Book Review: Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks

Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche's notebooks of the early 1870's edited and translated by Daniel Breazeale, Humanities Press International (1979) London. Reprinted 1992.

This book has just been reprinted and is worth a read by existential therapists who are interested in Nietzsche's work. Reading entries from Nietzsche's own notebooks, not meant for publication, of the latter part of his life, gives one a good insight into his preoccupations. A quote will explain better than a description what the style of the book is. I am trying to be useful to those who are worthy of being seriously and opportunely introduced to philosophy. Persons such as those mentioned above are advised - with good reason - to read Plato rather than to trust themselves to the guidance of the popular academic professional philosophers. Above all they should unlearn all sorts of stupidities and become simple and natural. The danger is of falling into the wrong hands. (p54).

I couldn't agree more. Nietzsche's advice to the beginning philosopher (or by extension to the existential therapist) is to follow the guidance of those who question life in an essential way rather than to jump on bandwagons or fill one's head with a lot of unnecessary concepts.

I also like: "Illusion is a necessity of life for a sensate being. Illusion is necessary for the advance of culture."

Again something therapists would do well to remember when they get a little over zealous in wanting to rob their clients of all their necessary self-deceptions. But apart from some interesting explorations there is also a lot that seems redundant and would only be of interest to the Nietzsche scholar.

Whilst this volume reminds us of the relevance of Nietzsche, it sends us to some of his established works rather than standing out in its own right.

Breazeale's foreword provides an interesting discussion of some of Nietzsche's ideas and there are also some pertinent passages for those who are interested in tracing Nietzsche's views on the unconscious and transference, well ahead of Freud (pages 40,41,57 etc). Nietzsche's view as usual is that the unconscious is synonymous with memory, it is an intrinsically physical phenomenon and merely one aspect of consciousness.

Many of these ideas are more completely expressed in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but they are never formulated as precisely or explicitly as in some of these passages. For those who are interested in tracing the formation of Nietzsche's ideas these notebooks are therefore essential reading.

Emmy van Deurzen-Smith