Nietzsche's Friends and Enemies

Extract

Just thirty years ago, R. J. Hollingdale began the introductio to one of his translations with the defensive question: “Why read a book by Nietzsche?” Now these same books are being simultaneously retranslated in several competing editions, so eager are university presses to capitalize on the academic bonanza that Friedrich Nietzsche has become. Many of Nietzsche's works were first published in print runs of some two hundred copies. We have now reached the point where there are many more books about Nietzsche than there were once copies of the original titles themselves. In the past decade alone, as a quick computer search will inform anyone, nearly three hundred volumes have been written concerning Nietzsche's work, his relation to other philosophers and cultural figures, and his effect on every aspect of our contemporary existence. Even for those seriously concerned with Nietzsche's philosophy, keeping up with this literature is a nearly impossible task. If forty days and forty nights were enough to cover the earth with water, then the flood of Nietzsche literature is perhaps nearing the thirty-eighth day. Once is almost tempted simply to wait until the waters have receded and then to see what, if anything, remains.