of the rumors surrounding Nietzsche's life, as well as telling how these rumors came about (you will find that the majority are the fault of his sister). Great Book.

Walter Kaufman is a scholar with a thorough knowledge of his subject. Unlike many others he does not impose his views on the subject. This book is a must read for anyone with even a passing interest in Nietzsche and his works.

This is in response to the previous review from the russian reviewer- This book is expensive because it is not destined for the general public but for libraries which operate as business do, with other concerns besides the price of books. As far as this volume is concerned I am sure that anyone who is initiated and seriously interested in scholarly study of Nietzsche will appreciate these articles, but I might suggest going to your local university library to read it.

I couldn't afford to buy this book. I wonder what it is. I wonder if the words are typed on the page using cocaine or speed or acid or something. I mean for that kind of money, what the hell are you getting? IT'S ONLY DEAD TREES FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!!! Do not buy this book. You can get those trashy romance novels for like $2.

This is a great, however brief, look into the life of one of the world's greatest minds. Hayman opens with a fleeting glance at Nietzsche's genealogy before diving into the seemingly bright life of the future philosopher. He cites Nietzsche's pendulum-esque nationalistic devotion prior to his near-death collapse from a horse. He then charts Nietzsche's intellectual progress from the life-altering secondhand bookstore find of Schopenhauer to the later critique of previous idols Wagner, Kant, and Renee. Hayman, however repetitiously (though nonetheless factually), outlines Nietzsche's incessant battle with illness throughout his life. The key to this text is that is does not attempt a definitive stance at the perpetual enigma as to the cause of Nietzsche's demise, but rather outlines possibilities starting from birth until his death. For those unfamiliar with the German titles of Nietzsche's works, it will require a bit of page flipping to the appendix until one grows accustomed to Hayman's methodology. Also, all passages from the philosopher's works are translated by Hayman that, in some cases, are clearer and more concise than the renounced Kaufmann readings. My only complaint is that Hayman didn't spend more pages in his great explication of the philosopher's life. I rate this alongside Monk's biography of Wittgenstein.

This biography is the most accurate and indeed, critical. It dealves into the life and thought of one of the greatest thinkers in Western Europe. Anyone who wishes to have a good introduction into Friedrich Nietzsche should read this book...by all means, read it!!

Nietzsche's announcement of God's death first appeared here, in The Gay Science. Also, this is the first book in which he mentions the Eternal Reccurence (see the second to the last aphorism of the fourth "book"). Zarathustra's prologue is also here (that's the last aphorism of the fourth book). Book 5 of the Gay Science was added in 1885, and covers Nietzsche's mature philosophy (post-Zarathustra period). Overall a good read.

Section 312 of this book is called "my dog" (on a combination of being faithful, obtrusive and shameless, "just as entertaining, just as clever as every other dog" (p. 177), but it is about Nietzsche's relationship to his pain. There is another book by Nietzsche, THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW, in which section 38 mentions "The bite of conscience" as a stupidity, like the bite of a dog into a stone. (Portable Nietzsche, p. 68). There is also a section in THE GAY SCIENCE about beggars using a stone to knock where there is no bell. This translation has an entry in the index for "beggars, and courtesy." The Walter Kaufmann translation listed section titles on pages ix-xviii, but Kaufmann didn't have an entry in the index for beggars or for bell, and though I may have rung Walter Kaufmann's bell a number of times, before and since I started writing reviews, my mental efforts to knock the war against the United Stoners of America has reached such a modern point of indifference in its approach to everything that what Walter Kaufmann thought about anything is of hardly any concern to those who would like an understanding of what is going on. I expect this book, which allows a comparison of minor differences on major matters, to be quite useful to me. I find it extremely comical when this translation makes something funny that in Walter Kaufmann's translation was only puzzling, but even the index of this book skips from women to words with no entry for wooden iron. There is no entry for iron between interruption, intuition, Islam, and Italian opera. But in the text itself, just before section 357 "On the old problem: `What is German?' " the end of section 356 raises the primary question any modern philosopher can face:

Free society? Well, well! But surely you know, gentlemen, what one needs to build that? Wooden iron! The famous wooden iron! And it need not even be wooden. (p. 217)

Asi hablo Zaratustra es una obra maestra de la filosofia contemporanea. Jamas he deseado conocer otro idioma (el aleman) tanto como al leer este libro. Esta obra escrita en parabolas, para acentuar su similitud con la Biblia, despliega el pensamiento filosofico de uno de los hombres mas estudiados de la historia, llevada de la mano de una maestria estetica solo comparable con obras como La Divina Comedia de Dante. Zaratustra es la anti-bibila donde convergen las ideas del Dios muerto, la voluntad de poderio y el eterno retorno, base fundamental de la filosofia de Nietzsche.

No solo es una gran obra para el que desea leerla con propositos academicos, sino para todo el que mas alla de querer encontrar respuestas sobre la existencia, esta buscando preguntas, esta buscando cuestionarse, abrir los ojos, ante todo lo antes creido.