At the same time, there are dangers in such a course of study. Perhaps we are not used to having such intimate knowledge of our favorite philosophers. (Do we even care about Aristotle's long association with Alexander and the ins-and-outs of Macedonian power-politics?) Don't we, to some degree, assume that philosophy as such is independent of all that, free standing, validated on some other basis than a person's biography? So if we become too intimate with a person's life, aren't we close to losing faith in his/her philosophical works?
In Nietzsche's case, this problem is made even more difficult by the fact that the later evolution of German politics ultimately gave rise to the Third Reich and the Nazis virtually adopted Nietzsche as "their state philosopher," using especially The Will to Power, the book attributed to him but actually put together by his sister, Elizabeth, after Nietzsche's collapse. On the other hand, Christians around the world reacted to Nietzsche's proclamation that "God is dead" with abhorrence and reviled him as the Anti-Christ. At the same time, Nietzsche's ultimate mental collapse is always brought forward, casting even more skepticism on his thought. When did Nietzsche really go mad? Does it show in his works? Can we draw a line between what is sane and what is insane?
Another disturbing example of the problems of philosophy when combined with a person's life and times is the case of Martin Heidegger. Heidegger actually continued in an official university position after the rise of the Third Reich, for almost a year, and obviously cooperated with the Nazis to some degree. While he took no official role through the remainder of the 1930s and during the War, Heidegger was clearly no antagonist of the Nazi regime, leaving us wondering how a philosopher could avoid being an antagonist. At the War's end, he was stripped of his teaching position by the Allied occupational authorities. During the remainder of his life, he refused to discuss his relations with the Reich, though he made efforts to have his name cleared through friends and colleagues, like Hannah Arendt. How, then, do we understand Heidegger's philosophy in relation to what we view as, at the very least, his unfortunate political naivete?
What we have before us is the whole dilemma of reading and, of course, by reflection, the dilemma of writing. Does reading put us in touch with universally meaningful ideas? That is, once created, does the text stand solid and unvarying through the remainder of time? Or does reading put us in touch with the author and does not being in touch with an author also imply being in touch with the whole environment in which the author writes? These are all issues that, in fact, fascinated both Nietzsche and Heidegger directly, as philosophers. And, of course, the whole question is made even more complicated when we read them in translation. Even if we boldly pick up the German texts, we must ask whether we are well enough informed about the German of, e.g., Nietzsche's day.
What I suggest here is that the more we know the better off we are. It is appropriate to look as carefully and realistically at Heidegger's Nazi connections; it is appropriate to look carefully and realistically at Nietzsche's insanity. It is important to know that Elizabeth Nietzsche's husband was a Nazi; but it is also important to read carefully what Nietzsche wrote about Jewish culture and people and also how Nietzsche felt about Germans. As David Farrell Krell observes in his recent book, Nietzsche wrote his mother, "Denn, wenn ich auch ein schlechter Deutscher sein sollte -- jedenfalls bin ich ein sehr guter Europäer." ("For, even if I should be a bad German, I am at all events a very good European.") When we respond to Nietzsche's numerous remarks about women, as we must, we should also remember the condition in which the five-year-old Nietzsche lost his father and suffered his entire early development at the hands of his domineering grandmother and aunts, with no significant male influence.
What is not appropriate is to suggest, on these bases, black-and-white judgments about the value of reading a person. For a person's philosophical worth, we need to go to his/her works well informed. What can we make of them? What portions of a person's thought do we want to embrace or endorse? More importantly, how do we build elements of what we read into our own thinking. A thorough understanding of the person's life simply means that we will embrace nothing blindly, and at best it should mean that we will embrace a person's philosophical writing with more understanding and more sensitivity. Perhaps in doing that we can understand more thoroughly our own philosophical needs and allow ourselves the privileges of revision and change.
Whether this course prompts you to endorse or embrace Nietzsche's philosophy is not my concern. My greatest hope is that it will suggest some things about the nature of philosophy in human life by illustrating a life that was thoroughly philosophical, from beginning to end.
Copyright 1998 by Tad Beckman, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711