Living with Nietzsche What the Great "Immoralist" Has to Teach Us

by Solomon, Robert C.

• ISBN13: 9780195160147
• ISBN10: 0195160142
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-08-21
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most popular and controversial philosophers of the last 150 years. Narcissistic, idiosyncratic, hyperbolic, irreverent--never has a philosopher been appropriated, deconstructed, and scrutinized by such a disparate array of groups, movements, and schools of thought. Adored by many for his passionate ideas and iconoclastic style, he is also vilified for his lack of rigor, apparent cruelty, and disdain for moral decency. In Living with Nietzsche, Solomon suggests that we read Nietzsche from a very different point of view, as a provocative writer who means to transform the way we view our lives. This means taking Nietzsche personally. Rather than focus on the "true" Nietzsche or trying to determine "what Nietzsche really meant" by his seemingly random and often contradictory pronouncements about "the Big Questions" of philosophy, Solomon reminds us that Nietzsche is not a philosopher of abstract ideas but rather of the dazzling personal insight, the provocative challenge, the incisive personal probe. He does not try to reveal the eternal verities but he does powerfully affect his readers, goading them to see themselves in new and different ways. It is Nietzsche's compelling invitation to self-scrutiny that fascinates us, engages us, and guides us to a "rich inner life." Ultimately, Solomon argues, Nietzsche is an example as well as a promulgator of "passionate inwardness," a life distinguished by its rich passions, exquisite taste, and a sense of personal elegance and excellence.

Author Biography

Robert C. Solomon is Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Philosophy and Business and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of more than twenty-five books including Passion for Wisdom (OUP, 1999), The Joy of Philosophy (OUP, 1999), What Nietzsche Really Said (2000), Introducing Philosophy (OUP, 2002), What is an Emotion? (OUP, 2002), Spirituality for the Skeptic (OUP, 2002), and Not Passion's Slave (OUP, 2002).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Living with Nietzsche	3	(2)
What Are We to Make of Nietzsche?	5	(2)
Nasty Nietzsche	7	(3)
Nietzsche's Virtues	10	(2)
How Should We Read Nietzsche?	12	(2)
What Would Nietzsche Make of Us? (An ``Existential'' Approach)	14	(2)
Thinking through Nietzsche	16	(3)
Nietzsche ad Hominem	19	(25)
Philosophy ad Hominem: Exemplary Virtues (and Vices)	19	(3)
Nietzsche's Style and Nietzsche's Philosophy	22	(4)
In Defense of ad Hominem Arguments	26	(4)
Ecce Homo: ``Nietzsche Was Mad, Wasn't He?''	30	(5)
Nietzsche's Perspectivism and the Perspectives of Morality	35	(7)
Confessions and Memoirs: A Plea for the Personal in Philosophy	42	(2)
Nietzsche's Moral Perspectivism	44	(19)
Nietzsche's Moral Perspectivism	46	(5)
Genealogy as ad Hominem Argument: Resentment as a Diagnosis of Morality	51	(2)
Is Genealogy a Genetic Fallacy?	53	(6)
Perspectives on Responsibility: Nietzsche's ``Blaming'' Perspective	59	(4)
Nietzsche's Passions	63	(26)
Nietzsche on ``Deep'' Emotions	65	(2)
The Truth of an Emotion as Its Meaning	67	(3)
In Defense of the Passions: Nietzsche on Human Nature	70	(4)
Nietzsche's Physiological Psychology	74	(5)
Nietzsche on the Emotions as Strategies	79	(2)
Life-Enhancing and Life-Stultifying Passions	81	(4)
The Will to Power and the Passionate Life	85	(4)
Nietzsche on Resentment, Love, and Pity	89	(71)
What Is Wrong with Resentment?	91	(2)
Nietzsche on Love and Pity	93	(8)
Ressentiment Reexamined	101	(4)
Eagles and Lambs: Metaphors of Strength and Weakness	105	(4)
Masters, Slaves, and the Origins of Justice	109	(51)
Nietzsche's Affirmative Ethics	160
Nietzsche in the Tradition: Nihilism For and Against	117	(4)
Nietzsche, Kant, and Aristotle	121	(3)
The Meanings of Morality	124	(4)
Virtue Ethics: Nietzsche and Aristotle	128	(4)
Aristotle's Polis, Nietzsche's Problem	132	(5)
Nietzsche's Virtues: What Would He Make of Us?	137	(38)
After Virtue (``The Revaluation of Values'')	140	(2)
Virtue by Example	142	(3)
How Are We Virtuous? Let Me Count the Ways	145	(2)
Nietzsche's Aristotelian Virtues	147	(11)
Distinctively Nietzschean Virtues	158	(8)
Nietzsche's Crypto-Virtues	166	(7)
The Ubermensch: A Cubist Portrait	173	(2)
Nietzsche's Existentialism	175	(34)
Nietzsche's Fatalism, Determinism, and Destiny	177	(4)
Nietzsche on Freedom and Fatalism: Paradox or Perspectives?	181	(2)
Nietzsche's Classical Fatalism	183	(4)
``Become Who You Are''	187	(2)
Making Good Sense of Fatalism	189	(3)
What Is Self-Creation? (Does It Require ``Free Will''?)	192	(6)
Nietzsche on Responsibility	198	(3)
Existential Life-Affirmation and Eternal Recurrence, Again	201	(5)
Conclusion: Is Nietzsche an Existentialist?	206	(3)
Notes	209	(18)
Selected Bibliography	227	(8)
Index	235