Bryan Finken - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Drafts by Bryan Finken
Postmodernists frequently attribute to Nietzsche a negative regard for the law of identity. I den... more Postmodernists frequently attribute to Nietzsche a negative regard for the law of identity. I deny that his work exhibits such an attitude. His work also contains no statements or ideas contrary to or critical of the traditional law of identity. I do not deny, but rather insist that Nietzsche was interested in a few implications arising from some of our basic ideas about identity. However, none of his remarks in this vein challenge the law of identity as traditionally understood in western philosophy.
You can read the opening passages from this chapter on my blog: milehighphilosophy.blogspot.com
https://milehighphilosophy.blogspot.com/2023/04/a-few-pages-from-nietzsche-on-logic.html
The story of Troy needs major revision because there is a large mound in the plain in front of Hi... more The story of Troy needs major revision because there is a large mound in the plain in front of Hisarlik that probably contains the remains of a bronze age city. Troy was probably the largest city in the Aegean.
In contrast to the postmodern view of him, Nietzsche described his writing in traditional terms, ... more In contrast to the postmodern view of him, Nietzsche described his writing in traditional terms, and strove for traditional qualities, such as clarity, brevity, universality and durability. My thesis is that in prose style, Nietzsche both is and wants to be more a classic than a rebel.
Robert Solomon's often published case asserting that Nietzsche is a frequent user of ad hominem f... more Robert Solomon's often published case asserting that Nietzsche is a frequent user of ad hominem fallacies is based on an equivocation and can be rejected on that basis alone. It is also wrong about Nietzsche.
Papers by Bryan Finken
Encyclopedia of Power, Oct 11, 2012
Encyclopedia of Global Religion
Get information, facts, and pictures about Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche at Encyclopedia.com. Make ... more Get information, facts, and pictures about Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche at Encyclopedia.com. Make research projects and school reports about Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche easy with credible articles from our FREE, online encyclopedia and dictionary.
Encyclopedia of Power
Aristotle Greek philosopher of Macedonian descent (384-322 bce). His studies of physics, biology,... more Aristotle Greek philosopher of Macedonian descent (384-322 bce). His studies of physics, biology, psychology, metaphysics, logic, rhetoric, poetics, economics and other subjects made him the most outstanding thinker of his age, if not of all time. His ideas about power, especially about political power, have influenced thinkers up to the present day. In ontology, Aristotelian power is synonymous with potency, which has three aspects: as a source of change, as a capacity for performance, or as a condition making a thing unchangeable. His thinking on this matter was standard fare until the Enlightenment, when Thomas Hobbes rejected the latter two criteria and redefined the first, so as to see power strictly as the source of motion. In psychology, Aristotle thought of power in terms of capacity for performance, defining, for example, talent in rhetoric as the power (dynamis) to discern what will be persuasive in each domain. Psychological powers can be either active or passive, operative or receptive, and immediate or remote. Hobbes altered this definition, so that a psychological power or faculty was a capacity to make or receive change. Like his teacher, Plato, Aristotle took politics to be the most important subject in human life. The art of statecraft is the highest art because it affects the entire social environment, including every art and science practiced in it. As a subject matter, politics is the study of humans in groups, while ethics is the study of the individual in isolation. Only "a beast or a god" can actually live in isolation, and thus humans are social animals. They are also rational animals, and their rationality chooses ends from among proposed ends, attempting to realize its share of human nature by choosing the best or the better from among any set of proposals. Political studies are the most important studies partly because they can improve the art of statecraft, and partly because they enable us to realize our natures as choosers of the better in the highest and weightiest affairs. The only kind of state Aristotle discussed at length was the city state or polis. Nation states, that is, states having more than one population center, were too large for their members to be addressed by a single herald in a single assembly, and hence were too large to be effectively governed. In addition, the population centers were bound to differ in their religious observances, leading to strife. The polis was a natural result of human associations. The basic unit of association was the family. Families associated together to form villages, and the polis resulted from the association of villages. Each association aims at achieving some end thought of as good, and thus the polis is an association aiming at a good. This definition has always left open the question as to whether Aristotle is more conventionalist or contractarian. It has also allowed his thinking to influence both schools. The fact that the chief goods aimed at by the polis are self-sufficiency and stability, two cognates of power, allowed his thinking to also influence theorists, such as Machiavelli, who see the accumulation of power as the aim of the state. Political power corresponds to the position of command in a command-obey relationship. The command-obey relationship was a natural phenomenon, likely to emerge wherever two or more persons join together in a common endeavor. Hence, any association, no matter how temporary, might feature it. The position of command can be used in two ways.
Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society
Justice, Theories of The question "What is justice" is the first problem addressed by Plato's Rep... more Justice, Theories of The question "What is justice" is the first problem addressed by Plato's Republic. It has remained a central question in all moral, legal and political thought. There are narrow and broad uses of the terms 'just' and 'justice.' In its narrowest sense, justice is close to lawfulness, and a just act is a legal one, meaning primarily that it is not illegal. Another narrow use is procedural, with the sense that certain decision-making procedures deliver a product that a state calls justice. In its broader senses, which are of the greatest interest to philosophers and other theorists, justice is thought of as an attribute either of acts, including transactions and decisions; of conditions, including rules and laws; or of entities, including persons, gods, societies and states. Aristotle held that the creation and maintenance of justice was the most important task of the state. A just state was ruled in the interests of the whole population, while an unjust state was ruled in the interests of its ruling class. Aristotle distinguished between distributive and commutative justice. The first deals with the distribution of rights, benefits, costs and responsibilities within a class, for example, among citizens of a state, among family members or among stakeholders in a corporation. The second, now widely known as retributive justice, deals with the treatment of individual persons or interests, for example, in a transaction or in meting out punishment. This second way of thinking about justice involves consideration of what people deserve according to some standard, such as law or precedence. Poetic justice, in which one unexpectedly gets what he or she deserves, is a notion of retributive justice. The distributive notion of justice involves, as Aristotle has it, treating equals equally and unequals according to their relevant inequality so that, for example, juveniles and adults are accorded differing rights and responsibilities with regard to alcohol, marriage, driving and voting. Injustice would clearly arise from treating a member of one class according to the rules laid down for the other class. Today theorists are unlikely to assert that there are two distinct conceptions involved in our thinking about justice, though most will agree that we have notions about justice that can be at odds with one another. Each of several employees might deserve all of the bonus dollars available in a given year, but it might still seem more just to divide the money among them. In that case, the desire for a kind of distribution is apparently at odds with the desire to give what is deserved. Some contemporary theorists emphasize the notion of distributive justice while others emphasize individual rights, and thus the retributive notion of justice. The concept of social justice takes justice as the attribute of a society in which a certain pattern of distribution is roughly realized throughout its most important institutions. In order to discover the right distributions, John Rawls attempts to produce a hypothetical social contract. His basic idea is that a contract made under certain constraints will guarantee justice. Discovering these constraints involves assuming a "veil of ignorance"we choose social arrangements from behind this veil by supposing that we must enter the world our policy choices create, though we are ignorant about how we will enter it, meaning that we might enter it in any condition of wealth or poverty,
SAGE Brief Guide to Marketing Ethics
Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society
Ethics is the branch of philosophy that deals with morality. Ethicists are concerned with a wide ... more Ethics is the branch of philosophy that deals with morality. Ethicists are concerned with a wide range of topics, such as human nature, the meaning of life, the nature of value, how judgments are made, how judgments can be improved, how moral attitudes arise or change, and the workings of morally significant mental states such as love, hate, greed, envy, indifference, pity, desire, aversion, pleasure and pain. Moral or ethical theories offer means of understanding significant elements in these and other areas of inquiry. Ethical theories tend either toward merely describing, or toward both describing and judging. As a result, some moral theories seem to belong to anthropology, psychology or sociology, while others look like instances of what ethics purports to study, that is, like moral doctrines or judgments. For this reason, a major distinction employed by moral theorists distinguishes descriptive from prescriptive, or normative, theories, or elements of theories. Moral judgments tend to state either that something is good or bad, or that something agrees or conflicts with our obligations. Consequently, a major division in moral theories is between theories of value (axiology) and theories of obligation (deontology). In each area, ethicists want to determine the meaning of moral judgments, their truth or falsity, their objectivity or subjectivity, how judgments are made, how they can be tested, how they can be justified, and the possibility of organizing judgments under first principles. A third major distinction places theories about the meaning of moral judgments in a category of their own called metaethics. Obviously, metaethical questions arise in all areas of ethics. Prescriptive or normative moral thinking recommends at least one moral evaluation, or else it attempts the same for at least one moral obligation. Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Epicureans and Cynics sought both to find the best kind of life, and to strongly recommend the judgment that it was in fact the best. Others, such as Immanuel Kant, attempted to describe the nature of obligation, but also provided grounds for justifying or recommending certain obligations. The theories of David Hume, Arthur Schopenhauer, Darwinism and Logical Positivism exemplify the tendency to separate the task of description from that of prescription, or to eschew prescription altogether, in order to describe and organize moral judgments for the sake of understanding alone. Unwavering pursuit of the metaethical question of the meaning of moral judgments brought many recent philosophers to the conclusion that moral judgments are not the sort of statements that can be true or false, but instead express resolutions, preferences, feelings, demands or other states of mind. Hume thought they reported subjective feelings, so that a judgment, for example 'insider trading is immoral,' would not be understood as ascribing a predicate to insider trading, but as saying something like 'I disapprove of that act.' A. J. Ayer, a Logical Positivist, believed that moral judgments did not report feelings, but merely expressed them. For him, the statement 'insider trading is immoral' merely expresses a negative emotional reactionalong the lines of 'boo insider trading!'. Such expressions are neither true nor false because they do not describe anything. Hume and Ayer represent the school known as Emotivism. A neighboring school, Prescriptivism, interprets 'insider trading is immoral' as an
Philosophy in review, 1998
Philosophy in review, 2008
Philosophy in review, 2011
Nietzsche was a romantic until he wasn't. He was a romantic until 1876, when he published a paen ... more Nietzsche was a romantic until he wasn't. He was a romantic until 1876, when he published a paen to Richard Wagner. He was obviously no longer a romantic in 1878, with the publication of Human, All Too Human, which contained numerous thinly veiled attacks on Wagner. There are few areas in which Nietzsche and his readers are more solidly in agreement about his life and works than on the matter of this deep change in orientation. Nietzsche discussed it in his autobiography and in the prefaces of some of his works. Biographers, supporters and critics alike are aware of those discussions. Having also noted the starkly different positions taken by Nietzsche in the two periods in question, they have as a bloc accepted this change of orientation as an essential element of any credible account of Nietzsche's development.
Philosophy in review, 2009
For those with a taste for Nietzsche, translator Norton has provided a particularly refreshing an... more For those with a taste for Nietzsche, translator Norton has provided a particularly refreshing and satisfying dish. Spicy, smart, textured, layered, generous and fully engaging, it is the kind of reading that makes a singular, unmistakable and long remembered impression on the palate. There is no other work on Nietzsche like it. Bertram, a musician, poet and professor of literature, displays a surprising level of psycho-moral sympathy with his subject. His work, which appeared in 1918, was beloved and deeply influential between the wars especially in Germany, where it won praise from Jaspers and Heidegger, among others. Translated into French in 1932, it has never appeared in English until now. However, it was famously criticized in English by Walter Kaufmann, in his groundbreaking work of 1950, Nietzsche, Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. Kaufmann aimed to clear the postwar air of Nazi and other myths about Nietzsche, and Bertram's eventual affiliation with the Nazi party, which led to his being banned from teaching after the war, was one part of his animus against the work. Another was its title. Another was the fact that Bertram cited Nietzsche and other authors extensively but for the most part without providing references to the original sources. Norton has thoroughly rehabilitated Bertram's reputation on this last point, providing correct references to letters, notebooks and published works wherever he could. Only a handful of sources were not found, and Bertram's extensive use of the text turns out to be both effective and accurate. Kaufmann was reproached, by no less than Thomas Mann, for his dismissive treatment of Bertram. Meanwhile, the book has frequently been criticized as a product of the Stefan George Circle, largely due to Bertram's close friendship with George. Norton, author of Secret Germany: Stefan George and his Circle (Cornell University Press 2002), assures us that while a few ideas echo George, most do not, and many were unwelcome in his circle, especially Bertram's many discussions of Nietzsche's relations with music, the art that George despised most. Another curious charge against Bertram's work questions its degree of Germanomania. But even if the degree was very high, and it was not, it could hardly diminish the value of this new translation. There are few works in English that read Nietzsche within his German literary context like this one does. Indeed Bertram's knowledge of Nietzsche's literary influences, from Novalis to Angelus Silesius, is unparalleled, and that alone easily justifies this translation. However, there is far more to admire here than these sorts of very worthy contributions from the literature professor.
Philosophy in review, 2011
This is the longest and most thorough account of Nietzsche's life available in English. It might ... more This is the longest and most thorough account of Nietzsche's life available in English. It might also be the best. It uses Nietzsche's letters to good effect along with generous helpings of the existing correspondence from his acquaintances. The pace is crisp and the writing is situated in the present day, often drawing parallels with contemporary events, objects and characters. There are 32 black and white photos, 28 chapters, a Chronology, Notes, a Bibliography and an Index. Young discusses several musical compositions by Nietzsche, recordings of which can be listened to free of charge at the Cambridge University Press Web Site, where further commentary can be found as well.
Philosophy in review, 2011
There are serious disagreements among Nietzsche scholars about many aspects of Thus Spoke Zarathu... more There are serious disagreements among Nietzsche scholars about many aspects of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. None are more fundamental than the disagreements about its structure. It is composed of four parts, with Zarathustra's death occurring at the end of Part 3, and thus the question of how to read Part 4 (in which Zarathustra is very much alive) as a part of the narrative has been particularly vexing. Some divide Part 4 from the rest of the work. Some deny that Zarathustra dies at the end of Part 3. Others suggest that Part 4 belongs where it is as a post-mortem retrospective. Still others suggest that Part 4 is a prequel of the sort seen in the second of the Star Wars trilogies.
After bailouts, stimulus bills, Ponzi schemes and executive suicides have filled headlines around... more After bailouts, stimulus bills, Ponzi schemes and executive suicides have filled headlines around the world for months on end, perhaps no other topic in philosophy elicits as wide an interest as business ethics. If mentioning the study of philosophy has always raised a few brows, and, as Nietzsche suggested, fathers have for millennia experienced sleepless nights over the problem of how to prevent their sons from becoming philosophers, we have entered a small window in time at which the study of philosophy is still widely viewed with suspicion, but the study of business ethics sounds downright appealing. In working class pubs, mention of the fact that one teaches business ethics, which was once met with resentment when it was not met with sarcastic remarks about the implicit oxymoron, is now met with a quizzical look-as if to ask, is there any hope for such a project?
Postmodernists frequently attribute to Nietzsche a negative regard for the law of identity. I den... more Postmodernists frequently attribute to Nietzsche a negative regard for the law of identity. I deny that his work exhibits such an attitude. His work also contains no statements or ideas contrary to or critical of the traditional law of identity. I do not deny, but rather insist that Nietzsche was interested in a few implications arising from some of our basic ideas about identity. However, none of his remarks in this vein challenge the law of identity as traditionally understood in western philosophy.
You can read the opening passages from this chapter on my blog: milehighphilosophy.blogspot.com
https://milehighphilosophy.blogspot.com/2023/04/a-few-pages-from-nietzsche-on-logic.html
The story of Troy needs major revision because there is a large mound in the plain in front of Hi... more The story of Troy needs major revision because there is a large mound in the plain in front of Hisarlik that probably contains the remains of a bronze age city. Troy was probably the largest city in the Aegean.
In contrast to the postmodern view of him, Nietzsche described his writing in traditional terms, ... more In contrast to the postmodern view of him, Nietzsche described his writing in traditional terms, and strove for traditional qualities, such as clarity, brevity, universality and durability. My thesis is that in prose style, Nietzsche both is and wants to be more a classic than a rebel.
Robert Solomon's often published case asserting that Nietzsche is a frequent user of ad hominem f... more Robert Solomon's often published case asserting that Nietzsche is a frequent user of ad hominem fallacies is based on an equivocation and can be rejected on that basis alone. It is also wrong about Nietzsche.
Encyclopedia of Power, Oct 11, 2012
Encyclopedia of Global Religion
Get information, facts, and pictures about Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche at Encyclopedia.com. Make ... more Get information, facts, and pictures about Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche at Encyclopedia.com. Make research projects and school reports about Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche easy with credible articles from our FREE, online encyclopedia and dictionary.
Encyclopedia of Power
Aristotle Greek philosopher of Macedonian descent (384-322 bce). His studies of physics, biology,... more Aristotle Greek philosopher of Macedonian descent (384-322 bce). His studies of physics, biology, psychology, metaphysics, logic, rhetoric, poetics, economics and other subjects made him the most outstanding thinker of his age, if not of all time. His ideas about power, especially about political power, have influenced thinkers up to the present day. In ontology, Aristotelian power is synonymous with potency, which has three aspects: as a source of change, as a capacity for performance, or as a condition making a thing unchangeable. His thinking on this matter was standard fare until the Enlightenment, when Thomas Hobbes rejected the latter two criteria and redefined the first, so as to see power strictly as the source of motion. In psychology, Aristotle thought of power in terms of capacity for performance, defining, for example, talent in rhetoric as the power (dynamis) to discern what will be persuasive in each domain. Psychological powers can be either active or passive, operative or receptive, and immediate or remote. Hobbes altered this definition, so that a psychological power or faculty was a capacity to make or receive change. Like his teacher, Plato, Aristotle took politics to be the most important subject in human life. The art of statecraft is the highest art because it affects the entire social environment, including every art and science practiced in it. As a subject matter, politics is the study of humans in groups, while ethics is the study of the individual in isolation. Only "a beast or a god" can actually live in isolation, and thus humans are social animals. They are also rational animals, and their rationality chooses ends from among proposed ends, attempting to realize its share of human nature by choosing the best or the better from among any set of proposals. Political studies are the most important studies partly because they can improve the art of statecraft, and partly because they enable us to realize our natures as choosers of the better in the highest and weightiest affairs. The only kind of state Aristotle discussed at length was the city state or polis. Nation states, that is, states having more than one population center, were too large for their members to be addressed by a single herald in a single assembly, and hence were too large to be effectively governed. In addition, the population centers were bound to differ in their religious observances, leading to strife. The polis was a natural result of human associations. The basic unit of association was the family. Families associated together to form villages, and the polis resulted from the association of villages. Each association aims at achieving some end thought of as good, and thus the polis is an association aiming at a good. This definition has always left open the question as to whether Aristotle is more conventionalist or contractarian. It has also allowed his thinking to influence both schools. The fact that the chief goods aimed at by the polis are self-sufficiency and stability, two cognates of power, allowed his thinking to also influence theorists, such as Machiavelli, who see the accumulation of power as the aim of the state. Political power corresponds to the position of command in a command-obey relationship. The command-obey relationship was a natural phenomenon, likely to emerge wherever two or more persons join together in a common endeavor. Hence, any association, no matter how temporary, might feature it. The position of command can be used in two ways.
Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society
Justice, Theories of The question "What is justice" is the first problem addressed by Plato's Rep... more Justice, Theories of The question "What is justice" is the first problem addressed by Plato's Republic. It has remained a central question in all moral, legal and political thought. There are narrow and broad uses of the terms 'just' and 'justice.' In its narrowest sense, justice is close to lawfulness, and a just act is a legal one, meaning primarily that it is not illegal. Another narrow use is procedural, with the sense that certain decision-making procedures deliver a product that a state calls justice. In its broader senses, which are of the greatest interest to philosophers and other theorists, justice is thought of as an attribute either of acts, including transactions and decisions; of conditions, including rules and laws; or of entities, including persons, gods, societies and states. Aristotle held that the creation and maintenance of justice was the most important task of the state. A just state was ruled in the interests of the whole population, while an unjust state was ruled in the interests of its ruling class. Aristotle distinguished between distributive and commutative justice. The first deals with the distribution of rights, benefits, costs and responsibilities within a class, for example, among citizens of a state, among family members or among stakeholders in a corporation. The second, now widely known as retributive justice, deals with the treatment of individual persons or interests, for example, in a transaction or in meting out punishment. This second way of thinking about justice involves consideration of what people deserve according to some standard, such as law or precedence. Poetic justice, in which one unexpectedly gets what he or she deserves, is a notion of retributive justice. The distributive notion of justice involves, as Aristotle has it, treating equals equally and unequals according to their relevant inequality so that, for example, juveniles and adults are accorded differing rights and responsibilities with regard to alcohol, marriage, driving and voting. Injustice would clearly arise from treating a member of one class according to the rules laid down for the other class. Today theorists are unlikely to assert that there are two distinct conceptions involved in our thinking about justice, though most will agree that we have notions about justice that can be at odds with one another. Each of several employees might deserve all of the bonus dollars available in a given year, but it might still seem more just to divide the money among them. In that case, the desire for a kind of distribution is apparently at odds with the desire to give what is deserved. Some contemporary theorists emphasize the notion of distributive justice while others emphasize individual rights, and thus the retributive notion of justice. The concept of social justice takes justice as the attribute of a society in which a certain pattern of distribution is roughly realized throughout its most important institutions. In order to discover the right distributions, John Rawls attempts to produce a hypothetical social contract. His basic idea is that a contract made under certain constraints will guarantee justice. Discovering these constraints involves assuming a "veil of ignorance"we choose social arrangements from behind this veil by supposing that we must enter the world our policy choices create, though we are ignorant about how we will enter it, meaning that we might enter it in any condition of wealth or poverty,
SAGE Brief Guide to Marketing Ethics
Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society
Ethics is the branch of philosophy that deals with morality. Ethicists are concerned with a wide ... more Ethics is the branch of philosophy that deals with morality. Ethicists are concerned with a wide range of topics, such as human nature, the meaning of life, the nature of value, how judgments are made, how judgments can be improved, how moral attitudes arise or change, and the workings of morally significant mental states such as love, hate, greed, envy, indifference, pity, desire, aversion, pleasure and pain. Moral or ethical theories offer means of understanding significant elements in these and other areas of inquiry. Ethical theories tend either toward merely describing, or toward both describing and judging. As a result, some moral theories seem to belong to anthropology, psychology or sociology, while others look like instances of what ethics purports to study, that is, like moral doctrines or judgments. For this reason, a major distinction employed by moral theorists distinguishes descriptive from prescriptive, or normative, theories, or elements of theories. Moral judgments tend to state either that something is good or bad, or that something agrees or conflicts with our obligations. Consequently, a major division in moral theories is between theories of value (axiology) and theories of obligation (deontology). In each area, ethicists want to determine the meaning of moral judgments, their truth or falsity, their objectivity or subjectivity, how judgments are made, how they can be tested, how they can be justified, and the possibility of organizing judgments under first principles. A third major distinction places theories about the meaning of moral judgments in a category of their own called metaethics. Obviously, metaethical questions arise in all areas of ethics. Prescriptive or normative moral thinking recommends at least one moral evaluation, or else it attempts the same for at least one moral obligation. Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Epicureans and Cynics sought both to find the best kind of life, and to strongly recommend the judgment that it was in fact the best. Others, such as Immanuel Kant, attempted to describe the nature of obligation, but also provided grounds for justifying or recommending certain obligations. The theories of David Hume, Arthur Schopenhauer, Darwinism and Logical Positivism exemplify the tendency to separate the task of description from that of prescription, or to eschew prescription altogether, in order to describe and organize moral judgments for the sake of understanding alone. Unwavering pursuit of the metaethical question of the meaning of moral judgments brought many recent philosophers to the conclusion that moral judgments are not the sort of statements that can be true or false, but instead express resolutions, preferences, feelings, demands or other states of mind. Hume thought they reported subjective feelings, so that a judgment, for example 'insider trading is immoral,' would not be understood as ascribing a predicate to insider trading, but as saying something like 'I disapprove of that act.' A. J. Ayer, a Logical Positivist, believed that moral judgments did not report feelings, but merely expressed them. For him, the statement 'insider trading is immoral' merely expresses a negative emotional reactionalong the lines of 'boo insider trading!'. Such expressions are neither true nor false because they do not describe anything. Hume and Ayer represent the school known as Emotivism. A neighboring school, Prescriptivism, interprets 'insider trading is immoral' as an
Philosophy in review, 1998
Philosophy in review, 2008
Philosophy in review, 2011
Nietzsche was a romantic until he wasn't. He was a romantic until 1876, when he published a paen ... more Nietzsche was a romantic until he wasn't. He was a romantic until 1876, when he published a paen to Richard Wagner. He was obviously no longer a romantic in 1878, with the publication of Human, All Too Human, which contained numerous thinly veiled attacks on Wagner. There are few areas in which Nietzsche and his readers are more solidly in agreement about his life and works than on the matter of this deep change in orientation. Nietzsche discussed it in his autobiography and in the prefaces of some of his works. Biographers, supporters and critics alike are aware of those discussions. Having also noted the starkly different positions taken by Nietzsche in the two periods in question, they have as a bloc accepted this change of orientation as an essential element of any credible account of Nietzsche's development.
Philosophy in review, 2009
For those with a taste for Nietzsche, translator Norton has provided a particularly refreshing an... more For those with a taste for Nietzsche, translator Norton has provided a particularly refreshing and satisfying dish. Spicy, smart, textured, layered, generous and fully engaging, it is the kind of reading that makes a singular, unmistakable and long remembered impression on the palate. There is no other work on Nietzsche like it. Bertram, a musician, poet and professor of literature, displays a surprising level of psycho-moral sympathy with his subject. His work, which appeared in 1918, was beloved and deeply influential between the wars especially in Germany, where it won praise from Jaspers and Heidegger, among others. Translated into French in 1932, it has never appeared in English until now. However, it was famously criticized in English by Walter Kaufmann, in his groundbreaking work of 1950, Nietzsche, Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. Kaufmann aimed to clear the postwar air of Nazi and other myths about Nietzsche, and Bertram's eventual affiliation with the Nazi party, which led to his being banned from teaching after the war, was one part of his animus against the work. Another was its title. Another was the fact that Bertram cited Nietzsche and other authors extensively but for the most part without providing references to the original sources. Norton has thoroughly rehabilitated Bertram's reputation on this last point, providing correct references to letters, notebooks and published works wherever he could. Only a handful of sources were not found, and Bertram's extensive use of the text turns out to be both effective and accurate. Kaufmann was reproached, by no less than Thomas Mann, for his dismissive treatment of Bertram. Meanwhile, the book has frequently been criticized as a product of the Stefan George Circle, largely due to Bertram's close friendship with George. Norton, author of Secret Germany: Stefan George and his Circle (Cornell University Press 2002), assures us that while a few ideas echo George, most do not, and many were unwelcome in his circle, especially Bertram's many discussions of Nietzsche's relations with music, the art that George despised most. Another curious charge against Bertram's work questions its degree of Germanomania. But even if the degree was very high, and it was not, it could hardly diminish the value of this new translation. There are few works in English that read Nietzsche within his German literary context like this one does. Indeed Bertram's knowledge of Nietzsche's literary influences, from Novalis to Angelus Silesius, is unparalleled, and that alone easily justifies this translation. However, there is far more to admire here than these sorts of very worthy contributions from the literature professor.
Philosophy in review, 2011
This is the longest and most thorough account of Nietzsche's life available in English. It might ... more This is the longest and most thorough account of Nietzsche's life available in English. It might also be the best. It uses Nietzsche's letters to good effect along with generous helpings of the existing correspondence from his acquaintances. The pace is crisp and the writing is situated in the present day, often drawing parallels with contemporary events, objects and characters. There are 32 black and white photos, 28 chapters, a Chronology, Notes, a Bibliography and an Index. Young discusses several musical compositions by Nietzsche, recordings of which can be listened to free of charge at the Cambridge University Press Web Site, where further commentary can be found as well.
Philosophy in review, 2011
There are serious disagreements among Nietzsche scholars about many aspects of Thus Spoke Zarathu... more There are serious disagreements among Nietzsche scholars about many aspects of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. None are more fundamental than the disagreements about its structure. It is composed of four parts, with Zarathustra's death occurring at the end of Part 3, and thus the question of how to read Part 4 (in which Zarathustra is very much alive) as a part of the narrative has been particularly vexing. Some divide Part 4 from the rest of the work. Some deny that Zarathustra dies at the end of Part 3. Others suggest that Part 4 belongs where it is as a post-mortem retrospective. Still others suggest that Part 4 is a prequel of the sort seen in the second of the Star Wars trilogies.
After bailouts, stimulus bills, Ponzi schemes and executive suicides have filled headlines around... more After bailouts, stimulus bills, Ponzi schemes and executive suicides have filled headlines around the world for months on end, perhaps no other topic in philosophy elicits as wide an interest as business ethics. If mentioning the study of philosophy has always raised a few brows, and, as Nietzsche suggested, fathers have for millennia experienced sleepless nights over the problem of how to prevent their sons from becoming philosophers, we have entered a small window in time at which the study of philosophy is still widely viewed with suspicion, but the study of business ethics sounds downright appealing. In working class pubs, mention of the fact that one teaches business ethics, which was once met with resentment when it was not met with sarcastic remarks about the implicit oxymoron, is now met with a quizzical look-as if to ask, is there any hope for such a project?
Philosophy in Review, 2014
