Unmodern Observations (Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen)
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Friedrich Nietzsche; Edited by William Arrowsmith
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Format: PaperPrice: $42.00
This translation of Nietzsche’s early Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen consists of four long essays and notes for a fifth. Nietzsche planned these works as part of an extremely ambitious critique of German culture. Although the project was never completed, the essays thematically linked and should be considered as a whole. This book, which presents these important works together in English for the first time, unifies the essays, provides introductions and annotations to each, and translates them in a way that does justice to the brilliance and versatility of Nietzsche’s style.
The dominant idea of Nietzsche’s project is the regeneration of culture through a radical reshaping of modern educational institutions. Nietzsche believed that philosophy, the arts, and the ennobling study of antiquity had all been corrupted by systematic miseducation, the work of so-called educators, who, as culture-philistines, had disgraced the highest of vocations. In response to this fragmented modern world, Nietasche argues for the creation of a”manworthy” culture with a single uniftying style—a style that integrated theology, philosophy, education, classical scholarship, journalism, and art in a seamless, dynamic whole. This style, Nietzsche contends, can best be realized by heeding the great creative examples of the pre-Socratic philosophers, Schopenhauer, and Wagner, and by reforming education, above all the study of history and the archaic culture of Greece, so that it serves, rather than obstructs, the needs of human life.
The essays include David Strauss: Writer and Confessor, introduced and translated by Herbert Golder; History in the Service and Disservice of Life, introduced by Werner Dannhauser and translated by Gary Brown; Schopenhauer as Educator, introduced by Richard Schacht and translated by William Arrowsmith; Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, introduced and translated by Gary Brown; and We Classicists, introduced and translated by William Arrowsmith.
"William Arrowsmith’s brilliant translation of Nietzsche’s extraordinary meditations upon the antithetical relationships between classical philology and the Greek spirit is a central work for the understanding of what might be called `literary agonistic’. Nietzsche’s own contest with Plato, and with European culture, is illuminated by Arrowsmith’s restorative volume."—Harold Bloom
"This collection will grace any reading list: I recommended buying one for a favorite colleague."—Ian Forbes, Political Studies
"A big and heavy volume. It is full of notes (excellent . . . ), and it ends with a translation of Nietzsche's jottings for an essay to be called 'We Classicists,' which marks the end of Nietzsche's work as an active Greek scholar."—J.P. Stern, London Review of Books
"Arrowsmith has edited an excellent volume that will be an invaluable resource for both scholars and first-time readers of Nietzsche's 1873 Unzeitgemasse Betrachtungen. . . . This long-overdue translation will be a welcome addition to all academic libraries. The informative footnotes and index are extremely helpful as research tools. Very highly recommended for all academic, public, and personal libraries seeking the complete English collection of Nietzsche's works."—Choice
"The availability of all four essays in good translations, richly and helpfully annotated, is a boon to the study of Neitzsche in the English speaking world."—Mark Migotti, International Philosophical Quarterly
"It is the first time that these important essays have appeared together in English, and William Arrowsmith and his colleagues are to be congratulated on their scholarship and on the old-fashioned pietas that they display towards their subject, a quality which has been sorely missing in recent attempts to subject Nietzsche to the grisly rituals of deconstructionist criticism."—Frank Field, German History
"William Arrowsmith's brilliant translation of Nietzsche's extraordinary meditations upon the antithetical relationships between classical philology and the Greek spirit is a central work for the understanding of what might be called `literary agonistic'. Nietzsche's own contest with Plato, and with European culture, is illuminated by Arrowsmith's restorative volume."—Harold Bloom
"The accuracy and completeness of the Arrowsmith edition, the addition of the notes for We Classicists, the translator’s notes, and the insightful prefatory essays that accompany each of Nietzsche’s pieces serve to make this a very readable and accessible edition of the Unmodern Observations."—John Fredrick Humphrey, Philosophy of Religion
"This collection will grace any reading list: I recommended buying one for a favorite colleague."—Ian Forbes, Political Studies
Publication Date: July 15, 2011
14 b/w illus.
