Nietzsche Book

NIETZSCHE BY CRANE BRINTON McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History, Harvard University CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1948 COPYRIGHT, 1941 BY THE PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE Second Printing ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE PUBLISHER. PRINTED AT THE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRINTING OFFICE CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U. S. A. To L. J. HENDERSON EDITORS PREFACE present biographical series, initiated by the volume on JL Nietzsche by Crane Brinton, has no intention of offering to the public once again the biographies of men which appear with almost monotonous regularity Napoleon, Cavour, Gladstone, Marx. It proposes instead to present the lives of men for whom there is no biography, or no adequate biography in English. At the same time these biographies will deal with men who left a significant impress on their age, men who may properly be con sidered as Makers of Modern Europe. Contributors will be invited to keep steadily before them the view that serious historical biography involves constantly the relation of its subject to his historical context. They will expose in adequate detail the problems with which the statesman dealt, the significant contributions which the thinker made. They will address themselves constantly to the question What was the significance of this man for his epoch The conception and development of the present series owes much to the counsel of others and especially of those here men tioned. I have consulted repeatedly various ones of my col leagues at Harvard, and have had the helpful advice of Professor Charles K. Webster of the University of London, Professors Carl L. Becker and Philip E. Mosely of Cornell, Pro fessors Arthur M. Wilson of Dartmouth and Chester W. Clark of the University of Iowa, and Drs. Edgar P. Dean and Robert G. Woolbert of the Council on Foreign Relations. In this, as in viii EDITORS PREFACE my other projects, I have enjoyed the stimulating interest of my wife and have been saved from many errors by her detached and candid criticism. DONALD C. McKAY JOHN WINTHROP HOUSE HARVARD UNIVERSITY January 6, 7947 AUTHORS PREFACE IWJSH to make quite clear that this study of Nietzsche does not attempt to analyze his work from the point of view of a professional philosopher, nor to estimate his place in the long line of such philosophers. That is a task for which I am not prepared. This study is rather an attempt to place Nietzsches work in the more general currents of opinion in our time. It is a study of Nietzsche as politiquc ct moralistc. Begun before Munich, finished after the defeat of France, it must bear some marks of contemporary events. Nazi commentators on Nietzsche are not agreeable and conciliating writers. There is, at least to an American brought up before the Four Years War, something very unpleasant about the Nazis, and especially about Nazi intellectuals. Abusive epithets like barbarous, uncivilized, insane, arrogant, brutal, all carry many of the right overtones you cannot fairly use nice words, nor even neutral words dear to semanticists, about the group that has made contemporary Germany. Yet I confess I have not been able to find what seems to me just the right word for the Nazis the nearest I can come is the metaphor with which I close Chapter VIII. I have not, then, written sine ira ct studio. On the other hand, I hope that I have not indulged in the now once more popular sport of Hun-baiting. This book is not meant to indict the German nation. I owe much to odds and ends of conversations with many of my friends, whom I cannot in these pages do more than thank as a group. I should like, however, to acknowledge more X PREFACE specifically numerous debts. To the Macmillan Company I am grateful for their generous permission to quote liberally from the authorized English translation of Nietzsches works, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy. Dr...Read More