delit1-7, Exercise 3: Misuse of Nietzsche

Model answer (check the details):

Why he was easy to misuse: Nietzsche wrote in aphorisms, striking phrases and prose-poetry, which can be quoted out of context and made to say things he did not mean (the "superman", the "will to power", the "death of God"). His papers were edited after his collapse and death by his sister, Elisabeth Foerster-Nietzsche, who shaped them to suit her nationalist and later Nazi sympathies, and she promoted a misleading picture. Nietzsche himself had criticised German nationalism and antisemitism.

How a careful reader should respond:
1. Read a reliable critical edition and a good translation.
2. Read a text in full, not only slogans.
3. Check quotations against the original and its context.
4. Read modern scholarship about the editing history.

Result: Nietzsche remains difficult and open to argument, but the Nazi reading is a distortion that later scholars have documented.