Alexander Nehamas

Alexander Nehamas, a Princeton professor, examines Nietzsche's thought by exploring the paradoxes found in his writing and in what is produced by his writing. He investigates Nietzsche's perspectivism in search of how seriously he accepted his own ideas as truth, and how this influences attempts at interpretation of his works. He then analyzes Nietzsche's aestheticism in connection with his perspectivism, and how this leads him to observe and critique the world as if it were a literary text, and discusses within this interpretative framework Nietzsche's ideas of the will to power, the eternal recurrence, and his attack on morality.… (more)

Nehamas is a very capable and convincing writer, and the parts of the book that touch on Socrates and irony were particularly good.

The overall argument will probably not be persuasive to someone who is not already convinced that the pursuit of a "life as art" is worthwhile. Nehamas doesn't counter potential (and in my case, actual) objections regarding the apparent frivolity and self-centredness of such approach. Nor does he address the broader moral issues around creating a life that, in its pursuit of individuality and particularity, explicitly eschews universalistic pretensions and seems to be inherently snobby in its attitude towards the mass of people who are either unable or unwilling to bother to create their lives as works of art.

The chapters about Socrates and irony were more than able to outweigh what I felt to be the shortcomings of this book.… (more)