Nietzsche and Jewish Culture

Friedrich Nietzsche occupies a contradictory position in the history of ideas. He devised the concept of a master race, yet Martin Buber, the eminent Jewish scholar, translated hisAlso sprach Zarathustrainto Polish and remained in a lifelong intellectual dialog with him. Freud admired Nietzsche's intellectual courage and recognized that he had anticipated many of his own basic ideas. NowNietzsche and Jewish Culturemakes an important contribution to Nietzsche studies and the history of ideas. It is organized into two parts: the first examines Nietzsche's attitudes towards Jews and Judaism; the second, Nietzsche's influence on Jewish intellectuals as notable and diverse as Kafka, Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Freud, and Mahler. The essays in this volume recognize the complexity of any discussion regarding Nietzsche's relationship to Jewish culture (a number of them offer competing interpretations). Yet all further our understanding of one of the seminal philosophersof the modern era.