Fred Says Read Hard!

 Looking over the references in Ioannes Chountis de Fabbri's Nietzsche's manifesto for reading (Engelsberg ideas), I think everything cited I had read by the time I was 25. Naturally contrary, I must give credit now for Nietzsche making me even more so: there is no fun in reading what does not challenge you.

Reading, according to Nietzsche’s writings, is not inherently or unconditionally ennobling. Some books, he believed, could poison as readily as they could strengthen. ‘There are books which have an immense value for the soul and health.’ The reader must bring discernment as well as patience. Books are no universal remedy; many are actively corrosive. They sap originality, flatter mediocrity, or drown the self in slogans. The true Nietzschean reader approaches books not to flee from, though, but to grow through them and at times to think more dangerously.

In his view, careful and deliberate reading served as an antidote to modernity and the restless spirit of the industrial age. To read well demands a range of intellectual virtues: sustained focus, openness of mind, critical acuity, sensitivity, and reflective judgement. Above all, one must learn to read before rushing to analyse or interpret. This emphasis reflects Nietzsche’s broader philosophical commitment to Perspectivism, the principle that animates his entire corpus. In our world, increasingly governed by algorithmic speed and the impulse to judge, Nietzsche’s call for slow reading is not merely a scholarly habit but a philosophical act of resistance.

The final lesson in Nietzsche’s view of reading is stark: true reading should wound us. The best books are not those that soothe or confirm, but those that demand something of us. ‘Of all that is written’, he said, ‘I love only what someone has written in his blood.’ Such writing is not to be skimmed, but endured, survived even. In Nietzsche’s eyes, the true reader is an adventurer: one willing to be marked by meaning and perhaps transformed by it.

But am I writing anything that matches how I read? If I could muster even a bit of the anger I had 15 years ago.... Only I think that anger fostered my depression.... That is a place I am truly frightened of returning to. Which marks me a coward.

sch 7/5