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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2022
There are plenty of reasons to dislike Nietzsche. Even prior to his slow descent into madness, he mostly adopted anti-enlightenment principles and illiberal attitudes towards human equality. While Nietzsche was not a proto-Nazi himself (he hated bigots), his constant references to “higher types”—combined with his rejection of the idea that selflessness and compassion should be staples of morality—were easily incorporated into Nazi ideology (Hitler attended Nietzsche’s sister’s funeral).
So you would be forgiven for being inclined to pass on any book offering life advice from a man Hitler might have admired.
But you may want to reconsider. While many of Nietzsche’s ideas are objectionable, there is no doubt that he possessed the mind of a genius, and surely there is something we can learn from him. As the philosopher Julian Baggini said in response to criticisms of David Hume’s racist writings, “We should never completely dismiss even those who are almost always wrong, as they are almost always sometimes right too.” Nietzche’s genius may have been largely wasted on a contemptible psychology, but he nevertheless did produce some enduring ideas we can all benefit from today.
So the first lesson of the book may be this: Every prominent thinker has something to teach us, even if we mostly disagree with them. In fact, learning to critically interact with an author without slavishly following everything they say is a skill worth developing, as well as a sign of intellectual maturity. As Nate Anderson wrote:
“But if you don’t take Nietzsche as your guide and guru, if you instead embrace him as a dialogue partner and provocateur, these limitations need not be a roadblock to thinking with him. Nietzsche would have valued the attempt to wrestle with his ideas—even to reject some of them.”
So, what can Nietzsche teach us today? The overarching theme of his philosophy—even though he’s usually over-dramatic about it—is that a life of ease, comfort, pleasure, and safety is a rather poor and facile excuse for a life. While there is nothing inherently wrong with ease and comfort, in the absence of more ambitious goals, they can never truly create joy—which comes from creative struggle in pursuit of higher aspirations. This creative struggle often involves pain and discomfort, but this should be embraced, not avoided.
This more positive aspect of Nietzsche’s philosophy is the focus of the book, and Anderson does a commendable job of applying the lessons to our tech-saturated world. He shows us how modern technology creates the kind of soul-crushing ease Nietzsche warned us about; with 24/7 access to the internet, the new digital paradigm encourages constant cheap entertainment, disconnection from our bodies and from the physical world, mental stimulation over physical activity, total digital control, and access to unlimited information.
Unlimited information poses its own special problems. Even ancient authors like Seneca complained that there were too many books to read, and proposed a more considered method of selection to ensure that one spent their limited time on the best books and authors possible. The problem, of course, is orders of magnitude greater today; we have near instant access to the entire canon of human literary and artistic output in addition to a constant stream of news and videos. Yet notice that most of us do not become scholars—we pass up the collective works of Shakespeare to watch Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and we avoid more difficult, timeless material and opt instead for easier, more popular works.
Information overload creates two additional problems: 1) It makes us feel that we need to keep up with and learn everything, preventing us from going deep in any one subject or topic, and 2) it drowns out our own voice and creative potential as we grow accustomed to simply repeating and reacting to the views of others.
Nietzche’s solution to this is to give up the life of ease and overstimulation; to be selective in what one chooses to read and learn; to forget the things that don’t create a positive impact in one’s life; and to establish positive, creative goals that require struggle and discomfort in pursuit of excellence.
This advice is no doubt relevant to our modern technology habits, but the reader may wonder if this orientation to life, in general, is universally applicable. One could instead adopt a more Epicurean stance and insist that a life of simple pleasures and quality time spent with family and friends is superior to the life of creative struggle. Nietzsche’s difficult, mostly solitary life may have excluded this possibility for him, but it doesn’t mean the rest of us have to follow suit. As Anderson wrote:
“Perhaps because his life-long illness deprived him of so many common pleasures—sleep, sex, food, the simple feeling of robust good health—Nietzsche could not content himself with hedonism.”
This brings up another critical point: a philosopher’s ideas often stem from their psychological dispositions, and what they consider to be the good life is simply the good life for them. Whether you follow Nietzsche’s path of creative struggle or Epicurus’s path of moderate pleasure might largely depend on your personality and life circumstances. (For a concise presentation of the Epicurean side of the argument, check out How to Be an Epicurean by Catherine Wilson.)
Notice also that you can embrace the life of creative struggle without adopting the hierarchical and illiberal philosophy of Nietzsche. Pursuing worthwhile goals does not necessitate harming or looking down on others, and it does not need to be, as Nietzsche suggests, such a solitary affair.
Nietzsche offers other more questionable advice, such as when he writes that he only ever reads the same eight authors (first of all, as Anderson points out, this isn’t even true of Nietzsche). And it’s generally bad advice anyway. Of course we should be selective in the material we read, but there’s also the danger of being over-selective. How can you know who the “best eight authors” even are if you don’t read more widely to discover them?
There’s been a tendency to overvalue specialization lately, but in my mind the value of indiscriminate, wider reading enhances your creativity by exposing you to various viewpoints and topics. And if Nietzsche is worried about having your own voice drowned out by reading, it seems to me that this will be more likely if you only read a limited number of authors, whom you might feel compelled to emulate rather than developing your own authentic voice.
Overall, the message of the book is a useful one, if not taken too far. You should be selective in what you read and consume, you should prioritize the real world over the digital world, and you’ll probably achieve more satisfaction in life if you set goals that are more ambitious than just being comfortable and safe. But taking things too far is precisely the danger with reading Nietzsche, as his distinguishing trademark among philosophers is his tendency to exaggerate almost everything. To Anderson’s credit, he recognizes and points this out, while retaining the core message that we should use technology as a means to achieving grander goals, not as an end in itself.
So you would be forgiven for being inclined to pass on any book offering life advice from a man Hitler might have admired.
But you may want to reconsider. While many of Nietzsche’s ideas are objectionable, there is no doubt that he possessed the mind of a genius, and surely there is something we can learn from him. As the philosopher Julian Baggini said in response to criticisms of David Hume’s racist writings, “We should never completely dismiss even those who are almost always wrong, as they are almost always sometimes right too.” Nietzche’s genius may have been largely wasted on a contemptible psychology, but he nevertheless did produce some enduring ideas we can all benefit from today.
So the first lesson of the book may be this: Every prominent thinker has something to teach us, even if we mostly disagree with them. In fact, learning to critically interact with an author without slavishly following everything they say is a skill worth developing, as well as a sign of intellectual maturity. As Nate Anderson wrote:
“But if you don’t take Nietzsche as your guide and guru, if you instead embrace him as a dialogue partner and provocateur, these limitations need not be a roadblock to thinking with him. Nietzsche would have valued the attempt to wrestle with his ideas—even to reject some of them.”
So, what can Nietzsche teach us today? The overarching theme of his philosophy—even though he’s usually over-dramatic about it—is that a life of ease, comfort, pleasure, and safety is a rather poor and facile excuse for a life. While there is nothing inherently wrong with ease and comfort, in the absence of more ambitious goals, they can never truly create joy—which comes from creative struggle in pursuit of higher aspirations. This creative struggle often involves pain and discomfort, but this should be embraced, not avoided.
This more positive aspect of Nietzsche’s philosophy is the focus of the book, and Anderson does a commendable job of applying the lessons to our tech-saturated world. He shows us how modern technology creates the kind of soul-crushing ease Nietzsche warned us about; with 24/7 access to the internet, the new digital paradigm encourages constant cheap entertainment, disconnection from our bodies and from the physical world, mental stimulation over physical activity, total digital control, and access to unlimited information.
Unlimited information poses its own special problems. Even ancient authors like Seneca complained that there were too many books to read, and proposed a more considered method of selection to ensure that one spent their limited time on the best books and authors possible. The problem, of course, is orders of magnitude greater today; we have near instant access to the entire canon of human literary and artistic output in addition to a constant stream of news and videos. Yet notice that most of us do not become scholars—we pass up the collective works of Shakespeare to watch Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and we avoid more difficult, timeless material and opt instead for easier, more popular works.
Information overload creates two additional problems: 1) It makes us feel that we need to keep up with and learn everything, preventing us from going deep in any one subject or topic, and 2) it drowns out our own voice and creative potential as we grow accustomed to simply repeating and reacting to the views of others.
Nietzche’s solution to this is to give up the life of ease and overstimulation; to be selective in what one chooses to read and learn; to forget the things that don’t create a positive impact in one’s life; and to establish positive, creative goals that require struggle and discomfort in pursuit of excellence.
This advice is no doubt relevant to our modern technology habits, but the reader may wonder if this orientation to life, in general, is universally applicable. One could instead adopt a more Epicurean stance and insist that a life of simple pleasures and quality time spent with family and friends is superior to the life of creative struggle. Nietzsche’s difficult, mostly solitary life may have excluded this possibility for him, but it doesn’t mean the rest of us have to follow suit. As Anderson wrote:
“Perhaps because his life-long illness deprived him of so many common pleasures—sleep, sex, food, the simple feeling of robust good health—Nietzsche could not content himself with hedonism.”
This brings up another critical point: a philosopher’s ideas often stem from their psychological dispositions, and what they consider to be the good life is simply the good life for them. Whether you follow Nietzsche’s path of creative struggle or Epicurus’s path of moderate pleasure might largely depend on your personality and life circumstances. (For a concise presentation of the Epicurean side of the argument, check out How to Be an Epicurean by Catherine Wilson.)
Notice also that you can embrace the life of creative struggle without adopting the hierarchical and illiberal philosophy of Nietzsche. Pursuing worthwhile goals does not necessitate harming or looking down on others, and it does not need to be, as Nietzsche suggests, such a solitary affair.
Nietzsche offers other more questionable advice, such as when he writes that he only ever reads the same eight authors (first of all, as Anderson points out, this isn’t even true of Nietzsche). And it’s generally bad advice anyway. Of course we should be selective in the material we read, but there’s also the danger of being over-selective. How can you know who the “best eight authors” even are if you don’t read more widely to discover them?
There’s been a tendency to overvalue specialization lately, but in my mind the value of indiscriminate, wider reading enhances your creativity by exposing you to various viewpoints and topics. And if Nietzsche is worried about having your own voice drowned out by reading, it seems to me that this will be more likely if you only read a limited number of authors, whom you might feel compelled to emulate rather than developing your own authentic voice.
Overall, the message of the book is a useful one, if not taken too far. You should be selective in what you read and consume, you should prioritize the real world over the digital world, and you’ll probably achieve more satisfaction in life if you set goals that are more ambitious than just being comfortable and safe. But taking things too far is precisely the danger with reading Nietzsche, as his distinguishing trademark among philosophers is his tendency to exaggerate almost everything. To Anderson’s credit, he recognizes and points this out, while retaining the core message that we should use technology as a means to achieving grander goals, not as an end in itself.
