The “Preface” to the Public Lectures on Education

Given his importance as an English translator and interpreter, Walter Kaufmann can be given a rightful place for bringing our attention to one question for us, for “we scholars” of Nietzsche’s work. One of the first, as inaugural, determines a tone until later developments and deviations. Others, in the Introduction, have been unapologetic about being forthright about their evaluations of those who have written on Nietzsche in philosophy and the humanities. A certain discrepancy can be looked at side by side: the Nietzschean difference between “reflection” and “idolatrous pleasure” has a number of possible references. He reminds us of a certain kind of self-indulgent culture and “being crushed under its wheels.” In his “Editor’s Introduction” to On the Genealogy of Morals,” Kaufmann remarks:Kaufmann adds much more. The date, 1967, is not one like others; because if this translator and scholar should once again be recognized for his work, he tells us about a distant misinterpretation and, in our case, another, perhaps more serious one than the reduction to psychology and his “madness.” The “psychiatric explanations” have become irrelevant, doubly-so when we consider Nietzsche’s profound psychological insights. His self-analysis revealed just how deep human beings could become; as for the rest of us, he gave us more than enough to figure out who we were, despite our misgivings and reluctance. “Study, psychologists, the philosophy of the ‘rule’ and its struggle with the ‘exception’” (BGE 149).