Nietzsche Unbound penetrates to the heart of the mysterious meaning of Nietzsche and describes in a highly approachable way the acute relevance of his thought to all who are concerned to fashion a spiritually satisfying life in the midst of today's culture of rampant materialism and disenchantment. It presents a new and unusual interpretation of Nietzsche as a genuinely religious thinker who not only grasped the nature of humanity's current spiritual predicament, but also set forth an overlooked and truly revolutionary solution to it.
“David Taffel has succeeded in writing a lucid, fresh, and vigorous
book on Nietzsche. It is a good read and an important contribution to
Nietzsche scholarship.”
—Richard J. Bernstein, Vera List Professor of Philosophy and Dean
of the Graduate Faculty for Political and Social Science
"Although the book market is full of books on Nietzsche, Dr. Taffel
succeeds in saying something still new about the subject and saying it
also in a new way. It is obvious that he discusses Nietzsche, not as an
antiquated philosophical author, but as an author whose fears, perhaps
more than his hopes, are relevant for our present. His Nietzsche is the
tragic Nietzsche who sees modernity as a world entangled in a labyrinth,
and he approaches the problem both systematically and historically—on
the one hand offering a general insight into Nietzsche’s criticism
of modern science and on the other discussing the historical development
of Nietzsche’s major philosophical conceptions, beginning with Nietzsche’s
first book, The Birth of Tragedy, and finishing with his posthumous works....
In three places he takes particularly innovative approaches to illuminating
Nietzsche’s thought; I mean in his discussion of Saint Paul’s
relation to Jesus, the discussion of the stories surrounding the "Hyperboreans"
of ancient Greek mythology, and the discussion of the artist in Schelling’s
System of Transcendental Idealism. All three discussions are eminently
relevant to the main issue…. I recommend the book very highly."
—Agnes Heller, Hannah Arendt Professor of Philosophy, New School
University
DAVID TAFFEL is the managing editor of The Conversationalist,
an online daily news and culture briefing. He has taught at New England
College and worked as a freelance editor and writer. His doctoral dissertation
on Nietzsche at the New School won the Hans Jonas Memorial Award for Philosophy.
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