We want to be just like Nietzsche, and Nietzsche knows this, which is why he encourages us to join him in enjoying fictional forms of strength, superiority, and self-expression. As Bull rightly warns, rejecting Nietzsche is never easy. To read Nietzsche like a loser, Bull reasons, is not to reject his arguments but to accept them, even at their most reprehensible.
To read like a loser is to refuse to collude in a fiction of dominance. Bull starts off by itemising many of these negative aspects before positing a form of "reading as a loser", a kind of narrative counter-identification, that seems very promising. Then, however, he drops this and sets about reading Heidegger and the very murky Jean-Luc Nancy, a man who seems incapable of clarity even when writing about his own heart transplant. Bull doesn't make it clear to me why Nancy is indispensable to his reading, nor does he engage thoroughly with the phenomenon of left-wing Nietzscheanism.
There's a useful section in which the concept of equality is analysed, but to no ultimately useful purpose. In the end I felt that Nietzsche remained standing by default, as it was quite unclear to me what "reading as a loser" had accomplished.
But perhaps I'm to blame, and will respond differently if and when I re-read it May 08, Michael Dhar rated it liked it. Bull employs a surgical precision in investigating both why it's been difficult to oppose Nietzsche and how one might do it. The early chapters, especially, are impressively subtle and insightful, primarily in showing that Nietzsche inspires his audience to "read for victory," so that even in opposing him, you affirm his "will to power" ideas.
Being anti-Nietzsche, then, means accepting the man's criticism of the masses but identifying oneself with those masses -- "reading as a loser," Bull says Bull employs a surgical precision in investigating both why it's been difficult to oppose Nietzsche and how one might do it.
Being anti-Nietzsche, then, means accepting the man's criticism of the masses but identifying oneself with those masses -- "reading as a loser," Bull says.
Once he got to the Heidegger stuff, though, I got kind of lost. He goes on to recast Nietzsche's ideas on values and equality as being ecological, another surgically subtle unpacking that, at times, becomes almost mathematical -- and thus a little dry in parts. Still, overall, Nietzsche's always at least sort of fun to read about, and the book's core point -- that the anti-everything philosopher has weirdly been little opposed -- is a good insight and well worth considering.
The subtlety of the arguments when not so subtle I couldn't follow them were what kept me coming back to this work. Jan 24, Daniel rated it it was ok Shelves: nietzsche , philosophy. This starts out promisingly well; then it goes all over the place trying to find something sure for footing and foundation sake. Well intentioned, and for any serious Nietzsche reader it is worth the investment to read. But the authors thesis is loose and weak, and there are all these diversions and dead-end like tangents Apr 14, Domhnall rated it it was ok Shelves: philosophy.
We are promised that "Anti-Nietzsche is a subtle and subversive engagement with Nietzsche and his twentieth-century interpreters—Heidegger, Vattimo, Nancy, and Agamben. I am not in the mood to read Nietzsche that way and this book does not give a fair representation of We are promised that "Anti-Nietzsche is a subtle and subversive engagement with Nietzsche and his twentieth-century interpreters—Heidegger, Vattimo, Nancy, and Agamben.
I am not in the mood to read Nietzsche that way and this book does not give a fair representation of Nietzsche's work. When I discard the verbal gymnastics and sketch out the structure of the apparent arguments, they are thin and weakly supported.
Outside of the book - in the academic world perhaps, or in the world of reviews and discussion groups - it may well be that there is a sustained and substantial argument and this can be related back to this book, but I do not accept that this is the case within the book as it stands. Instead I see a succession of disconnected thought bubbles, potentially worth pursuing, but instead allowed to drift away in a haze of words.
The twin ideas of reading for victory and reading like a loser are amusing enough. Reading for victory is the approach of those who imagine Nietzsche is writing for their benefit; reading like a loser is for those who admit we may not be the superhuman genius he had in mind. These ideas would work well in many other contexts.
They would be useful weapons in the war against the contemporary clamour for leadership and self improvement. In a world where a chosen few stand to inherit the whole package, most of us recognise that we are almost certainly not chosen and that those who imagine they are ought to be shunned. So "reading like a loser" alerts us to the dangers and perhaps innoculates us against narcissistic delusions of grandeur at the expense of our neighbours.
Maybe so. I just don't think the book actually follows through on this conception in the way advertised. The book relies too much on "thought experiments" which just don't connect with a real world, material or social. For example it explores diverse notions of equality and inequality in a very abstract manner, exploring really the definition of the words rather than their social expression in a real social world, and then pretends this can be used to comment on Gramsci, as though Gramsci too was an academic word merchant rather than a deadly serious political activist writing in a fascist prison.
I just don't see that "Marxism" is concerned with making everyone the same or that the social chaos attributable to excessive inequality can be dismissed as trivial because we wish to promote fine works of art.
Capitalism does not reward talent: it exploits talent. Individualism does not produce great art - it produces coke sniffing antisocial vandals. Art is a social project in an historical context, not the ahistorical product of solitary genius. Debating abstractions and word definitions is simply not a substitue for serious social commentary. This book is not philosophy to my taste. It is just verbosity without a purpose. Stripping away the verbosity and focusing on the arguments reveals that the book is just a mess.
Malcolm Bull Where is the Anti-Nietzsche? Email required. Password required. Subscribe for instant access to all articles since He seduces by appealing to our desire for victory, our creativity, our humanity. Anti-Nietzsche is a subtle and subversive engagement with Nietzsche and his twentieth-century interpreters—Heidegger, Vattimo, Nancy, and Agamben. Written with economy and clarity, it shows how a politics of failure might change what it means to be human. Start earning points for buying books!
Uplift Native American Stories. Add to Bookshelf. Category: Philosophy Category: Philosophy. Apr 08, ISBN Add to Cart. Buy from Other Retailers:. Sep 01, ISBN Paperback —. About Anti-Nietzsche Nietzsche, the philosopher seemingly opposed to everyone, has met with remarkably little opposition himself. Also by Malcolm Bull. Product Details. Inspired by Your Browsing History. Simon Critchley.
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