NIETZSCHE NOW!

Wallis considers Nietzsche’s philosophy as it applies to everyday life.

In these pages, the author, a professor, editor, and translator, aims to draw the reader into a kind of “adventure” with his philosopher subject, Friedrich Nietzsche—it quickly becomes apparent that Wallis sees his project as an intensely modern, relevant discussion rather than an arid intellectual exercise. “What is the ideology of wokeness if not an attempt to uncover and thereby undermine de-humanizing practices of prejudice, discrimination, racism, sexism, and more?” he asks. “What is cancel culture if not a mechanism for bringing to task public figures who have violated our shared moral standards?” While offering a fast-paced and surprisingly comprehensive tour of the philosopher’s life and works, Wallis attempts to demonstrate that Nietzsche was grappling with some of the same core issues that spark debates and headlines today, from nihilism and public catastrophism to questions of faith and civic responsibility. The author will present an everyday scenario—say, a meeting with colleagues in which someone says something cringe-inducing or dishonest—and supply both a pertinent Nietzsche quote (“be different from all others, and be pleased when someone is different from the others”) and its context. We need Nietzsche, Wallis insists, and we need him now, because he remains such an “exceptionally timely thinker.” Those who’ve read Nietzsche and consider him to be a long-winded crank mostly operating on sedatives, sophistry, and syphilis will smile at Wallis’ enthusiasm—and will likely be won over by it as well. At every turn, the author combines an encyclopedic knowledge of Nietzsche (his chapter outlining the philosopher’s life, “Reader, Nietzsche” is a tight little masterpiece in its own right) with an empathetic understanding of the man. “Nietzsche recognizes the complex contradictoriness of the matters he takes up because he intimately lives them,” he writes. “Might that, too, be a recommendation to us?”

A surprisingly engaging grafting of Nietzsche’s philosophy onto the modern world.