Review of Zeitlin's NIETZSCHE: A RE-EXAMINATION

{The following appeared in Volume 96, Number 2 (Spring 1997) of the APA Newsletters.}

Irving Zeitlin. Nietzsche: A Re-Examination, Polity Press, 1994, 178pp. Reviewed by: Rick Hogan, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth

     The resurgence of interest in Nietzsche during the last thirty years has resulted in a veritable Zauberberg of literature that is at the disposal of instructors who teach courses on him or that include him. In addition to a number of first-rate monographs and some excellent collections of articles (2), there is virtually an unlimited number of other, usually more specialized, books on Nietzsche. And there is no lack of presentations of his thought that are accessible to undergraduates.(3) Therefore in order to merit serious attention from Nietzsche teachers, new materials must be of very high quality.
     Irving Zeitlin is a sociologist, whose book discusses a number of the central themes in Nietzsche's philosophy. The cover says that the book "will be essential reading for second-year students and above, plus professionals in the areas of philosophy, social theory, and political thought." Regrettably, the claim on the cover is wrong. Prof. Zeitlin's book is an extremely poor introduction to Nietzsche for students, and it makes no important contribution to scholarship on Nietzsche.
     The book's defects are numerous. First, Zeitlin's avowedly critical aim takes the form of presenting a number of hackneyed criticisms of Nietzsche (e.g., that he rejects any notion of truth, reason, or knowledge (4), that he committed the "genetic fallacy," that he endorses grossly immoral actions, that he presents no support for his views, that his position is "just a matter of taste" etc.).
     Zeitlin thinks it is quite obvious that these criticisms are correct; so he offers little defense of them himself. He seems to suppose that merely presenting the criticism is enough to deliver a knock-out blow. He is apparently completely unaware of the post Kaufmann/Hollingdale scholarship on Nietzsche (the book contains no bibliography), which, if anything, has shown that the issues are much more complicated than many previous writers on Nietzsche allowed. He makes no attempt to consider what a sympathetic reader might see in Nietzsche and the ways in which such more dispassionate critics have tried to defend him from the usual charges.
     In sum, Zeitlin's presentation of Nietzsche is extremely crude, unsympathetic, philosophically naive, and ignorant of current scholarship.
    Another rather strange feature of Zeitlin's book is his inclination to provide summaries of marginally relevant material: on the relation between the ancient Hebrews and Egypt; on Alcibiades; on Archaic and Classical Greek history; on the Hebrew prophets. Zeitlin makes little detailed attempt to integrate these discussions directly into his account of Nietzsche other than simply pointing out that his material furnishes examples of points that Nietzsche makes. This approach reminds one of an undergraduate anxious to fill up space.
    The book's claims to originality do not pass muster. For example, Zeitlin's comparison between Nietzsche and the "immoralist" antagonists of Socrates (Callicles in the Gorgias, Thrasymachus in Republic I) was the subject of the well known appendix to E.R. Dodds' edition of the Gorgias.(6). The discussion of Darwin, in addition to containing a number of mistakes, repeats points made many times in the recent literature. The chapters on Stirner and Dostoyevsky contain virtually no analysis that would justify including them in a book on Nietzsche. The material on the Greeks and the Hebrews provides additional examples of phenomena ("master" and "slave" morality) already sufficiently illustrated by Nietzsche's own texts.
     Finally, Zeitlin's presentation consists in large measure of paraphrases, but often amounts to almost verbatim reproduction of Nietzsche's text, without indication that this is what is occurring. Sometimes Zeitlin does not tell the reader which translation he is using. Occasionally he introduces his own infelicities, e.g., when he imports "superman" into Kaufmann's translation of Zarathustra.
    Zeitlin also plagiarizes from Hollingdale's Nietzsche. Although he has a footnote (p.16) informing the reader that he "rel[ies] on Hollingdale's splendid study for these details about Nietzsche's childhood and his intellectual development," he doesn't let the reader know when he appropriates Hollingdale's diction, sentence structure, and judgements. Although there are several, properly footnoted quotations, other specific borrowings remain unacknowledged according to standard scholarly conventions. I was surprised and dismayed to find that such a book could be published in the mid-1990s.

Notes:

 1. E.g., Richard Schacht, Nietzsche (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983); Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1985); Maudmarie Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); John Wilcox, Truth and Value in Nietzsche (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1974).
2. E.g., R. Solomon, ed. Nietzsche: A Collection of Critical Essays (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980); R. Solomon and K. Higgins, eds. , Reading Nietzsche (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); R. Schacht, ed., Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). 3. E.g. Michael Tanner's "Past Masters" Nietzsche (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
 4. One of the most important issues in contemporary scholarship on Nietzsche is his views on truth, knowledge, and objectivity. These are, to say the least, complicated. But he has recently had some able defenders, who claim that the mature Nietzsche retains a commitment to truth and the possibility of knowledge. See, e.g., Clark: "The Nietzschean ideal of affirmation does not require us to abandon logic, argument, or the commitment to truth," p.23. See also Schacht, Nietzsche; B. Leiter, "Perspectivism in Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals," in R. Schacht, ed. Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality. Zeitlin shows no awareness of any of the scholarship on this issue.
5. Nietzsche is defended against the charge of "genetic fallacy," by, inter alia, R. Schacht, Nietzsche; R. Solomon, "One Hundred Years of Ressentiment," in R. Schacht, ed. Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality.
6. E.R. Dodds, Plato: Gorgias (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), Appendix, "Socrates, Callicles, and Nietzsche," 387ff. Zeitlin is apparently unaware of this essay.