Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist

Summary

The following summary of the book is based on Nehamas's introduction.

Kaufmann seeks to counter the distorted understanding of Nietzsche as a psychologically flawed, totalitarian, irrationalist, and anti-semitic thinker. He places the responsibility for the creation of this Nietzsche "legend" partly on Stefan George and his followers, but mainly on Nietzsche's sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, who controlled the publication of his works and sometimes even changed his language. Kaufmann argues that The Will to Power, which she edited and published, is an arbitrary selection of Nietzsche's notes, taken out of context and chronological order and arranged according to Förster-Nietzsche's flawed understanding of her brother's thought, and that Nietzsche acquired his reputation for heartless cruelty, anti-semitism, and pervasive self-contradiction because critics felt free to quote short passages of his work, often written in exaggerated language, without concern for context.

In Kaufmann's view, Nietzsche's style indicates a specific approach to philosophical questions: it expresses the desire to look at things from as many different perspectives as possible and a willingness to "experiment" with ideas. By describing Nietzsche's concerns as "existential", Kaufmann connects him to the existentialism of Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Kaufmann sees Nietzsche as an heir to rationalism, rather than a Romantic critic of the Enlightenment. Nietzche's ideal type is not Napoleon Bonaparte or Adolf Hitler, but Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who conquered not the world but himself. Kaufmann concludes that Nietzsche's philosophy has its roots in Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Socrates, who "became little less than an idol for him." He rejects the interpretation of Nietzsche's overman as a biological category referring to a German master race whose will to power would lead it to exploit the rest of the world.

While Kaufmman admits that Nietzsche sometimes invites misunderstanding, he insists that overcoming, the chief attribute of the overman, involves the sublimation of people's baser impulses, the cruder forms of the will to power, an effort guided by the will to power itself in the form of rationality. The overman is thereby able to face the eternal recurrence, which Kaufmann understands to mean that the universe repeats itself in exactly the same way endlessly and without purpose.

Nietzsche, as Kaufmann interprets him, is an enemy of all versions of the state, both totalitarian and liberal: he is an "anti-political" thinker for whom individualism is a greater value than any collective good. Kaufmann considers Nietzsche's judgments balanced and reasonable. In The Birth of Tragedy (1872), Nietzsche pits Apollo, the form-giving God, against Dionysus, the god of formless frenzy, and he favors a synthesis of the two, in which the Apollonian spirit controls and siphons the Dionysian spirit's creativity, resulting in "passion controlled." Later on, Nietzsche starts calling this very synthesis "Dionysus", dropping the name's reference to formless frenzy, and begins calling himself and the likes of Goethe "Dionysian". Dionysus is now not opposed to Apollo, being now the synthesis of the two, but rather the Crucified, Christianity's spirit of suppressing, not siphoning, the passions. (cf. Chapter 4) In On the Genealogy of Morality (1887), Nietzsche explains modern morality as a transformation of an early form of Homeric "master" values into a "slave" morality aimed at safeguarding the interests of the weakest members of society, but does not side with either master or slave morality, aiming to go beyond both.

Scholarly reception

Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist is a classic study through which many English-speaking readers became interested in and acquainted with Nietzsche after World War II. Sociologist Philip Rieff, writing in Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (1959), called it the best book in English on Nietzsche. Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist was praised by historians Peter Gay, who called it "truly epoch making", and Roy Porter, who described it as "authoritative". Gay has noted, however, that Kaufmann's conclusions have themselves been subjected to criticism and correction by later scholarship. Author Michael Tanner called Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist an "ill-organized transformation of Nietzsche into a liberal humanist", but acknowledged that it "had its place in the history of Nietzsche reception".

Nehamas, writing in an introduction to the 2013 edition of Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, described the book as a major turning point in Nietzsche's posthumous reputation, crediting Kaufmann with reversing the popular image of Nietzsche as a totalitarian anti-semite, making it possible for philosophers to take Nietzsche seriously, and ensuring that Nietzsche's works have a prominent place in the philosophy sections of modern bookstores. He observed that Kaufmann's view that Nietzsche was an heir to rationalism rather than a Romantic critic of the Enlightenment is the most controversial element of his interpretation. Nehamas concluded that there is some truth to the charge that Kaufmann, in trying to reverse the "legend" surrounding Nietzsche, went too far in the opposite direction, over-emphasizing the more acceptable aspects of Nietzsche and minimizing the problematic or disturbing aspects, but that this does not detract from Kaufmann's accomplishment. In his view, Kaufmann's selective reinterpretation of Nietzsche may have been necessary to make it possible for Nietzsche to be read seriously by both philosophers and the general public, and Kaufmann's book repays careful study.