Nietzsche As Philosopher: Expanded Edition Book

Another book by my late professor discusses a continental European philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, using the Anglo-American style of analytic philosophy. I love this sort of book, which is similar to his treatment of Jean-Paul Sartre, for several reasons. First, it establishes the kinship between the two main currents of contemporary philosophy in a way which is rarely discussed except in the most global terms. Second, it illustrates some of the tools of analytic philosophy used outside of their usual domain. And thirdly, it shows the mind of a broadly educated man at work.

As with Danto's book on Sartre, Danto shows particular parallels between the continental philosopher and the analytic philosopher. To give just one example, Danto holds that one of Nietzsche's unique positions was that consciousness is not the defining possession of the individual human being, as Descartes might have argued, but that it is a product of man's being a social animal and having to interact with and to explain himself to his fellow human beings.

Danto remarks the resemblance of this position to that of P.F. Strawson, a British philosopher who followed Wittgenstein, and who argued that to understand an emotion is not only to have experienced it subjectively, but also to know its identity with the behavior that our fellow human beings observe. I wish that I had read this in graduate school, because it would have helped me with a particular paper that I wrote for Danto, and with a particular topic that I was trying to understand.

Danto covers the usual topics that people know in connection with Nietzsche, such as the death of God, the superman and the eternal return, but he draws his own conclusions as to what is most important. For example: "And if there is any single moral/metaphysical teaching I would ascribe to him, it would be this: suffering really is meaningless, there is no point to it, and the amount of suffering caused by giving it a meaning chills the blood to contemplate."

Danto takes care to see what is unique in Nietzsche and to distinguish him from the unfounded stereotypes of him as a libertine or as a proto-Nazi. He distinguishes between Nietzsche the aphorist, and Nietzsche the philosopher. Danto shows how an accomplished contemporary philosopher can come to terms with a radical thinker of the 19th century, so that we are drawn into appreciating (not uncritically) his philosophical vision.