I Am Dynamite

"A biography of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche"--

NEW YORK TIMES Editors’ Choice • THE TIMES BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR • WINNER OF THE HAWTHORNDEN PRIZE A groundbreaking new biography of philosophy’s greatest iconoclast Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most enigmatic figures in philosophy, and his concepts—the Übermensch, the will to power, slave morality—have fundamentally reshaped our understanding of the human condition. But what do most people really know of Nietzsche—beyond the mustache, the scowl, and the lingering association with nihilism and fascism? Where do we place a thinker who was equally beloved by Albert Camus, Ayn Rand, Martin Buber, and Adolf Hitler? Nietzsche wrote that all philosophy is autobiographical, and in this vividly compelling, myth-shattering biography, Sue Prideaux brings readers into the world of this brilliant, eccentric, and deeply troubled man, illuminating the events and people that shaped his life and work. From his placid, devoutly Christian upbringing—overshadowed by the mysterious death of his father—through his teaching career, lonely philosophizing on high mountains, and heart-breaking descent into madness, Prideaux documents Nietzsche’s intellectual and emotional life with a novelist’s insight and sensitivity. She also produces unforgettable portraits of the people who were most important to him, including Richard and Cosima Wagner, Lou Salomé, the femme fatale who broke his heart; and his sister Elizabeth, a rabid German nationalist and anti-Semite who manipulated his texts and turned the Nietzsche archive into a destination for Nazi ideologues. I Am Dynamite! is the essential biography for anyone seeking to understand history's most misunderstood philosopher.

The Times Biography of the Year Winner of the Hawthornden Prize 2019 Shortlisted for the HWA Non-Fiction Prize 2019 Longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2019 Longlisted for the Cundhill History Prize 2019 Friedrich Nietzsche's work blasted the foundation of western thinking. The death of God, the Übermensch, and the slave morality permeate our culture, high and low, and yet he is one of history's most misunderstood philosophers. Nietzsche himself thought that all philosophy was autobiographical and in this myth-shattering book, Sue Prideaux brings readers into the world of a brilliant, eccentric and deeply troubled man, illuminating the events and people that shaped his life and work. From his placid, devoutly Christian upbringing, overshadowed by the mysterious death of his father, through his lonely philosophising on high mountains, to the horror and pathos of his final descent into madness, Prideaux explores Nietzsche's intellectual, emotional and spiritual life with insight and sensitivity. The book is studded with unforgettable portraits of the people who were most important to him, including Richard and Cosima Wagner, Lou Salomé - the femme fatale who broke his heart - and his rabidly nationalist and anti-Semitic sister Elizabeth, who betrayed him by manipulating his texts and putting them to infinite misuse at the hands of the Nazis. Today, Nietzsche's ideas continue to be adopted by both the left and the right. I Am Dynamite! is the essential biography for anyone seeking to understand the philosopher who foresaw - and sought solutions to - our own troubled times.

Power is conventionally regarded as being held by social institutions. We are taught to believe that it is these social structures that determine the environment and circumstances of individual lives. In I Am Dynamite, the anthropologist Nigel Rappaport argues for a different view. Focusing on the lives and works of the writer and Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi, refugee and engineer Ben Glaser, Israeli ceramicist and immigrant Rachel Siblerstein, artist Stanley Spencer, and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, he shows how we can have the capacity and inclination to formulate 'life projects'. It is in the pursuit of these life projects, that is, making our life our work, that we can avoid the structures of ideology and institution.

'As the primary liberatory project, anarchism - the project which aims at the abolition of all forms of power, control, and coercion - remains entitled to appropriate the work of one of the greatest iconoclasts of all time. And although Nietzsche was rather harsh on his anarchist contemporaries - or more precisely on a type of contemporary anarchist - he nevertheless in some respects shared with them a vision of total transformation. The notion of a transvaluation of all values clearly remains not merely compatible with, but an integral component of the anarchist project, and the idea of philosophy with a hammer underlies the anarchist commitment to radical social transformation.'- John Moore, in "Attentat Art"This collection of essays is intended to examine various dimensions of the interactions between anarchism and Nietzsche. The aim of this volume is twofold: first, to provide instances of the historical appropriation of Nietzsche by anarchists, and second, to provide instances of appropriations and readings of Nietzsche by contemporary anarchist thinkers and commentators.The volume is thus divided into two sections, the historical and the contemporary, or in other words the periods of modernity and postmodernity. The historical section comprises four essays which consider historical appropriations of Nietzsche from a variety of ideological perspectives from the early twentieth century. Daniel Colson provides an overview of Nietzsche and the libertarian tradition and focusses on the appropriation of Nietzsche by French anarcho-syndicalists. Leigh Starcross reconstructs the ideas of Emma Goldman on Nietzsche and thus investigates an important intersection between anarchism, individualism and feminism. Allan Antliff considers the synthesis between anarchism, Eastern traditions and Nietzschean thought effected by Ananda Coomaraswamy, providing an important post-colonialist perspective to the topic. Finally, the modernity section includes the neglected but historically significant 1902 essay by the British anarchist Guy Aldred who provides an early and brief but very sophisticated anarchist reading of Nietzsche. The book's second section explores the relevance of Nietzsche to contemporary anarchism. At the core of this section are five essays-by Andrew Koch, Franco Riccio, Salvo Vaccaro, Saul Newman and Max Cafard-which from different perspectives deal with post-structuralist and post-modern readings of Nietzsche, and consider their appropriateness or otherwise for anarchists. These specific engagements with contemporary interpretations of Nietzsche are complemented by two essays focusing on specific aspects of Nietzsche's work from anarchist perspectives: John Moore provides an anarchist, post-situationist interpretation of Nietzsche's aesthetics, and Peter Lamborn Wilson considers the Islamic dimensions of Nietzsche's philosophy.

The biography of the artist who created the most haunting icon of the twentieth century

More than eighty years after his death, Nietzsche's writings and his career remain disquieting, disturbing, obscure. His most famous views--the will to power, the eternal recurrence, the bermensch, the master morality--often seem incomprehensible or, worse, repugnant. Yet he remains a thinker of singular importance, a great opponent of Hegel and Kant, and the source of much that is powerful in figures as diverse as Wittgenstein, Derrida, Heidegger, and many recent American philosophers. Alexander Nehamas provides the best possible guide for the perplexed. He reveals the single thread running through Nietzsche's views: his thinking of the world on the model of a literary text, of people as if they were literary characters, and of knowledge and science as if they were literary interpretation. Beyond this, he advances the clarity of the concept of textuality, making explicit some of the forces that hold texts together and so hold us together. Nehamas finally allows us to see that Nietzsche is creating a literary character out of himself, that he is, in effect, playing the role of Plato to his own Socrates. Nehamas discusses a number of opposing views, both American and European, of Nietzsche's texts and general project, and reaches a climactic solving of the main problems of Nietzsche interpretation in a step-by-step argument. In the process he takes up a set of very interesting questions in contemporary philosophy, such as moral relativism and scientific realism. This is a book of considerable breadth and elegance that will appeal to all curious readers of philosophy and literature.