Hiking with Nietzsche

A very personal take on Nietzsche, who had fascinated Kaag since his teenage years. It twice prompted him to follow Nietzsche’s trail in the Swiss mountains: first in 1998, at the age of nineteen, and then again in 2015, aged 36, with his partner Carol Hay and their four-year-old daughter. Like Nietzsche, he believed that the best philosophical thinking happens when you are walking. (This will lead him to a disquisition on pilgrimages, long treks undertaken not so much for creative thinking, but to seek salvation from one’s sins, and so a product of the slave morality which Nietzsche so despised.) There will be insights and anecdotes that may be new even to those readers reasonably familiar with Nietzsche’s life and thought. I, for one, did not know how Nietzsche had been influenced by the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American, as Kaag, a Professor of Philosophy, is himself.The main interest in the book is the account of Kaag’s physical, intellectual and emotional journey. On his first visit to Sils Maria, his base is a Spartan room in the Nietzsche Haus. He sprinkles his reflections with many highly apposite quotations from Nietzsche’s writings. (Regrettably, Kaag does not have footnotes of their sources.) Like Nietzsche, he disdained the comfortable and soulless materialistic life. In his several climbs on his two visits, he, too, was in search of physical and metaphorical heights, knowing that there was always more to conquer. He, too, joyously embraces pain and suffering and, on that first visit, even tested himself by fasting. (Nietzsche, too, had fasted from time to time.) Like Nietzsche, Kaag often rested on the lips of a precipice and, on that first visit, contemplated ending his life by plunging down into its depth. (He tells us that for some years he was on anti-depressants, and it seems to me that he always had a taut, restless and ascetic personality.) But he made up for all this on his last night in Sils by gorging himself in the famous and expensive Waldhaus Hotel in the village. This hotel also had Nietzsche associations, since several famous Nietzsche pilgrims had stayed there. One of these was Theodore Adorno, of whose Nietzschean ideas on decadent mass culture Kaag gives an account over several pages. Another was Hermann Hesse, to whom Kaag also devotes the better part of two chapters.We learn a good deal about Kaag’s family life: he says that he had loathed his father who had abandoned his family when his son was four, but who still saw him occasionally. His marriage, to a fellow philosopher, ended in divorce. Another philosopher, Carol Hay, became his partner. She was committed to Kant, whom Nietzsche had described in one passage as decadent and an idiot, while Carol thought Nietzsche a “marauding fool”. (There are some rather difficult pages on Kant and Nietzsche later on.) By the time they met, Kaag had turned from Nietzsche to American philosophy. But she was intrigued by Kaag’s earlier obsession with Nietzsche; and, with their four-year-old daughter Becca, they went to Sils to stay in the Waldhaus Hotel (though Kaag had also rented a room in the Nietzsche Haus to which he could resort for study and contemplation. To his disgust, much of the house had been converted into a museum.) They stayed there just a fortnight. The description of his insomniac wanderings along the hotel’s corridors may be a tad self-indulgent, but his thoughts about Nietzsche during these peregrinations are rich and illuminating.Often his musings take him well away from Nietzsche. Some of these are triggered by his adorable little daughter and are reflections on fatherhood: when does being protective become being over-protective, for instance? Nietzsche, of course, was never a father; but his philosophy would certainly have discouraged over-protectiveness.Kaag, Carol and Becca make a few trips together; but he also obsessively sets off alone on potentially dangerous climbs. For all that, he concludes that this second visit had been a failure. Having gone as a family anchored him too much in the here and now to allow the sort of transcendence he had been looking for. He sees the division between these two pulls as one of the keys to Nietzsche’s life.In the last chapter, Kaag quotes Hesse: “Perhaps you seek too much, [and] as the result of your seeking you cannot find.” I think Kaag accepted this at the end of his second stay, though I find it difficult to make out what precisely, in these last pages, he actually meant. Perhaps “to see the sacred in the prosaic”, to take pleasure in the uncomplicated pleasure to be had in life as it is? In a good marriage or in a delightful daughter, in the contentment of a good shepherd who does not see sheep as symbolizing slave morality?On his return from the second visit, he found this worked for a while; but occasionally he slipped back into his old yearning, and again sought some help in anti-depressants. After all, he had also said in that last chapter: “My entire life was – and, FOR THE MOST PART STILL IS [my capitalization] – about seeking and striving.”The book has many poetic passages; but it is not always easy to read; and some people may be put off by the mixture between his exposition of Nietzsche and all that autobiographical material. Others may not care for the author’s somewhat highly-strung (but honest) personality; but I found it a compelling and, on the whole, enjoyable read.

I have here at home many, many books on Nietzsche and this has to be one of the very, very best that I’ve read. Some books explain Nietzsche’s philosophy, some his thoughts, some his life & some the issue as to whether he was mad most or all of his life.This excellent book does touch on these issues too - but (for me) what makes ‘Hiking with Nietzsche’ so different / fascinating is that the author has actually ‘experienced’ Nietzsche in a way I didn’t think possible. If ever there was a book that demonstrates EXACTLY what old Fritz was about then it would be this one. Aside from being very well written, humorous & generally informative - Kaag has shown (if correctly understood) how an understanding of Nietzsche (I mean a REAL understanding of Nietzsche) can enrich & inform one’s life. There’s one particular passage in which Kaag discusses the almost inevitable questioning of one’s life around middle-age.This is a relatively short book but if you are interested in Nietzsche or in how an understanding of philosophy can help us overcome life’s occurrences of existential ennui then this is a book you would enjoy. It truly is a wonderful read.“Thus Spoke Zarathustra”

An interesting jaunt through Nietzsche’s life giving a view of the mental trials the man went through. Often the book compares this to tribulations in the authors own life. I thought the book was ok but I had wanted more insight into the philosophy of Nietzsche. I felt I got more of a look into the authors life than an explanation of Nietzsche’s work.

This book is basically a personal journal of the author's relationship with Nietzsch's work and trying to place the works in geographical and psychological context. You learn more about the author than you want to, and less about Nietzsche than you expected. This book would probably be of most interest to the author...Perhaps his wife.

I loved this book. The way in which this book intertwines a relatable story of personal exploration with philosophy makes for an enjoyable and accessible intro to Nietzsche.