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Nietzsche: A Selected Annotated Bibliography
“I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous-a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.” 1 Nietzsche’s InfluenceFriedrich Nietzsche's (1844-1900) influence on the present age is all pervasive. In 1955, Martin Heidegger wrote, it is “Nietzsche, in whose light and shadow all of us today, with our ‘for him’ or ‘against him’ are thinking and writing…” 2 This is even more evident today. Stanley Rosen has called him the most influential philosopher in the western world; and for Charles Taylor, all contemporary philosophy is neo-Nietzschean. This influence is reflected in the enormous secondary literature about Nietzsche. The International Nietzsche Bibliography, published in 1968, listed over 4,500 entries in 27 languages; since then more than 3,000 books on Nietzsche have been published. The Weimarer Nietzsche-Bibliographie, published 2000-2002, includes over 20,000 entries in 42 languages. Initially, Nietzsche’s influence was primarily literary and artistic. Thomas Mann, Herman Hesse, André Gide, William Butler Yeats, Rainer Maria Rilke, George Bernard Shaw, Eugene O’Neill, August Strindberg, to name but a few, were all influenced by him. Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud admired him. Freud stated “that he had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any man who ever lived or was likely to live.” 3 And Freud stopped reading him because he feared Nietzsche had anticipated many of his own ideas. Interest in Nietzsche as a philosopher, however, only became widespread after World War II. Although important works about him were published in the thirties by the German philosophers Karl Jaspers, Max Scheler, and Karl Löwith, their influence was limited by the rise of Nazism. It was Martin Heidegger’s lectures on Nietzsche from the 1930’s and 1940’s, but published only in 1961, that was decisive in developing interest in Nietzsche as a philosopher. Heidegger's interpretation shaped the image of Nietzsche in Europe until the 1970’s, when it was challenged in France in what has become known as “the new Nietzsche” or “the French Nietzsche.” Like Heidegger in Europe, Walter Kaufman’s interpretation of Nietzsche, in Nietzsche:Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (1950), as well as his many translations of Nietzsche, and their accompanying introductions and commentary, determined how Nietzsche was understood in North America up to the 1970’s. 4 If you have any questions or comments about this guide, e-mail jsherefkin@nypl.org. This research guide is created and maintained by Jack Sherefkin. ------------------- 1. Friedrich Nietzsche. “Why I am Destiny,” Ecce Homo. (New York: Vintage, 1967) 326. 2. Martin Heidegger. The Question of Being. (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1958) 107. 3. Ernest Jones. The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, 3 vols. (New York: Basic Books, 1953-1957) 2: 344. 4. Steven Taubeneck, “Nietzsche in North America: Walter Kaufmann and After,” in Confrontations:Derrida, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Ernst Behler (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1991) 159-77. |
