Schopenhauer as Educator: Nietzsche's Third Untimely Meditation

By Friedrich Nietzsche

Book Overview

My partial translation of Nietzsche's Third Untimely Meditation - covering all of sections I-V, which actually deal with Schopenhauer, but not sections VI-VIII, which move on to other things - was not initially prepared for my own benefit at all, or with any thought of publication, but only for my students at Colgate University, to whom I wanted to give a sense of Nietzsche's beautiful diction as I hear it having grown up with the language. It was a labor of love, in other words, a reverential act towards Nietzsche, and an expression of commitment to a particularly fine group of students.
In light of that blameless genesis, I am all the more saddened by how certain armchair critics have seen fit to malign the work, and slander me, by making it sound as if I were suppressing something vital, or even censoring a thinker and writer I admire. Absurd charges with deplorable results, not least for those potential readers who might have benefited from this version of the text, but who cannot go to the original to verify how faithful it in fact is to Nietzsche's German and therefore end up being misled by crude noises from self-appointed defenders of the faith.
Nothing has been willfully falsified; all I have done is to make an informed decision about the much greater pertinence of the earlier sections to the subject announced in the title, namely Schopenhauer as an educator. Those who cannot see the clear break in the argument where I leave off, or who do not feel qualified to make such a call, I commend for their restraint, so long as it expresses true intellectual humility; but to cry foul at the very thought of such judgements in order to draw attention to one's own superior wisdom is another matter altogether. Not for nothing does Zarathustra warn his devotees to beware lest a statue slay them. One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.
Nietzsche's essay is not only a homage to Schopenhauer, but also a reflection on education in the most comprehensive sense. Many of Nietzsche's writings aimed at instructing the modern world on how to philosophize with a sledgehammer, but the premise of the Third Meditation is altogether more tender, namely the singular marvel that is every human being. True educators help us to identify the uniqueness that makes us special, but they can only point the way: "No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don't ask, walk!"
(Since this translation went into print in 2014 it has been repeatedly revised and corrected. The current edition was last updated in early 2022.)

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1503386317
• ISBN13: 9781503386310
• Release Date: November 2014
• Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 90 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.9" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

There are more recent translations

Nietzsche's SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR is an early work, available in other translations of a set of four works known as UNTIMELY MEDITATIONS or UNFASHIONABLE OBSERVATIONS. The small paperback version that I have with an Introduction by Eliseo Vivas, published by Regnery/Gateway, Inc. in 1965, was actually translated by James W. Hillesheim and Malcolm R. Simpson, with the help of Carl H. Hamburg, Department of Philosophy, Tulane University. The introduction quotes Nietzsche on how ideal education, made possible by someone with Schopenhauer's wisdom, is not merely training or inane indoctrination. "Education is rather liberation, a rooting out of all weeds, rubbish and vermin from around the buds of the plants, a radiation of light and warmth, . . ." (p. xviii). Eliseo Vivas must have looked long and hard to find anything so flowery in the works of Nietzsche, and applying such thoughts to Schopenhauer could "be open to a charge of irresponsibility," (p. vii), as the first sentence of his introduction admits.There is a Chapter IV in this book, beginning on page 34, which has, in the middle of the chapter, a distinctive quotation from Goethe, of Jarno addressing Wilhelm Meister, which is easy to locate in the other translations which I have. I am interested in the paragraph following the quotation for a clue about the main emotions underlying philosophy."Thus, to be quite frank, it is necessary for us to get really angry for once in order for things to improve. And the image of Schopenhauerian man gives us courage for this. The Schopenhauerian man voluntarily takes the pain of truthfulness upon himself, and this suffering serves to kill his individual will to prepare that complete revolution and reversal of his being, the attainment of which is the actual meaning of life. This assertion of the truth appears to other people as a sign of malice, for they look upon the preservation of their imperfections and pretenses as a duty of humanity and think that anyone must be malicious to break up their childish games in this way. They are tempted to call out . . ." (pp. 43-44). A few pages later, still in the same paragraph, "He tortures himself and sees how no one else tortures himself in such a way, how rather the hands of his fellow men are passionately stretched out after the fantastic events on the political stage, or how they themselves strut about in a hundred masks, as youths, men, old men, fathers, citizens, priests, officials and merchants, thinking only of the comedy they are playing and not at all of their selves." (pp. 46-47).My copy of J. R. Hollingdale's translation of UNTIMELY MEDITATIONS, with an Introduction by J. P. Stern (1983, reprinted 1989) does not have an index, and the Glossary of Names at the end of the book does not include Goethe, though "The man of Goethe" (p. 151) is a major topic in Chapter 4 of SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. Goethe, Rousseau, Faust, Mephistopheles, and the Devil are names that fill the paragraph in whic