Friedrich Nietzche - Hardcover

*Starred Review* Among the things Nietzsche smashed during a career doing philosophy with a hammer were his own prospects for a coherent life. The brilliant shards of that life invite scrutiny in this marvelously accessible biography. Cate recounts Nietzsche's story in a taut narrative, linking each epoch to shrewd commentaries on the works it incubated and highlighting the deep fissures that run through the philosopher's life and legacy. Such fissures yawn wide in the very personality of a thinker who scorns the comforts of orthodoxy in favor of never-ending warfare against dogmatism. In the epigrams and paradoxes with which Nietzsche wages his war, Cate acknowledges tensions, even antitheses. Thus, Nietzsche scathingly denounces Christianity yet admires passionate Christians such as Pascal and Dostoevsky. And even as he bewails the way the world has been "Jewified," Nietzsche pours contempt on anti-Semites. But beyond the contradictions, Cate discerns a literary intent (shattering complacency) and a philosophical doctrine (linking good to evil, truth to untruth). But neither literary artifice nor philosophic doctrine shields Nietzsche from the pain of real-life contradictions. The anti-nihilist who praises the godless life as a joyful dance finds his personal choreography taking him to the brink of suicide and then over the edge into insanity. The worst contradiction comes posthumously, when errant disciples (including his own sister) transform the foe of saber-rattling patriotism into a Nazi icon A compelling portrait of a much-maligned figure. Bill Ott
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