Why We Are Not Nietzscheans

By Luc Ferry

Book Overview

"To think with Nietzsche against Nietzsche." Thus the editors describe the strategy adopted in this volume to soften the destructive effects of Nietzsche's "philosophy with a hammer" on French philosophy since the 1960s. Frustrated by the infinite inclusiveness of deconstructionism, the contributors to this volume seek to renew the Enlightenment quest for rationality.

Though linked by no common dogma, these essays all argue that the "French Nietzsche" transmitted through the deconstructionists must be reexamined in light of the original context in which Nietzsche worked. Each essay questions the viability of Nietzsche's thought in the modern world, variously critiquing his philosophy of history as obsessed with hierarchy, his views on religion and art as myopic and irrational, and his stance on science as hopelessly reactionary.

Contending that we must abandon the Nietzsche propped up as patron saint by French deconstructionists in order to return to reason, these essays will stimulate debate not just among Nietzscheans but among all with a stake in modern French philosophy.

Contributors are Alain Boyer, Andr Compte-Sponville, Vincent Descombes, Luc Ferry, Robert Legros, Philippe Raynaud, Alain Renault, and Pierre-Andr Taguieff.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226244814
• ISBN13: 9780226244815
• Release Date: June 1997
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 242 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Check your Nietzsche Kit

Ever read Nietzsche? Of course, you have - in college, as you properly should have, when you didn't know any better about the world. Now you are wiser, but you still have your favorites among his aphorisms; always a dictum or two, tucked away in your pocket like a trusty little Swiss Army knife that Uncle Freddie gave you to whip out when you find yourself in a forest of nihilism and defeat. "What does not kill me makes me stronger" certainly helped me through many a defeat in my youth. But now that I have succeeded in becoming a full-fledged nobody, I can confidently say I am not an -"ean" to anybody's name; and mostly certainly not a Nietzschean. And this collection of essays corroborates what I have come to know through living the same (more or less) reality that Nietzsche himself did. This book, I admit, though highly entertaining and just, is irrelevant to scholarship. But it IS weird (as one reviewer said), and there lies the book's surprising, and surprisingly delightful content: Just about all the essays are written with verve, wit, passion, rationality, and mastery of that uniquely mellifluous don't-give-a-flying-puck style of writing at which the French are known excel when provoked by kitsch...and Nietzsche DID write a lot of kitsch. However, the essays in this book will not be quoted by anybody who might need/want to thoroughly, academically, trash N's ideas. But then, these essays are NOT about trashing N so much as they are about pointing out, in a manner most stylishly and cavalier, the malignant effects of the dingleberry-ish cottage industry that's sprung up (first in France, and then by infection, the US) in the shadow of the "great" man's name. (Anyone who is familiar with the tenor of academia in the humanities will know the sort of "Nietzsche-inspired" clap-trap that "small Nietzscheans" - and they are legion - like to pass around as the most sublime profundity.) As mentioned in "Book Description" above: "To think with Nietzsche against Nietzsche": that is the spirit with which this small collective enterprise is undertaken: ...Contra Nietzsche... Ironically, what could be more Nietzschean than that? Indeed, the authors openly admit the necessity, importance, and GREATNESS of Nietzsche, but they argue that it is neither enough, nor "healthy", to stick with Nietzsche to the point of being an "-ean." They all realize (as we all do) very well that N said everything twice: once `for' and once `against'. He's a mercurial fellow and you're never going to catch him sitting in any given spot twice. But, the fact is, N also said (wrote) a lot of stuff that cannot be undone by any sophistry. "One Jew more or less...what does it matter?" "There is no truth." There's more, even more egregious, but we know that. The point of this book is to make you stop and review the QUALITY of your allegiance, assumptions, and/or imaginary projections, if any, to Nietzsche's ideas. Read the intro to Human-All-Too-Human and you will know how lonely t