Nietzsche's Task: An Interpretation of Beyond Good and Evil Laurence Lampert New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001, x + 320 pp., $40.00 (original) (raw)

After publishing at his own expense the fourth and final part of his Thus Spake Zarathustra in May of 1885, Nietzsche faced a quite unprecedented literaryphilosophical task. What does one who has just published, in his considered opinion, the greatest thing ever written in German, or indeed in any language, a book that puts the Vedas, the Divine Comedy, and the works of Shakespeare and Goethe entirely in the shade, do for an encore? What does he write next, supposing he is bold, or foolish, enough to write anything? In the event, Nietzsche was surprisingly quick to provide the few dozen illuminati who thought well, or at all, of his work with Beyond Good and Evil (BGE) in 1886. And now, fifteen years after the publication of his much admired Zarathustra's Teaching (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), Laurence Lampert presents us with its natural follow-up, an interpretation of Beyond Good and Evil. Beyond Good and Evilis probably the most widely read and taught of Nietzsche's works. Less gnomic and bombastic than Zarathustra, more compact and accessibly organized than the great middle works (Human, All Too Human, Daybreak, and The Gay Science), less dense and self-involved than the pamphlet-sized quintet from 1888 (Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Ecce Homo), and more comprehensive than either the blistering "supplement" to it, On the Genealogy of Morality, or the writings of the Basel period, The Birth of Tragedy, and the Untimely Meditations, BGE is the obvious answer to questions such as: "Which work of Nietzsche's should we put on the PhD qualifying exam list?" or "What should I read to get a sense of what Nietzsche's philosophy is all about?" So, a book-length treatment of the work ought to be an especially welcome addition to the Nietzsche section of the library. Of this booklength treatment, however, the best I can say is that people who like this sort of thing will no doubt like it. By "this sort of thing," I mean "philosophical work in thrall to the ideas of Leo Strauss." In the spirit of Peter Cook's miner-who would have preferred a career in the judiciary and shows a positively Moorean fastidiousness in his concern to distinguish the sweeping generalization that "you get a load of riff raff down the mine" (to which he will not commit himself) from the singular proposition that "I had a load of riff raff down my mine," for which he claims to have ample empirical evidence-let me say at the outset that, while I am unqualified to speak of the soundness, truth, or interest of the thought of Leo Strauss, I find that it has not in the present case proven very helpful. Nietzsche's task, according to Lampert, was twofold, encompassing the achievement of "a comprehensive perspective on the world and on the human disposition toward the world" (p. 1), the task of philosophy, and the securing of "a place for that perspective in the lived world of human culture" (ibid.), the task of political philosophy. Following the master, Lampert sees this distinction of tasks reflected in the organization of BGE, which, on the Strauss-Lampert model, begins with three sections-on the prejudices of philosophers, the free mind or spirit (derfreie Geist), and the religious life or nature (das religiose Wesen)-devoted to articulating the comprehensive perspective constitutive of philosophy, and ends with five