In his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche observes that Greek tragedy gathered people together as a community in the sight of their gods, and argues that modernity can be rescued from ‘nihilism’ only through the revival of such a festival. This is commonly thought to be a view which did not survive the termination of Nietzsche’s early Wagnerianism, but Julian Young argues, on the basis of an examination of all of Nietzsche’s published works, that his religious communitarianism in fact persists through all his writings. What follows, it is argued, is that the mature Nietzsche is neither an ‘atheist’, an ‘individualist’, nor an ‘immoralist’: he is a German philosopher belonging to a German tradition of conservative communitarianism – though to claim him as a proto-Nazi is radically mistaken. This important reassessment will be of interest to all Nietzsche scholars and to a wide range of readers in German philosophy.
Editorial Reviews
Review
‘Julian Young offers a comprehensive, profound, yet consistently lively and engaging overview of Nietzsche’s almost obsessive reflections on religion. Young’s claim is that instead of rejecting all religion, Nietzsche tries to revive a richer, ‘healthier’ religious life that existed in earlier times, one that gives us a meaningful way of understanding community, commitment, devotion, the fact of death, and even the ‘gods’.’ Charles Guignon, University of South Florida
‘Every student of Nietzsche in the Anglophone world should read this book.’ Nietzsche Circle
‘In Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Religion, Young presents a scandalously unscandalous version of the author who dreamed of dividing world history in two. politically, Young’s Nietzsche was neither a proto-anarchist nor a proto-Nazi, but a mainstream one-nation conservative who, though not much of a democrat, would have favoured something like ‘twentieth-century Scandinavian social democracy.’ New Humanist
Book Description
In this book, Julian Young argues that Nietzsche’s early religious communitarianism persists through all his published works.
About the Author
Julian Young is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland and Honorary Research Professor at the University of Tasmania. His many publications include Heidegger: Off the Beaten Track (2002) edited and translated with Kenneth Haynes, Heidegger’s Later Philosophy (2001) and Heidegger’s Philosophy of Art (2001, 2004).
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