Young nietzsche biography

  • In this beautifully written account, Julian Young provides the most comprehensive biography available today of the life and philosophy of the nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
  • An excellent biography of Nietzsche.
  • Young deals with the many puzzles created by the conjunction of Nietzsche's personal history and his work: why the son of a Lutheran pastor developed into the.

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    Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography

    March 29,
    This is a controversial book for several reasons. First, the author was accused of plagiarizing a previous biography written bygd Curtis Cate. Young gave a strange explanation for some obvious similarities and was criticized for it. I have read Cate’s biography years before; it was fine but too focused on daily events in Nietzsche’s life, lacking deeper insight into his intellectual development. Seeing that this one is titled "philosophical biography", I expected that he perhaps copied good parts of Cate’s work and expanded the philosophical aspect. While it is a sort of expanded version it is not better; there are other problems with this book.

    Biographical chapters are focused mostly on Nietzsche private life; Young presents him as more sociable and charming than usually thought. He often emphasizes his politeness, which he takes as a sign that his proclaimed egoism and immoralism should not be taken at face value. Strangely
  • young nietzsche biography

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    Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography

    Simply put, this is an excellent biography of Nietzsche, and a model of what a philosophical biography should be. ung offers a smooth integration of biographical detail and philosophical analysis so that one can readily see how Nietzsche’s life and thought informed one another. He stakes out some controversial interpretive claims, but even setting these aside, Young has produced a study that must be read by every Nietzsche scholar and by anyone interested more generally in the shaping of the modern philosophical landscape.

    Among other Nietzsche biographies available in English, Young’s biography improves hugely upon Safranski () and Hollingdale (), and sizably upon both Kaufmann () and Hayman () in scope and detail. It is a difficult balance to achieve, but Young has a keen sense of exactly how much detail to relate without becoming tedious and tiresome. He vividly describes the particulars of Nietzsche’s very real “living concern

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    Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography by Julian Young

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    Eva Cybulska is in two minds over a new Nietzsche biography.

    Having read and enjoyed Julian Young’s other publications on Friedrich Nietzsche, I was looking forward to this biography. The author, who is anything but a puffed-up academic, has impressed me with his incisive, provocative and elegant writing. He also seems to have a gift for sleuth-work. Yet although I regard this book as a highly worthwhile read, for me it is tinged with some disappointments.

    The book’s structure revolves round a discussion of Nietzsche’s life and writings and their mutual influence. Young’s arguments are persuasive, yet leave enough space for the read