This is one of the books that I picked up at the Hillbillies Bookstore in Gairloch. I have to admit that I was so fascinated by the title that it has jumped the queue in my reading list.
The author is an academic philosopher and has mde two journeys in the Alps that retraced Nietzsche's footsteps. One journey was as a young man and the other in middle age having become a parent. At the onset of reading this I had only a very vague notion of Nietzsche's ideas. I knew that the Nazis took him as a model for their malign operation. But the truth is that this was a very selective hijacking of his ideas and one that was amplified by Nietzsche's sisiter's wanting to further her nationalistic ideals. She dealt with his affairs following his death so that she was able to manipulate his philosophical ideas for her own ends. The truth is that he was neither nationalistic nor was he anti semitic.
I enjoyed the read which takes the reader on the author's Alpine walks while weaving in Nietzsche's thoughts and fragments of his writing. John clearly empathises with Nietzsche's psyche and found the journeys punctuated with reading Nietzsche's books helpful in 'becoming who you are'. I did not share that empathy and interestingly neither did John's wife whose philosophical leaning is toward Kant who was very much rejected by Nietzsche.
I was interested to get further perspective on Nietzsche so I reread Bertrand Russels section on him in 'History of Western Philosophy'. This was useful and interesting too that Russell clearly had no affinity for Nietzsche. I looked also at Nigel Warburton's chapter on Nietzsche in his 'A Little History of Philosophy' and at the end of this Nietzschean immersion I think I have some understanding of this brilliant but very trouled character.
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