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Title: Human, All Too Human (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy) by Friedrich Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale ISBN: 0-521-56200-7 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 1996 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $44.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.83 (12 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Here's to Friedrich Nietzsche
Comment: "Human All too Human" is the zenith in Nietzsche's philosophy. It doesn't get any better than this, folks. Read this book from cover to cover and you will be amazed, and if you're like me, captivated, by the depth of Nietzsche's thinking. In "Human, All too Human", Nietzsche spills his musings on the State, "Man alone with himself", and the eternal splinter in his brain, religion.
When reading "Human, All too Human", you will recognize Nietzsche's shortcomings. His distrust of women is evident. His insecurity with the rapid advancement of technology and communications in his time clouded his thinking. But we should be forgiving of these errors. Judge not, lest you be judged. Nietzsche, like all of us, was human. He too, like so many of us do, embraced false symbols of power (religion, militarism) in his younger days. He was, after all, the son of a Lutheran clergyman and joined the army as an ambulance orderly during the Franco-Prussian War. Fortunately for posterity, Nietzsche possessed the intellectual fortitude to recognize these errors and bring them to light in his writings.
In "Human, All too Human", Nietzsche proves his remarkable ability to examine mankind like a crude specimen under a microscope. He stumbled along the way, but at least he mustered this courage. Isn't that all we can hope to be in this life? A little more human?
Rating: 4
Summary: Nietzsche: A Precursor to Existentialism
Comment: This is Nietzsche's first, and in some ways the best, philosophy book. Prior to Human All-Too Human, he penned The Birth of Tragedy and Untimely Meditations. But it is only in this book that Nietzsche comes into his own as a philosopher. The book was written soon after his retirement from teaching, due to ill health, and Nietzsche suffered a lot from physical pain, while writing the book, having to take hashish to relieve it. The book contains opinions on almost everything under the Sun. Although it is clearly broken down into distinct chapters, the thoughts within chapters are not arranged systematically. This is intentional and represents Nietzsche mistrust of grand theorizing and excessively systematic thinking. He retained this aphoristic writing style till the last days of his productive life. Thus in his approach, Nietzsche anticipates both existentialism and post-modernism. He views life personally, passionately, and with distrust to grand system(narrative) building. Thoughts slither through the labyrinth of human life, revealing strartling insights and forcing us to reconsider received opinions and conventional wisdoms.
By Nietzsche's standards, the perspectives presented in the book are fairly measured, and the author's voice is not nearly as shrill as it would become ten years later, in his last books. Because Nietzsche settles at a high level of generalization, some opinions do sound narrow-minded and prejudiced. In this, Nietzsche was also a victim of his time and culture: his comments on women and "the youthful Jew of the stock exchange" are not intellectuals gems, to put it very mildly. Some of his other opinions, on marriage, for example, also strike me as strange. Overall, this is a book by an all-too-human philosopher, yet it is a path-breaking work, a precursor to existentialism and post-modernism, written in a style that can appeal to the reader sheerly as good literature.
Rating: 5
Summary: One of the funnest books ever written
Comment: Nietzsche is always fun in all of his writings, and this book is one of his best in this regard. It is better than morning coffee in stimulating the mind, and one cannot read it without frequent chuckles. One can only wonder if Nietzsche would have been as personable in real life as he is in this book. One can say with certainty though that Freud was right in stating that Nietzsche new more about himself than most any other human being...but also, he knew more about other humans than perhaps any other human being. Nietzsche incites the reader to recklessness, and this gives the book its value. Everyone needs free play: a run up the steps of Ephesus. The Nietzschean project of drunken Dionysian ecstacy can be accomplished by the perusal of the written word: this book is ample proof of that.
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