Reviewed by Dr. Ghelawdewos Araia

A hundred years after his death, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche is a controversial philosopher at best and a confused confessor of a nihilist type at worst. A significant number of contemporary thinkers and present-day academe portray Nietzsche as “ the most influential philosopher of the modern era.” Gorfu thinks otherwise, and does not even attribute the kernel of philosophy to Nietzsche although he admires the volumes produced by the latter in such a short time.

Walter Arnold Kaufman, the eminent Nietzsche scholar and translator of his many works, boasts that the Basic Writings of Nietzsche (Modern Library Classics) must indeed be renamed The Indispensable Writings of Nietzsche. Moreover, according to Kaufman, Nietzsche’s works such as The Birth of Tragedy, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, The Case of Wagner, Ecce Homo, and his “celebrated aphoristic works” are “ must reads for any aspiring student of philosophy.”

Kaufman does not substantiate his ideas of Nietzsche with convincing evidence. Instead he tells us that “Nietzsche’s polemical ratiocinations on Christianity, Socrates, Germany, and art are frequently misunderstood.” Far from criticizing Nietzsche’s works and exposing their essence (thereby the real nature of Nietzsche) Kaufman, on the contrary, argues that “Nietzsche is one of the few philosophers since Plato whom large numbers of intelligent people read for pleasure.”

Other editors of Nietzsche’s works including Duncan Large, Maudemaire Clark, Brian Leiter, R. J. Hollingdale, and Thomas Common are great admirers of Nietzsche. Unfortunately, most of these scholars are incarcerated in their Eurocentric world outlook and could not (or don’t want to) see the irrelevance of Nietzsche to philosophy.

Duncan Large, for instance, tells us that Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer (Oxford World Classics) is “intended to serve as a short introduction to the whole of his (Nietzsche’s) philosophy.” Large further argues that this title goes beyond philosophy and galvanizes “physiology, pathology, symptomatalogy, and medicine.”

By the same token, Clark and Leiter truly believe that Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality “marks the arrival of Nietzsche’s ‘mature’ philosophy and is indispensable for an understanding of his critique of morality and ‘re-evaluation of all values’.” Similarly while Hollingdale infroms us of Nietzsche’s 1400 collections of aphorisms and hence challenges to his “previous metaphysical and psychological assumptions,” Thomas Common reviews Thus Spoke Zarathustra as “Nietzsche’s mature philosophy and the masterpiece of his career.” Additionally, Common argues that Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a masterpiece of literature, because “the book is a combination of prose and poetry, including epigrams, dithyrambs, and parodies as well as a section of pure poetry.”

At close inspection, however, the so-called literary masterpiece of Nietzsche actually could be a montage of satire, wild and irregular strain in poetry, sentimental ditty, a feeble and ridiculous imitation that collectively celebrate a nihilist subculture.

What the above authors and editors could not see is Nietzsche’s haphazard and disjointed ideas that were somewhat assembled in the form of books to give the semblance of a consummate philosophy. With the exception of very few critics, almost all scholars did not delve into the psyche of Nietzsche, but we are fortunate enough to have Gorfu Contra Nietzsche, whose author not only probes into Nietzsche’s philosophy but also penetrates the subliminal zones of the mind of this controversial philosopher. Gorfu does this by skillfully combining historiography, philosophy, and psychonarration in comparative perspective.

Gorfu introduces the reader by bluntly asserting that Nietzsche’s philosophy “is totally bankrupt and worthless” which served as “a launch pad for most of the ideals and actions” of the Nazis. The parallels drawn between Nietzsche and the Nazi intellectuals and propagandists such as Dr. Joseph Goebbels is persuasive especially when it comes to the underpinnings of power, superman (Ubermensch), the myth of the Arian race, and Germany’s pivotal role in the unification of Europe and global domination.

Militarism and arsenal of destruction were, of course, the hallmark of Hitler’s Nazi Germany and the mission of the latter, apparently could be fulfilled only by a dogmatic ideology (national socialism) and ‘obey don’t ask why’ motto that we see today in many army barracks.

Gorfu discusses “that of being ready to obey and take orders unquestioningly…” in the context of the Barbarian attack of the Legionnaires of Rome. Hitler’s chauvinism and militarism, however, is not entirely a legacy of Nietzsche. The supremacy of the state without checks and balances was already anticipated in the works of Hegel and Marx. For instance, Shlomo Avineri in his book Hegel’s Theory of the State implies that dictatorial forms of governments were embedded in the works of these great German philosophers.

On Part II of the book, Gorfu clearly states that “Nietzsche does not support his thoughts by the usual tools of logic and dialectics…all that appears has been done in the philosopher’s head.” Here the author begins to read Nietzsche’s mind, and with unparalleled depth and complexity he exposes the speculative puzzlement of Nietzsche’s inner world.

Gorfu convincingly argues that Nietzsche does not reason, he only makes a statement. He is in fact “against all reasoning and logic,” but his ideas had become the embodiment of the Third Reich. The presiding judge, thus, reasoned that “this was the unforgivable crime that Nietzsche committed against philosophy.”

After examining Nietzsche’s Protestant background and how this denomination of Christianity shaped his psychological makeup, Gorfu compares him to the founding father of this religion, Martin Luther, and then further delves into the mind of Nietzsche. The author tells us that Nietzsche “claims to have broken and destroyed all traditional values,” (p. 52) but he also infers that “appearances cannot deceive us forever, and in the final analysis the truth comes out.” This reminds me of Sartre’s Nausea, a classic example of a new wine in an old bottle. “The wine is so fermented that it keeps on breaking the bottle,” as aptly put by the able Dorrit Chohn in his Transparent Minds. Once the bottle is broken, there is no way to hide the truth and thus “the mask comes off, revealing full view the real face of Nietzsche, the coward, the squealing piglet…” (p. 53)

“Nietzsche could not be taken as an intellectual, a real thinker” (p. 68) because he was opposed to rational thinking and this is contrary to “thinkers and philosophers [who] exalted reason above anything else” (p. 79)

Gorfu calls Nietzsche the ultimate egotist for arguing “if self-interest is lacking then everything else is lacking.” This incisive observation of the author depicts the psyche of the so-called philosopher under discussion, but egotism and self-centeredness should not be reduced to Nitzschean terminological ambiguity. They, in fact, elucidate the characteristics of a capitalist system where individual interests override community values. This indeed is a complicated and difficult psychological makeup for Africans to understand, because their philosophy of ‘I am because we are’ is the governing principle of a communal society with collective interests.

After the author systematically and craftily unmasks Nietzsche, the reader is invited to know the real nature of the philosopher, and the unmasked Nietzsche is quite frightening and disgusting. As per Nietzsche, “without cruelty there is no festival” and this incredibly wicked statement alarms us that “we have finally reached the pit of the barrel” according to Gorfu. What is more frightening is also Nietzsche’s frenzy of a rather disembodied medium that has finally turned into a material force in the Third Reich.

In Part III, the author revisits the ‘superman’, the hero above the whole, the masses (p. 115) and this, I think, is a manifestation of the attributes of a capitalist system that I alluded to earlier. Finally the concept of the ‘superman’ culminates in the “Mandarin caste for all Europe.” (p. 129)

G. E. Gorfu’s, lucid critical appraisal of the Nietzschean world is clearly a bold measure of exposition of the philosopher’s mythological overtones, of his major works and aphorisms, and the maximal dissonance that characterize his books. While the admirers of Nietzsche want to extend salutary sobriety to their favorite philosopher, Gorfu thinks that he was intoxicated with delusion and was sunk in a morass of conspicuous and idiosyncratic egotism.

Gorfu Contra Nietzsche is a must reading because it is first of its kind to uncover the real nature of Nietzsche and the true essence of his philosophy. The book also contributes to the enrichment of Afrocentric thought by challenging Eurocentirc ideas. The author offers brief historical synopsis to the various philosophical arguments he advances against Nietzsche, and unlike admirers and critics who came up with a variety of metaphors, he polishes his point of view with solid facts. In this context, Gorfu is not only the nemeses of Nietzsche but his judge as well; and in this regard Gorfu Contra Nietzsche is priceless.

( Dr. Ghelawdewos Araia, contributed and has sole responsibility for the content on this article.)