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Title: The Pre-Platonic Philosophers (International Nietzsche Studies) by Greg Whitlock, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche ISBN: 0-252-02559-8 Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr (Pro Ref) Pub. Date: 01 June, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (3 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Important Text, but...
Comment: Let me start out by saying that this text is a welcome addition to the serious attempts made to bring Nietzsche's notebooks into publication. Not only, for those of us who are serious Nietzsche schorlars, does The Will To Power have many faults (see my review for it) but we also do not have much if any serious work being done in attempting to translate these 16,000 pages or so of notebook material.
One will see in this text Nietzsche's extraordinary knowledge of the greeks. Most of us know that Nietzsche started his academic life as a philologist, and found in the Greek culture something which pointed him towards the philosophical inquiry he would come to make in his life. I encourage all to partake in Nietzsche's discussion with the Greeks, for it will provide critical insight into the devlopment of his philosophy.
This text is the lecutre course that he gave at Basel in 1868. It provides an account of the most important thinkers before the time of Plato, in accordance to Nietzsche's own struggle with their (the thinkers) fragments. If one finds this text interesting, I would recommend looking into the Birth of Tragedy, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, and just to get some background info on the lives and fragments obtained from these thinkers, Kirk, Raven, and Schofield's The Pre-Socratic Philosophers.
With that said, this text does have its limitiations. At some moments the translation is very good, and at other moments rather poor. There are sections, for example, in the Chapter on Empedocles that are very important that do not make it into the English translation. Moreover, the translation seems to make use of common English expressions when the actual German dictates a more dramatic expression. Like I say in all my reviews of Nietzsche's notebooks, his texts makes one want to learn German, so do that if you can. If one cannot, read it alongside an expert in German and you will be able to see the rather superficial areas of translation.
So, an important text with some mechanical problems in the translation. Still worth the investment though, and it provides a good intro in NIetzsche's insight into the Greek world.
Amor fati
Rating: 5
Summary: Could you worship this like an indefinite God?
Comment: As always, Nietzsche demonstrates an incredible grasp of theology, and it is merely our own stupidity that someone who is so much smarter than his teachers in this way is in so much trouble in the field of public opinion, which demands a much more comfortable stupidity than any reader of this book is likely to sympathize with. In the midst of this book, the judgment which Nietzsche pursues about very early Greek thinkers is "These religious insights originated from a need to eliminate anthropomorphism, but they still show the primordial Hellenic sensitivity toward the gods." (p. 78) The fragment of Xenophanes, given in Greek in footnote 15 on that page, which preceded his observation, was: "Always he remains in the same place, not moving at all; Nor is it fitting for him to go to different places at different times." As Nietzsche thought Plato and Aristotle understood this, "the entire dichotomy between spirit and matter, deity and world, is absent here. He resolves the identification of God and man in order to equate God and nature." (pp. 78-79). In humor, a high spot is a poem by Planudes about Seven Wise Men, with a line, "But Bias of Priene declared, The majority are the worse." (p. 22). Nietzsche makes the effort to sort them all out. On Anaximander, he said, "Thus he made two great advances over Thales, to wit, a principle of water's warmth and coldness and a principle of the Unlimited, the final unity, the matrix of continuous arising." (p. 33). People who are new to philosophy might think that there is too much which is new here, but it's really very old.
Rating: 5
Summary: A milestone in Nietzsche scholarship
Comment: This book is remarkable on several levels. As a work of scholarship, it is an awesome achievement, considering that Greg Whitlock was able to produce a coherent text of Nietzche's lecture notes, and performed the most helpful task of looking up every citation, confirming its source, and providing extensive notes to clarify the details of the lectures.
But even more surprising and satisfying is the section that Whitlock modestly calls a "Translator's Commentary", which is actually a challenging and profound engagement with Nietzsche, the various Greek philosophers under discussion, Nietzsche's near contemporaries in German science, philosophy, and philology, and later thinkers as well. In fact, one of the more exciting parts of the text is where Whitlock challenges various statements by Heidegger and, I think, comes out on top. This is not mere history of philosophy, but a genuine encounter with some very provocative ideas.
At the end of this book, the reader must be absolutely conviced that the Pre-Platonic philosophers are not just interesting historically, but that each of them was a brilliant thinker with a highly developed intuitive gift for charging ahead into new intellectual territory. Nietzsche's deep passion for these thinkers is irresistible, and the reader cannot help but marvel at his ability to synthesize the Greeks with the science of his day and then use that to begin his own extraordinary philosophical journey.
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Title: Unpublished Writings from the Period of Unfashionable Observations (Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzshe, Vol 11) by Richard T. Gray, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche ISBN: 0804736480 Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr Pub. Date: December, 1999 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Nietzsche: Writings from the Late Notebooks by Friedrich Nietzsche, Rüdiger Bittner, Kate Sturge ISBN: 0521008875 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks by Marianne Cowan, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche ISBN: 0895267101 Publisher: Regnery Publishing Pub. Date: July, 1996 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Dithyrambs of Dionysus by Friedrich Nietzsche, R.J. Hollingdale ISBN: 0856463272 Publisher: Anvil Press Poetry Pub. Date: August, 2001 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Nietzsche: Daybreak : Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality by Friedrich Nietzsche, Maudemarie Clark, Brian Leiter ISBN: 0521599636 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: November, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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