Nietzsche: A Very Short Introduction

Author: Michael Tanner

Rating: 2/5

Exactly what the title says and my first and hopefully not last foray into Neitzsche’s work!

Spoilers ahead.

Review

Nietzsche’s first book was The Birth of a Tragedy and I honestly don’t think I fully grasped what the book was about. From what I gathered, he talked about the Dionysian and the Apollonian art forms and compared them. The former is essentially chaos and the latter is logical and more rational. I THINK he talked about Homer’s plays in this book and then his conclusion was something along the lines of, “You need a bit of both to experience life fully.” Nietzsche used Richard Wagner as his prime example in Birth of a Tragedy and I think he was using it as, like, something that was meant to be heralded. But afterwards, they had some disagreements and Nietzsche wrote about how Wagner’s music essentially sucked and I was all here for that level of pettiness because it totally felt like something I would do myself.

Tanner describes Nietzsche as “a creative artist manqué” and I felt so much for Nietzsche, especially after reading that one line about his failure as a musician (lol been there, done that!). It was all the more exciting to read about Nietzsche writing his way out of his misery though I get the sense that he was still very much miserable. 

Human, All Too Human, at least the tiny snippets that were included in this introductory book, seemed like a very interesting read. Tanner rightly writes that Nietzsche manages to insult and poke fun at the reader for being a certain way. I also liked how that book was just a collection of aphorisms with mini explanations, short and sweet. 

“Compelling oneself to pay attention. – As soon as we notice that anyone has to compel himself to pay attention when associating and talking with us, we have a valid proof that he does not love us or loves us no longer.”

HOW TRUE IS THAT?

I found it incredibly bizarre how in that same chapter about Human, All Too Human, Tanner dropped like five bombs casually mentioning how Nietzsche quit his job as a professor, got syphilis from a prostitute which caused his “insanity and paralysis” and then essentially looked for the best place to be alone to write and live the hermit life.

Nietzsche apparently dreaded nihilism which I found surprising; I always thought he was the father of nihilism or something. To him, nihilism meant the denial of values. Nietzsche felt that western civilisation was moving to a point where he no longer agreed with the values that were touted. There was this whole discussion on morality which I couldn’t quite wrap my head around. There was something about the “moral hypocrisy of commanders” where Nietzsche suggested everyone was just obeying orders and even the ones who were supposedly in charge were being obedient to “higher powers” or the constitution or whatnot.

Nietzsche, from what I gather, felt entrenched in his suffering. He believed that existence was horrendous and “only as an aesthetic phenomenon is life justified” which, honestly, same. But what totally discomforted me was his view on God:

“He who does not find greatness in God finds it nowhere. He must either deny it or create it.”

I’ve recently been getting back into my religion and doing better, away from home, to follow traditions and do my prayers because I noticed that I felt much better when I did so than when I didn’t. And now I’m wondering whether I felt more depressed before because I felt pressure to create greatness on my own and whether now I’m in a slightly better state because I’ve dumped that pressure onto this external figure and so, snagged myself on the coattails of greatness. 

The chapter on Thus Spoke Zarathustra confused me a LOT. That’s actually part of the reason I rated this book specifically so low—I felt like I had to research most of what Tanner said online. The whole point of reading this book before starting any of Nietzsche’s works was to AVOID that process. What I pieced together from reading different sites was Nietzsche wrote about a will to power and becoming an Übermensch (sort of like a superhuman); he wrote about eternal recurrence where things happen in cycles? Can you tell I don’t know what I’m saying here?

In chapter seven, it’s mentioned how Nietzsche realised that his friend Paul Rée was close to the woman he wanted to marry named Lou Salomé (to whom he proposed via Paul) and I felt that third-wheel life SO much that I needed to mention it in this review. I feel like Nietzsche went through a lot of the worst scenarios life can throw at you and just despaired in them which, honestly, relatable and I would probably have done the same. In Beyond Good and Evil, he talks about how values are kind of pointless in that they are clearly constructed by us to create value, but because we’ve constructed them, we should technically get as many viewpoints as possible and be aware that what we’re believing in is false. But then if you acknowledge that your belief is false, then doesn’t that mean you don’t believe in it in the first place? So, yeah, I wasn’t sure about Tanner’s explanation of that in the book. 

In Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche critiques asceticism and discusses artists and priests who indulge in it. He talks about how people don’t like those who don’t share his beliefs and that there’s a “will to nothingness”—to rebel against life and everything it contains like happiness and sadness and beauty—in humans, that we’d rather have a will to nothingness than not have a will at all. I thought that was pretty interesting because I’ve never articulated my state of being as being a “will to nothingness” before but it seems a pretty decent summary.

In the concluding chapter, Tanner explains that Nietzsche was all for accepting everything that happens in our lives to attain a sort of “godlike” status, to not be affected by anything that life throws at you. He thought feeling pity (and self-pity) was pointless because grief and difficulty are ubiquitous in life so we should just accept it as a background thrum. We have to bear everything (or at least learn to). 

I definitely thought Nietzsche’s philosophy was interesting and I’m SUPER glad that Dr. Egerton told me to start with this book because I know I would have been super lost if I had dove straight into something Nietzsche himself had written. However, I felt this book wasn’t a very good introduction. I often had to look things up for myself and piece together what Nietzsche’s ideas were. I also feel like the notes I took while reading (which I just copied and pasted for this review) may not be the most accurate. I was hoping for someone to take me by the hand and give me a glimpse into Nietzsche’s mind but reading this book felt more like being plunged headfirst into cold water and expected to just know things off the bat.