Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography by Rüdiger Safranski (review)

theverypatriarchal and paternalistic social order on which they relyfor theiridentities " (120-121). Personal writing is a good way to introduce theoretical concepts ofsubjectivity and identity, making She ?f Nothing in Particukr a good starting point for undergraduate study. By the concluding chapter, "Something in Particular: Writing, Journals, and the Evidence ofPresence," we see the ways in which reading diaries can inspire teachers and dieir students in their own writing. As Wink writes of her own reaction to the diaries, "It is through their writing moments that I have come to write and to understand the person I myselfam continually becoming" (130). At the end ofVirginiaWoolf's story, after reading his wife's diaries and discovering that her death was really a suicide, die widower reflects, "He had received his legacy. She had told him die truth." Such is the legacy ofthese six diaries; in bringing them to our attention, Amy Wink has articulated a profitable critical approach, applicable to all sorts ofdiaries. % Rüdiger Safranski. Nietzsche:A Phi'hsophicalBiography. Trans. Shelley Frisch. NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 2002. 4l2p. Sean Ireton University of Missouri-Columbia Given the glut ofNietzsche studies diat have filled bookshelves over theyears, one cannot help but ask the question: whyyetanother bookon the mostwritten-about philosopher in the twentieth century? Granted, Nietzsche's multifarious ideas and styles naturally invite a host ofinterpretations, whether from a philosophical, literary , political, or—as has been the case in recent decades—poststructuralist perspective . Nietzsche's life, as amply demonstrated by several (psycho-)biographies, was no less rich in complexity and detail: he was an accomplished philologist, mediocre composer, not to mention philosopher out ofseason; he traveled incessandy , suffered from various physical ailments before his final collapse into madness , had personal contact with key intellectual figures ofthe nineteendi century (e.g. Wagner, Burckhardt, Lou Andreas-Salomé); and in terms ofhis sexuality (a hot topic oflate), he was a complete enigma—even to Freud. It is safe to say diat nearly everyaspect ofNietzsche's life andworkhas been chronicled and explicated by scholars, philosophers, and literary theorists ofall camps. So the question remains : why another book on Nietzsche? In his concluding remarks, author Rüdiger Safranski offers an indirect answer: "Nietzsche's philosophical biography is a story without an end and will need to 100 * ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * FALL 2002 Reviews continue being written" (349). This notion of "philosophical biography" is central to the conception ofthe book, which delves into Nietzsche's life only insofar as it informs his thought. As Safranski points out, Nietzsche's "life was a testing ground for his thinking" (28) and hence cannot be treated separately from his work. Safranski has already proven himself a master of this philosophical-biographical genre, havingwritten similarly constructed studies ofSchopenhauer and Heidegger (available in English as Schopenhauer and the Wild Years ofPhilosophy and Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil). In his latest effort, planned to coincide with the centennial of Nietzsche's death (the original German version appeared in 2000), Safranski relies not only on texts published during the philosopher's lifetime but gives equal interpretiveweight to posthumouslyreleased fragments, letters, and journals. Through this multi-textual approach, Safranski effectively illuminates the existential urgency ofNietzsche's ideas, which were after all conceived more in artistic passion than philosophic contemplation. The overall strength ofSafranski's Nietzschelies in its near perfect mesh ofanalytic and synthetic observations. The author, in other words, deftly breaks down Nietzschean concepts for even the lay reader's understanding and places them within the broader cultural framework ofnineteenth-century Europe. Moreover, a third narrative strand often enters the mix: Safranski traces the genesis of important notions (e.g., the will to power, eternal recurrence, and the Übermensch) from their first to final appearance in Nietzsche's writings. This three-pronged approach—analytic, synthetic, and genetic—helps create a more totalized vision ofNietzsche than can be found in most other full-length studies. As for its specific content, Safranski's book explores numerous issues that preoccupied Nietzsche throughout his short-lived yet highly productive writing career : morality, Hellenism, the Dionysian, art vs. science, self-configuration, decadence , the death ofGod, will to power, etc. The author also devotes a great deal of attention to figures...