Nietzsche: Portable or Basic?

[curlyqlink]

I finally want to put Nietzsche on my reading list. Any advice on which collection to start with? First I was thinking The Portable Nietzsche, but now I'm wondering if the Basic Writings might be a better choice. They're both Walter Kaufman editions. I'm particularly interested in the writings on aesthetics... Birth of Tragedy seems intriguing, but it doesn't seem to appear in the Portable.

[Jozanny]

I finally want to put Nietzsche on my reading list. Any advice on which collection to start with? First I was thinking The Portable Nietzsche, but now I'm wondering if the Basic Writings might be a better choice. They're both Walter Kaufman editions. I'm particularly interested in the writings on aesthetics... Birth of Tragedy seems intriguing, but it doesn't seem to appear in the Portable.

I have the Portable curly, and I hang my head in shame, as I cannot get through it, so basic editions might be better. Sometimes, the Nietzsche comes through in great force, but in others seems obscure. Perhaps I should try Portable again with Google on standby. I took too long to make coffee and breakfast, and now a storm is brewing and I have to wait to go food shopping!!!!!!!!!!!

Perhaps jgweed can explain Nietzsche's preoccupation with Wagner.

[jgweed]

Both are handy compilations of N's works. The PN contains Z, Twilight ,Antichrist, and NCW, as well as excerpts from other works,and some letters.
Basic Writings contains, on the other hand, some of N's more "philosophical" works: BT, BG&E, GM, CaseW, and Ecce Homo.I would certainly opt for BW, especially since you are interested in aesthetics. It contains the (historically) important BT and the later works are full of references to its contents and Wagner. Ecce Homo:How One Becomes What One Is, is N's own commentary on his works and life, and one might well begin with reading it, then his other works, and then reread it.

[Nietzsche was not a systematic philosopher in that there is one book that contains his Ethics, another his Metaphysics, or that his "final" views on subjects are neatly summarised somewhere---one might argue that it would be a poor reading to even use "final" in this sense---; consequently, even though each book is indexed separately, the indexes in BW can be extremely helpful.]



N's love-hate relationship with Wagner (and his wife as the "eternal feminine" in theory and practice) is somewhat complicated because Wagner was both a close friend, a musician of historical importance, and (later) a symbol of much of what N abhorred; sometimes, to say the least, these distinctions become blurred in his writings [Wagner vs. Wagnerism, for example, although sometimes the distinction is kept in EH].
Nietzsche himself began as a friend and disciple of Wagner (BT is not without its Wagnerian manifesto passages), and later, not without difficulty, broke off his relationship and became philosophically an anti-Wagnerian. (There is something of a parallel with his attitudes towards Sokrates).
I would suggest reading Silk and Stern, Nietzsche on Tragedy (Cambridge,1981), which discusses the relationship, provides a commentary on BT, and discusses its place in the history of aesthetics and the concept of Greece (both before and after his book).
It is important to understand, if I can digress for a moment, that many key concepts in Nietzsche take on a life of their own in his thinking progressed. Dionysus in the BT is not the Dionysus in some of his later works, for example, where the god takes on a different meaning (some have said that he is merged with Appolo).
Regards,
John

[NikolaiI]

I had both, I bought Portable used and Basic new from some bookstore. I read Portable all the way through and really loved it. I only read some of Basic because doing other things at the time, but if I remember right Twilight is perhaps not in Basic? So I would recommend Portable, because it's cheap anyway and you can buy the other later.