At the beginning of Nietzsche’s Legacy, as a kind of epigraph, is a German sentence: Was ein Philosoph ist, das ist deshalb schlecht zu lernen, weil es nicht zu lehren ist. “What a philosopher is, that is difficult to learn, because it cannot be taught.” Leaving that sentence untranslated constitutes perhaps the biggest difference between the German original of Meier’s book and its ably and thoughtfully translated English version, for which Justin Gottshalk deserves credit. Meier identifies the sentence as coming from Beyond Good and Evil, but he leaves it to the reader to discover the precise location. The quotation is the very beginning of section 213, and what the investigator also discovers there is that the quotation is not a complete sentence as the period might have suggested. Meier’s quotation should have been followed by a colon, after which Nietzsche’s text continues “one must ‘know’ it, out of experience,—or one should have the pride, not to know it.” Nietzsche’s Legacy sets itself the task of reading out of Ecce Homo and The Antichrist Nietzsche’s presentation of the philosopher and of the philosophic life. The epigraph in its full context (see the entirety of section 213) raises two challenges to such a reading. Does the author know what a philosopher is (from his own experience)? What is required of the audience (in terms of their experience) in order for such knowledge to be conveyed?

Meier’s book consists of an esoteric reading of Nietzsche’s last two books, Ecce Homo and The Antichrist. It has an appendix that offers a sketch of an interpretation of Nietzsche’s third to last book, Twilight of the Idols. Meier’s approach already offers a superiority to most of the vast scholarship on Nietzsche’s thought in that Meier reads Nietzsche’s books as books. In his reading, Meier offers almost no engagement with secondary literature. His reading is pure; he bases his interpretation on careful attention to Nietzsche’s own texts. He pays special attention to Nietzsche’s punctuation. He counts words and structural divisions and calls the reader’s attention to the centers of these. He makes use of Nietzsche’s manuscripts and the revisions thereof that Nietzsche made. Meier tends to grant superiority to Nietzsche’s latest revisions, except in cases where those revisions tend to the criticism of Plato (e.g., 254, n. 27).

What emerges from Meier’s painstaking care is an interpretation of Ecce Homo and The Antichrist as an intricately linked dyad devoted to the presentation of the philosophic life. Meier interprets Nietzsche’s early works, prior to Human All-Too-Human, as belonging to a period before Nietzsche discovered the philosophic life, the life animated by the passion for knowledge. That early period, characterized by “hope, tragedy, instinct,” ultimately disappointed Nietzsche and led to a crisis, characterized by a total aberration of Nietzsche’s instinct. Meier presents a Nietzsche who realized that instinct could not serve as a reliable guide. “Instinct did not by any means keep the becoming-oneself on a secure course” (75). To bring himself out of this crisis, Meier’s Nietzsche had to recognize that “Knowledge is the one thing needful” (134).

The “becoming-oneself” that belongs to the subtitle of Ecce Homo is a description of the philosopher’s coming to know nature, the knowledge of which is the basis of the philosophic life. By Meier’s account, in order for philosophy to be possible, it must be possible to know the whole and to know life and to judge both. In order to claim that life can be judged, Meier interprets a metaphorical riddle wherein Nietzsche states (at the beginning of the first section of Ecce Homo) that he is “as my father” already dead and “as my mother” still living. This riddle of a dual origin is taken to mean that Nietzsche is claiming (as a philosopher) to be in a position to pass judgment on life (19). What Nietzsche says in the sequel to this very passage is that his unique origin gives him a subtler sense for ascent and descent than other human beings. Is Nietzsche really claiming here that he can judge life itself? This contradicts the argument Nietzsche offers in Twilight of the Idols, “The Problem of Socrates,” section 2, which concludes thus, “judgments of value, concerning life, for it or against it, can in the end, never be true: they have value only as symptoms.” But if no true judgment of life can be made, that would seem to mean there cannot be philosophers of the type Meier imagines.

In Meier’s reading, the Revaluation of Values, that is the political task of The Antichrist, is the counterpart of Ecce Homo’s pursuit of becoming-oneself. This Revaluation is the countermovement to an earlier revaluation of values that instituted Christian values. Meier does not present the Revaluation as a project for the future. Rather he presents the Revaluation as present and achieved in the book The Antichrist itself, achieved both in the author and in the reader who understands (241). The task of Revaluation “helps Nietzsche [the philosopher] to ascertain his nature and serves his knowledge” (80). Thus both books together serve “the clarification of the question of what a philosopher is” (149). Still, in this dyad, it is Ecce Homo that is architectonic. “It is Ecce Homo in which Nietzsche occupies the highest perspective” (228). Meier goes so far as to claim that both books end together. “The fourth chapter of Ecce Homo, the book that is supposed to prepare The Antichrist, is in fact the last chapter of both books” (112).

As careful, as rich, as intricately put together as Meier’s interpretation is, one might worry about how he reads. Meier often identifies structural centers in the texts. He implies that the centers should be revealing (of Nietzsche’s inner or real thought). Here he follows the model of Leo Strauss, and Meier does it so often that it could seem mechanical. But sometimes Meier makes centers where there are none. He finds centers in structures that are evenly divided (e.g., 17, 20, 28, 183). Is this flexibility a strength or a weakness of his approach? One might have hoped that Meier would have incorporated what Nietzsche himself says about esotericism (in Beyond Good and Evil, section 30) into his reading of Nietzsche’s esotericism. In his attention to Nietzsche’s punctuation, one might have hoped Meier would have incorporated what Nietzsche himself says about punctuation.

Meier gives us a picture of Nietzsche the philosopher who is an opponent of Platonism rather than Plato. Meier’s Nietzsche is transhistorical (137). Meier’s Nietzsche has “unobstructed access to reality” (87).

All this paves the way for an understanding of the philosopher that seems too simple and straightforward to justify the epigraph at the beginning of Meier’s book. But if we take that epigraph as a warning of the limits of the teachability of philosophy, then Meier’s endless hints and gestures may make sense. Nietzsche’s Legacy provides a sketch of what a philosopher is and invites readers to think it through themselves (223). As it must be.