Strauss is not content with telling us the story of Lowell's fascinating life--he portrays each milieu in which Lowell worked and lived with a complexity that gives us the tools to understand Lowell in context. For example, he gives us piquant details about life in the upper reaches of Boston Brahmin culture. One of the more interesting stories is Lowell's move from prominence in academia to the position of crank and critic of the increasing professionalization of astronomy.

This is the portrait of a restless mind, worth delving into.

The first fully satisfying biography of a man who helped to change astronomy, sustained its popularity and mystery, and tested the wills of mainstream astronomers.

Strauss' historical look at Lowell is extremely engaging and I found this book hard to put down. Some great historical context about Boston and Japan really give you the feeling of what is was like to be there back in the 1800's. I recommend this to all.

Nietzsche and Wagner were adept at picking on their contemporaries in a way that is so thoroughly unpopular now that I would not be surprised if this book is never again printed with the Introduction by J.P. Stern which was in the 1983 version reprinted in 1989, and which I purchased in 1990. It is clear from that introduction that David Strauss had read the first portion of this book and furnished his friend Rapp with a clear question about Nietzsche's character in a letter of 19 December 1873. "First they draw and quarter you, then they hang you. The only thing I find interesting about the fellow is the psychological point -- how can one get into such a rage with a person whose path one has never crossed, in brief, the real motive of this passionate hatred." (p. xiv) Those who are familiar with legal procedures, or how the media treats anyone who is suddenly perceived to be a fink, might enjoy this book as something that might be considered an unforgivable outburst today. Who could wish for such a triumph now, over intellectual paths which crossed twice? When Nietzsche was young, he perceived a scholar who displayed the real Straussian genius. Later, Nietzsche could only find a writer who, "if he is not to slip back into the Hegelian mud, is condemned to live out his life on the barren and perilous quicksands of newspaper style." (p. 54) I could have rated this book a bit higher, for being much more truthful than is expected of scholarly work today, but the kind of scholars who read these books might have no idea what I meant, or they know that they are better off not raising questions about those political issues which are most questionable. Nietzsche's real fearlessness began here.

Nietzsche wrote "David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer" in 1873, the first of his Unfashionable Observations, at the behest of Richard Wagner. David Strauss was an eminent theologian, whose The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1864) had had a tremendous impact due to its demystification of Jesus' life. Strauss had contended that the supernatural claims made about the historical Jesus could be explained in terms of the particular needs of his community. Although Strauss defends Christianity for it's moral ideals, his demythologizing of Jesus appealed to Nietzsche.

Nevertheless, Wagner had been publicly denounced by Strauss in 1865 for having persuaded Ludwig II to fire a musician rival. Not one to forget an assault, Wagner encouraged Nietzsche to read Strauss' recent The Old and the New Faith (1872), which advocated the rejection of the Christian faith in favor of a Darwinian, materialistic and patriotic worldview. Wagner described the book to Nietzsche as extremely superficial, and Nietzsche agreed with Wagner's opinion, despite the similarity of his own views to Strauss' perspective on religion.

This Unfashionable Observation, accordingly, was Nietzsche's attempt to avenge Wagner by attacking Strauss' recent book. In fact, the essay is at least as much an argumentative attack on Strauss as on his book, for Nietzsche identifies Strauss as a cultural "Philistine" and exemplar of pseudoculture. The resulting essay appears extremely intemperate, although erudite, filled with references to many of Nietzsche's scholarly contemporaries. The climax is a literary tour de force, in which Nietzsche cites a litany of malapropisms from Strauss, interspersed with his own barbed comments.

Nietzsche's second Unfashionable Observation, "On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life" (1874) is "unfashionable" because it questions the apparent assumption of nineteenth century German educators that historical knowledge is intrinsically valuable. Nietzsche argues, in contrast, that historical knowledge is valuable only when it has a positive effect on human beings' sense of life. Although he acknowledges that history does provide a number of benefits in this respect, Nietzsche also contends that there are a number of ways in which historical knowledge could prove damaging to those who pursued it and that many of his contemporaries were suffering these ill effects.

Nietzsche contends that history can play three positive roles, which he terms "monumental," "antiquarian," and "critical." Monumental history brings the great achievements of humanity into focus. This genre of history has value for contemporary individuals because it makes them aware of what is possible for human beings to achieve. Antiquarian history, history motivated primarily out of a spirit of reverence for the past, can be valuable to contemporary individuals by helping them appreciate their lives and culture. Critical history, history approached in an effort to pass judgment, provides a counter-balancing effect to that inspired by antiquarian history. By judging the past, those engaged in critical history remain attentive to flaws and failures in the experience of their culture, thereby avoiding slavish blindness in their appreciation of it.

The problem with historical scholarship in his own time, according to Nietzsche, was that historical knowledge was pursued for its own sake. He cited five dangers resulting from such an approach to history: (1) Modern historical knowledge undercuts joy in the present, since it makes the present appear as just another episode. (2) Modern historical knowledge inhibits creative activity by convincing those made aware of the vast sweep of historical currents that their present actions are too feeble to change the past they have inherited. (3) Modern historical knowledge encourages the sense that the inner person is disconnected from the outer world by assaulting the psyche with more information than it can absorb and assimilate. ( 4) Modern historical knowledge encourages a jaded relativism toward reality and present experience, motivated by a sense that because things keep changing present states of affairs do not matter. (5) Modern historical knowledge inspires irony and cynicism about the contemporary individual's role in the world; the historically knowledgeable person comes to feel increasingly like an afterthought in the scheme of things, imbued by a sense of belatedness.

Although Nietzsche was convinced that the current approach to history was psychologically and ethically devastating to his contemporaries, particularly the young, he contends that antidotes could reverse those trends. One antidote is the unhistorical, the ability to forget how overwhelming the deluge of historical information is, and to "enclose oneself within a bounded horizon." A second antidote is the suprahistorical, a shift of focus from the ongoing flux of history to "that which bestows upon existence the character of the eternal and stable, towards art and religion."

Nietzsche's third Unfashionable Observation "Schopenhauer as Educator" (1874), probably provides more information about Nietzsche himself than it does about Schopenhauer or his philosophy.

Schopenhauer, in Nietzsche's idealizing perspective, is exemplary because he was so thoroughly an individual genius. Schopenhauer was one of those rare individuals whose emergence is nature's true goal in producing humanity, Nietzsche suggests. He praises Schopenhauer's indifference to the mediocre academicians of his era, as well as his heroism as a philosophical loner.

Strangely, given Schopenhauer's legendary pessimism, Nietzsche praises his "cheerfulness that really cheers" along with his honesty and steadfastness. But Nietzsche argues that in addition to specific traits that a student might imitate, Schopenhauer offers a more important kind of example. Being himself attuned to the laws of his own character, Schopenhauer directed those students who were incapable of insight to recognize the laws of their own character. By reading and learning from Schopenhauer, one could develop one's own individuality.

"Richard Wagner in Bayreuth" (1876), the fourth and final of Nietzsche's published Unfashionable Observations, was intended as an essay of praise to Wagner, much like "Schopenhauer as Educator." Nietzsche's relationship with Wagner had been strained by the time he wrote the essay, however, and the tension is evident in the text, which emphasizes Wagner's psychology (a theme that would preoccupy Nietzsche in many of his future writings). Nietzsche, himself, may have been concerned about the extent to which the essay might be perceived as unflattering, for he considered not publishing it. Ultimately, Nietzsche published a version of the essay that was considerably less critical of Wagner than were earlier drafts, and Wagner was pleased enough to send a copy of the essay to King Ludwig.

Herein lie the seeds of Nieztsche's notion of Eternal Recurrence, which will germinate in The Gay Science, and bear fruit in Zarathustra.

Neitzsche's treatment of the four "types" of history in "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life" is facsinating, both in its own right, and as a prelude to the notion of eternal recurrence.

This is really a book that must be read by anyone serioulsly interested in Nietzsche's philosophy.

This book is an English translation of a classic German work written by David Strauss in the middle of the nineteenth century; most of the translation was done by the well-known novelist George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans). This is no lightweight monograph: Strauss is a scholar who draws on the relevant ancient sources and sprinkles his text with quotations in Greek, Latin and, to a lesser extent, Hebrew. However, only rarely does the argument turn on a lexical or grammatical peculiarity of one of these languages.

Strauss was one of the first theologians to perform a systematic analysis of the text of the New Testament from an essentially modern viewpoint. (For example, he does not believe in the existence of angels or demons.) Strauss works his way through the NT, taking each event or story as it occurs and subjecting it to a painstaking analysis. He relentlessly, one might even say mercilessly, exposes contradictions and inconsistencies in the NT text, considering and eliminating one-by-one all the attempts of conservative theologians to reconcile the irreconcilable. As Albert Schweitzer wrote in "The Quest for the Historical Jesus", Strauss's arguments "filled in the death-certificates of a whole series of explanations which, at first sight, have all the air of being alive, but are not really so."

Thus most of the book is still relevant, because it explodes harmonizing explanations that are still found today in popular Christian literature. However, there can be no doubt that Strauss is too single-minded in his desire to reduce everything in the NT to myth.

The book shows its age; for example, Strauss is of the opinion that Mark is little more than an abridgment of Matthew and Luke, although it is widely held today that Mark in fact has precedence. Almost all of Strauss's references to his contemporaries are to other German scholars, and the majority of these references are now difficult if not impossible to find. (It's easier to find the ancient works cited, such as those by Origen, Augustine, etc.) The book unfortunately lacks an index, and, considering the book's bulk, it is often very difficult indeed to find out if and where Strauss treats a particular NT story.

Albert Schweitzer said that there are two broad epochs of Bible Study - the period before David Strauss and the period after David Strauss. Strauss belongs to the 18th and 19th century German Protestant rationalist theological movement that tried to explain all the miracles of the Bible 'rationally'. The movement begins about 1776 with H. Reimarus and continues with J. Herder, K. Barhrdt, K. Venturini, H. Paulus, GWF Hegel and F. Schleiermacher. However, it is not ordinarily noted, but Hegel and Schleiermacher were in disagreement on just about everything, and David Strauss as a student of Schleiermacher, not Hegel.

Strauss' troubles began when he crossed the line and used Hegel's name. Hegel was the most famous philosopher of the day, and Strauss decided to drop his name in the marketing of his book. Wrong move. Hegelians, led by Bruno Bauer, hotly contested Strauss' claims to use their mentors name. In his follow-up to this book, IN DEFENSE OF MY LIFE OF JESUS AGAINST THE HEGELIANS (1838), Strauss contradicted himself -- he admitted that Hegel himself would not recognize his writing as representative of Hegel's theology. Ultimately, Strauss ended up alone.

Strauss was the world's first 'demythologizer' and that is saying a great since most 20th century theology centers around demythologization -- even late Catholic theology.

But let's set the record straight -- Strauss was hardly influenced by Hegel at all -- his real strength came from Schleiermacher. (Schleiermacher had his own method of triads.) Strauss tried to capitalize on Hegel's popularity and in fact this worked -- Strauss' book became a best-seller in 1835 and Strauss lived on the royalties for the rest of his life. However, he never wrote a best-seller after this one.

I would point out that Strauss no longer has the last word in Bible criticisms; for example, he did not see the logic in the Marcan Hypothesis, while most every other scholar since 1840 has accepted it. His defense of the priority of JOHN is quite weak. His quest for the historical Jesus was almost nil. His analysis of the mind-set of the Gospel Communities themselves, or of the Gospel authors themselves, was elementary.

Strauss did not create in a vacuum, nor may we say that he had no peers. In many ways his fame was fueled by a fiction, and he did significant damage to Hegelians by obscuring their actual and already complex theological nuances.

I liked this book and I recommend it. One needs to know Strauss before one can be fully fluent in, say, the Jesus Seminar and its authors. I think it is a necessary starting point for today's Bible scholar. To some degree I must agree with Albert Schweitzer: there are two broad epochs of Bible study -- the period before David Strauss and the period after David Strauss.

Strauss's 1835 Life of Jesus is a classic work which was the first to systematically examine the Gospel accounts of Jesus' life with the express purpose of trying to determine what is "mythical" as opposed to historical in them. The criteria he used to make this distinction are substantially the same as those used by critical scholars today, starting with a fundamental conviction that events in the Gospels which require a suspension of ordinary physical laws (walking on water, stilling storms, raising the dead, healing the blind) cannot be accepted as historical but should be understood as myths added to the narrative to bolster the early Church's claims of Jesus' divine commission. In Strauss's day, it was fashionable for rationalist scholars to try to provide naturalistic explanations for miraculous happenings. Strauss effectively demolishes their arguments by showing that they do not fit the plain sense of the texts and are usually harder to swallow than simple belief in the miracle itself.

To a modern student of critical historical Jesus literature, Strauss's approach to the texts will seem naïve. There is little in his exegesis that takes into account evolving strains of tradition reflected in the texts, rather he reads them as literally as possible, pointing out difficulties and inconsistencies that arise, particularly when more than one evangelist reports the same incident. He also demolishes, often with wry wit, the still popular tactic of claiming that if different Gospels report what sounds like the same incident, but these accounts are irreconcilable, then the only explanation is that there was more than one incident of the kind, for example, Jesus must have cleansed the temple in Jerusalem on two separate occasions since the synoptics place this immediately prior to the passion, while John places it early in Jesus' career. Strauss's detailed analyses are still very much to the point in dealing with conservative apologists, such as Gleason Archer, who maintain in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary that everything in the Gospels presented as historical fact must be true, regardless of the contortions needed to reconcile the accounts.

There are probably few books that can compare with Strauss's in being very well known and often referred to, but never in fact read. Fortunately, Sigler Press now has an excellent inexpensive edition in print, so readers can see for themselves, in George Eliot's superb translation, what put critical Jesus scholarship on the scholarly map and also cost Strauss his career as a theology professor. While not an "easy read," Life of Jesus is remarkably accessible. Yes, it sometimes quotes Latin, Greek and Hebrew without translation, but if you have your New Testament handy, as you should when you read it, it's pretty easy to follow the references, especially with the additional aids provided by Peter Hodgson, editor of the Sigler edition. It also, thankfully, at 800 pages, is not a work that needs to be read cover to cover. The discussions of individual events are largely self-contained, and can be read with great profit on their own. Life of Jesus deserves a place in every thinking Christian's library, as well as in the library of those interested in the history of critical scholarly research.

The Real F.W. Nietzsche would never argue against dissent of his views. He, unlike Wagner, wanted no disciples. He wanted critical commentary, and above all, he wanted to be challenged. The reality is that he was challenged everyday to write, even in extreme pain and half blind. This translation is an admirable effort, but it does fall short in emphasis on what Nietzsche tried to (really) say. His odd, broken, and subtle humor has been lost in many English translations. In truth nothing other than the original German, read by an accomplished student of the language, can really give insight into his mind. This is the same problem that exists in Carl Jung's writings. In my humble opinion Kaufmann is still one of the best German/English translations available. Kaufmann dispels many previous myths associated with Nietzsche especially when it comes to National Socialism, and Darwinism, both of which Nietzsche himself despised. One last note on Nietzsche: His opinion of Noble Morality vs Slave Morality is true even more today.

Sometimes, as I channel surf past some WWF goon belting another with a chair, I can't help but feel that we suffer from the opposite of the problems Nietzsche discussed, and that a little more suffocating bourgeoisie-Christian 'good culture' couldn't hurt. But that's neither here nor there.

I believe this book is considered transitional Nietzsche, having been written after _The Birth of Tragedy_ but before _Beyond Good and Evil_, _The Genealogy of Morals_, et cetera. It consists of four essays: on David Strauss, history, Schopenhauer, and Wagner respectively. In my opinion the 'history' essay is the most interesting; Nietzsche asserts that too much awareness of history enervates the mind, robbing it of the raw vigor he considered so important. Not en entirely original thought, perhaps, but knowledgeably and poetically argued.

This translation seems to be clearly the best of the three I perused in the bookstore: the vocabulary is sharp, forceful, and true to what I know of the German. I don't think this is the place to begin one's study of Nietzsche, but if Walter Kaufmann's collections (The Portable Nietzsche, The Basic Writings of Nietzsche) don't give you your fill, you could certainly pick up this one next.

I take my title for this review from the final sentence of Nietzsche's essay on "David Strauss the Confessor and the Writer." Nietzsche was finding himself in a troubling position, commenting on a work which was as subjective as it was without objective proof, while he was just an individual trying to make himself heard against the entire world, in order to adorn us with one more feather, "For as long, that is, as what was always timely -- and what today more than ever is timely and necessary -- is still considered unfashionable: speaking the truth." (p. 81) This masterly translation removes an element of contradiction which has tripped up those who used the title, "Untimely Meditations" for this book, as if we, of all people, didn't need to read it. Walter Kaufmann did not translate this early work by Nietzsche into English. While Kaufmann is widely recognized as having provided translations which were superior to what was previously available, Nietzsche in the original German ought to be considered better than any English version, and the truth with which Nietzsche was concerned in his essay on Strauss might have been particularly painful for any scholar who would like to remain at a high level in the esteem of his peers, for the insults in this work win every argument. From the first words of the first section, "Public opinion in Germany," (p. 5) Nietzsche displays a worry about "defeat -- indeed, the extirpation -- of the German spirit for the sake of the German Reich." (p. 5) Perhaps Kaufmann was never comfortable enough with the English language to make himself credible in a work that ends with a section on style: "perhaps Schopenhauer would give it the general title 'New Evidence for the Shoddy Jargon of Today,' for we might console David Strauss by saying . . . indeed, that some people write even more wretchedly than he does. . . . We do this because Strauss does not write as poorly as do the vilest of all the corrupters of German, the Hegelians and their crippled progeny." And Strauss of course, in Germany in 1873, was famous for providing the Germans with a guide to their beliefs and culture, much like the works of Walter Kaufmann on Goethe, Hegel, Nietzsche, etc., provide today's Americans with a view of individual self-control which seeks to guide public opinion above all, or over all, or whatever. Perhaps, given our current status as civilizers of Europe, Nietzsche might even maintain a view of the Americans who study his work in accord with what he said of Strauss, he "would by no means be dissatisfied if it were a bit more diabolical." (p. 20) This is only frighteningly inappropriate for those who see nothing but manipulation in matters of public opinion, which remains about as far from the truth as it can be stretched, and who are afraid of these things snapping back all over the place. I certainly think they are.

I am so sorry to be doing this, but I wouldn't want anyone who has read the review by Midwest Book Review to think, as its final sentence asserts, that this "combines his two benchmark books under one cover." I happen to have a paperback edition of THE LIFE OF JESUS CRITICALLY EXAMINED, translated into English by the famous novelist George Eliot, itself 812 pages, in which Strauss exhibited what Nietzsche called the real Straussian genius, as a scholar who was adept at compiling a variety of scholarly views on the subject with a bit of dogmatic import. As Strauss put it on page 780 of his truly great work, "as subject of the predicate which the church assigns to Christ, we place, instead of an individual, an idea." Not surprisingly, the church wanted to maintain its own selection of views on Christ, but it was still possible for Strauss to switch from theology to more popular matters of public opinion, in which pompous thinkers like Wagner and Schopenhauer were lightly skimmed over in favor of the famous old masters of German thought. Wagner and Nietzsche found Strauss particularly vulnerable to attack, and my familiarity with this book is entirely the result of Nietzsche's attempt to destroy it, which provided him a freedom of speech that he could never have savored if he had remained in Germany, a dark and dreary place thoroughly soaked in beer, if Nietzsche can be given any credibility on matters relating to the country of his birth. Strauss deserves to be recognized as the best recorder of ideas with which the most intellectual pretenders to culture intoxicated themselves with their beer, but the jump from Christianity to this, the contrast called forth by the title of this book, is hardly any indication of any great leap forward. At one time, this might have been like a little red book of Chairman Mao Quotations for those who valued their own opinions above all else, but it had been bested by 1873. After Strauss was buried, Nietzsche wrote to one of his friends that he could hope "that I did not sadden his last months, and that he died without knowing anything about me. It's rather on my mind." (11 February 1874) It might also be on the mind of anyone who reads this book today.