No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Bricks and Stones: A Reply to Paul Franco
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 May 2008
Extract
Because these books have not received as much scholarly attention as Nietzsche's other writings, Paul Franco's article “Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human and the Problem of Culture” should be welcomed by students of Nietzsche. However, Franco fails to take advantage of the opportunity to really engage with the small secondary literature and move the debate about the significance of these neglected works forward. While Franco mentions most of the other works on Human, All Too Human (henceforth, HH), he barely interacts with what those who have gone before him have said. His decision not to heap “stone upon stone, brick upon brick” (as Nietzsche recommends) is problematic for three related reasons. It (1) forfeits the opportunity to build on what exists—either by affirming, correcting, or adding to the secondary literature in one area of Nietzsche studies where this is possible; (2) makes it impossible for readers to assess the originality of Franco's contribution; and (3) fails readers who should be able to rely upon reputable scholarly writings as fair and faithful guides to the literature on Nietzsche.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2008
References
1 Horst Hutter, Shaping the Future: Nietzsche's New Regime of the Soul and its Ascetic Practices (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), xvi.
2 In a review of recently published works about Nietzsche, Dana Villa observes that the secondary literature continues to grow unabated. See his “Still Making Sense of Nietzsche,” Political Theory 35 (2007): 508.
3 The Review of Politics 69 (2007): 215–43.
4 Ibid. notes 3–5, 216.
5 Ibid., 216. Of the previous works Franco mentions, this is most accurate as a depiction of Iain Morrisson's “Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality in the Human, All too Human Series,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 11 (2003): 657–72.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid., 217 cf. 241.
8 The article contains two exceptions to this trend. The first appears in note 18, page 225, where Franco mentions the view of Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter in their introduction to Daybreak. They claim that in that work, Nietzsche moves away from the psychological egoism of HH. Franco responds that Nietzsche never fully subscribed to the position they see him as moving away from. The second exception appears in note 25, page 235, where Franco acknowledges Julian Young's argument about art having a new function in HH but explains why he disagrees with Young.
9 Ibid., 223–24.
10 Ibid., 224–25.
11 Ibid., 225.
12 Ibid. 226–27.
13 Brendan Donnellan, Nietzsche and the French Moralists (Bonn: Bouvier, 1982).
14 Franco, “Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human,” 216 n. 5; 223 n. 16.
15 Nietzsche and Rée: A Star Friendship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
16 Ruth Abbey, Nietzsche's Middle Period (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 24–33. As my critique of Nietzsche here illustrates, while Franco is correct to describe mine as a “sympathetic study” (216) of the middle period, it is not, ipso facto, uncritical.
17 Small, Nietzsche and Rée, 92–97.
18 Franco's discussion appears on pages 227–28. The section of my book entitled “Moderation” appears on pages 52–53.
19 Franco's discussion appears on page 232; my discussion, subtitled “Leisure,” appears on pages 91–93 of Nietzsche's Middle Period.
20 Franco, “Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human,” 216 n. 3.
21 Ibid., 218–19.
22 Ibid., 223.
23 Ibid., 242.
24 Ibid., 220.
25 Ibid., 218, 220, 235.
26 Ibid., 237. Cf. 241–42.
27 Abbey, Nietzsche's Middle Period, 87.
28 Ibid., 17.
29 Franco, “Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human,” 215–16, 243. I agree with Julian Young and Michael Gillespie that Schopenhauer remains an important interlocutor for Nietzsche throughout his writing life. See Young's Nietzsche's Philosophy of Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 3; and Gillespie's Nihilism Before Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 183. See also the essays in Willing and Nothingness: Schopenhauer as Nietzsche's Educator, ed. Christopher Janaway (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). For an argument about the persistence of Wagnerian themes in Nietzsche's writing, see Young's Nietzsche's Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). On the widespread tendency of scholars to take Nietzsche's claims to independence and originality at face value, see chapter 9 of my book, “The Invention of Invention.”
30 One such “aphorism” is HH, 3 (Franco, “Nietzsche's Human All Too Human,” 220), which occupies nearly a page of text. In what sense is a passage of this length an aphorism?
31 Abbey, Nietzsche's Middle Period, 158.
32 Franco, “Nietzsche's Human All Too Human,” 220, 221, 225, 242.