The Great Philosophers: Nietzsche

Description

'God is dead', announced Nietzsche - before going on to abolish himself. Envious contemporaries of Nietzsche ridiculed him as a mad man - and yet they came closer than they knew in characterising a philosopher in whose thought ambivalence approximated to disintegration of the self. While the nineteenth century's coherent, consistent systems of certainty came crashing down ingloriously at the very first touch of the twentieth, Nietzsche's discourses survived. He was more modern, it seemed, than the moderns. In this stimulating and provocative guide, Hayman reveals how Nietzsche's work is more contemporary and relevant than ever in a new postmodern age.

Ronald Hayman is the celebrated biographer of Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Jung, Jean-Paul Sartre, Marcel Proust, Sylvia Plath and Thomas Mann. After reading English at Cambridge he lived in Germany for two years, mainly to write. His play, Playing the Wife, was performed at the 1995 Chichester Festival with Derek Jacobi as Strindberg. Ronald Hayman died in 2019.

The books should improve the cultural circulation of philosophy by their style as well as their substance - TES Rarely have intellectual sophistication and complexity come so cheap - FINANCIAL TIMES A promising venture - THE TIMES The virtue of these deceptively brief books is that they are the real thing - EVENING STANDARD