Kaag, the philosophy-department chair at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, began experimenting with what might be called first-person philosophynot desiccated fodder for arcane journals but robust inquiry into what he calls the stuff of everyday lifein his 2016 book, American Philosophy: A Love Story. Mingling romance and scholarship, Kaag related how he stumbled onto the private library of a 20th-century philosophical eminence, then out of a miserable marriage and into the arms of his now-wife, the Kantian philosopher Carol Hay. As Kaag and Hay worked to preserve the librarys holdings, they didnt find consolation, exactly. Instead, they grappled with transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson and pragmatists like William James. Along the way, they came to regard love as a challenge rather than a balm. In Hiking With Nietzsche, Kaag describes the draw of Nietzsches marital ideala union that embodies the will of two to create the one that is more than those who created it, never lapsing into one long stupidity.

Kaags latest work represents another effort to restore philosophy to its former relevanceto tether it to the mess of daily experience. Hiking With Nietzsche explores two related but distinct reckonings with the blandishments of modern life, Kaags and Nietzsches. Kaag is fascinated by the idea of decadencewhich Nietzsche first broached in The Birth of Tragedy, and which would preoccupy him for the rest of his life: Is it perhaps possible to suffer from over-abundance? he asked. Is there perhaps such a thing as neuroses of health? Blending biography, intellectual history, and personal essay, Kaag follows three related journeys: Nietzsches evolution from adolescent upstart to middle-aged iconoclast, Kaags youthful attempt to retrace Nietzsches footsteps through the Swiss Alps, and Kaags adult effort to retrace his own retracing, this time with Hay and their 3-year-old daughter in tow. The result is not just an approachable introduction to Nietzsches thought. Kaags book is also, despite its cloying title, a confirmation that philosophy thrives when it provides an antidote to the wholesome doldrums of sanity.

Nietzsche, born in 1844, led the kind of maladjusted life that contemporary therapies and self-help books are designed to rehabilitate. He was a lonely, awkward young man whose attempts to participate in the drunken revelries so prevalent at his two alma maters, the University of Bonn and the University of Leipzig, were short-lived and half-hearted. He actually didnt like beer, Kaag reports. He liked pastries. And he liked studyinga lot.

Nietzsches academic career was marked by a number of dazzlingly early successes. At 24, he was the youngest tenured faculty member at the University of Basel. But by 28, he had been demoted from wunderkind to pariah, thanks in large part to the publication of his first book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872). More a work of creative interpretation than a piece of faithful exegesis, the debut departed sharply from accepted philological method, infuriating Nietzsches colleagues. It argued that two aesthetic tendencies vied for dominance in ancient Greece: the Dionysian, a primordial blurring of the borders dividing self and world, and the Apollonian, a rationalist paradigm that positioned art as an ordered alternative to the havoc of life. Though Nietzsche regarded these two forces as mutually enhancingand he lauded tragedy for wedding themhis real allegiance lay with the Dionysian, as his life and work went on to attest.

The hostility that The Birth of Tragedy spawned among philologists solidified Nietzsches break with academic culture. In 1879, when he was 34, declining health compelled him to leave his post in Basel, and he wandered the Alps and nursed his chronic headaches for the next decadehis most miserable and most productive. His sole serious romantic interest, the author Lou Salom, rebuffed him brutally, declining his three marriage proposals. (Salom, whom Nietzsche once described as the smartest person Ive ever met, had an enviably literary love life: She rejected not just Nietzsche but also the writer Paul Re, and she conducted a long-standing affair with the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.)

In 1889, Nietzsche suffered the dramatic breakdown that would debilitate him until his death 11 years later: Upon catching sight of a man flogging a horse in a public square in Turin, the story goes, he threw his arms around the animals neck, burst into tears, and crumpled to the ground. He had already displayed signs of volatility before this collapse. According to Kaag, Nietzsche began to sign his letters Dionysus in 1888, and he had a troubled relationship with food throughout his life, ricocheting from one extreme diet to the next. As he grappled with the specter of decadence, his austere and itinerant life represented a rejection of the indulgent spirit dulling the haute bourgeoisie of fin de sicle Europe.

Read more from the original source:
Nietzsches Guide to Better Living - The Atlantic