Untimely Meditations (Texts in German Philosophy)
Friedrich Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale
Language: English
Pages: 289
ISBN: 0521289270
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This superb edition of The Untimely Meditations by Friedrich Nietzsche contains the compelling translations of Anthony Ludovici and Adrian Collins.
These early writings by Nietzsche displays much of the promise which was to unfurl later in the philosopher's life. These four essays, all different in subject and tone yet tangentially related, are also known by the title Thoughts Out of Season, and were originally published in two parts between 1873 and 1876.
In each essay, Nietzsche examines aspects of modern culture and art. In the first, third and final essays he singles out a single personage as representative or influential upon of the present day, subjecting each to a philosophic critique. The first two essays are openly polemical and critical, whilst the final two offer a non-hostile and complimenting tone, with parts praising their subjects.
The first essay, David Strauss: the Confessor and the Writer, sees Nietzsche polemically and scathingly criticise the theologian and author David Strauss, in considering Strauss's 1871 work The Old and the New Faith: A Confession as symptomatic of contemporary German thought. He then goes further, attacking Strauss as appropriating history in service of pseudo-cultural ends.
The second essay, On the Use and Abuse of History for Life, has Nietzsche present a new and novel way of reading history, and attempts to discredit the idea that man is merely a product of the history which has so far happened. The essay exemplifies the growing attitude of elitism which would become more obvious in Nietzsche's later works.
In the third essay, Schopenhauer as Educator, Nietzsche praises and lauds the philosopher Schopenhauer and suggests that a revival in thought would likely occur thanks to this philosopher and his fine ideas. As well as what he wrote, Nietzsche praises the attitude which Schopenhauer had to life - jovial, forthright and honest, if pessimistic.
In the final essay, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, Nietzsche examines the life and works of his contemporary - the composer Richard Wagner. At the time it was published, Nietzsche praising attitude to Wagner was changing - yet a friend, Peter Gast, saw value in its words and persuaded him to redraft and publish it. However some time after its publication, Nietzsche would split from Wagner and the two would conclude their friendship.
have put aside the next five years for working out the remaining ten "Untimely Meditations".' Many different lists of the pro jected series of Unzeitgemiisse Betrachtungen are to be found in Nietzsche's Nachlass from this period. In English, see Breazeale, Philosophy and Truth, pp. 1 62-3 and Nietzsche, Unmodern Observations, trans. William Arrowsmith (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1990.) , pp. 321-2. 9 See Nietzsche's claim in Ecce Homo, 'Why I Write Such Good Books', 'The
and that he should permit himself to make public confession as to his beliefs at all already constitutes a confession. * - It may be that everyone over forty has the right to compile an autobiography, for even the humblest of us may have experienced and seen from closer quarters things which the thinker may find worth noticing. But to depose a confession of one's beliefs must be considered incom parably more presumptu ous, since it presupposes that the writer accords value, not merely to what
pistons and rams? And of what con solation could it be to the worker within this machine to know that this oil is being poured on to him while the machine continues to hold him in its grip? Let us say simply that the metaphor is an unfor tunate one and turn our attention to another procedure through which Strauss seeks to convey how he really feels towards the universe and in the course of which there hovers upon his lips the question Gretchen kept asking: 'He loves me - he loves me not - he
perhaps not his own but often that of a nation or of man kind as a whole; he flees from resignation and needs h istory as a specific against it. Mostly there is no reward beckoning him on, unless it be fame, that is, the expectation of a place of honour in the temple of history, where he in tum can be a teacher, comforter and admonisher to those who come after hiIJl. For the commandment which rules over him is: that which in the past was able to expand the concept 'man' and make it more
goal of all previous events, when his miserable condition is equated with a completion of world- history. Such a point of view has accus tomed the Germans to talk of a 'world-process' and to justify their own age as the necessary result of this world-process; such a point of view has set history, insofar as h istory is ' the concept that realizes itself' , 'the dialectics of the spirit of the peoples' and the · 'world tribunal' , in place of the other spiritual powers, art and religion, as the