... engaging ... Kaag’s account of his return to Sils-Maria and of his reunion with the philosophical idol of his youth is an engrossing one ... Hiking with Nietzsche serves as a straightforward and even practical introduction to the German philosopher’s writings, and makes a convincing case for why they continue to matter. Even readers not necessarily tempted to descend into the Nietzschean abyss will surely find Kaag’s exploration of selfhood, decadence, companionship, and physical duress both invigorating and thought-provoking ... Above all, Kaag’s portrait of Nietzsche... is a deeply moving one. Walking in his footsteps, he shows us the heights to which Nietzsche rose and the depths to which he sank, the sacrifices he made and the suffering he endured.
Kaag cleverly connects Nietzsche’s musings with his own experiences both past and present, detailing how his understanding of Nietzsche has evolved and changed over the 17 years between his trips to Switzerland ... As Kaag notes, philosophers 'have always thought on their feet,' citing examples of 'great wanderer-thinkers' such as Jesus, Rousseau, Wordsworth, Emerson and Thoreau. With Hiking with Nietzsche, Kaag can now add his own name to the list of thoughtful wanderers.
Kaag is particularly successful...in his more recent memoir, Hiking with Nietzsche ... Kaag’s search for Nietzsche...is cyclical and eternal, something that—like Nietzsche himself—comes in many guises and in unexpected, self-disruptive forms. And so, as we delve deeper into Kaag, we delve deeper into Nietzsche—and vice versa ... Kaag is not interested in popularizing philosophy by merely sharing 'its results.' Instead, he is interested in how philosophy might be more broadly understood—how the ordinary person might come to understand philosophy in its own terms by bearing witness to the subtleties and joys of philosophical inquiry. This, perhaps, is the greatest promise and aspiration of Kaag’s memoirs. He leads a general audience into the delicate and often inaccessible ways in which philosophers seek to understand philosophy’s history ... Kaag has carved out a genre all his own, a genre with the promise to narrow some of the gaps between the esoteric and the familiar, the academic and the non-academic, the philosopher and the self-help guru. For those with Kaag’s unusual mixture of philosophical sophistication and narrative skill, it is a genre well worth emulating.
Kaag is a lively storyteller who brings Nietzsche’s life into continual contact with his own. This is both the strength and the weakness of the book. He succeeds quite well in maintaining a balance between Nietzsche’s life and thought and makes some nice connections to Emerson, Hesse, Mann and Adorno... At other times, a cloying style gets the better of him as we learn a little too much about the author’s parenting skills ... Kaag doesn’t exactly ignore Nietzsche’s rough edges — his fascination with eugenics, his flirtations with anti-Semitism, his hatred of democracy in all its forms — but he sees them as not fatal to Nietzsche’s project of individual self-overcoming.
At 37, confronting the dullness of adult life, philosopher John Kaag looks for inspiration in the life and writing of one of the heroes of his youth, Friedrich Nietzsche ... The summer before his senior year of college, Kaag traveled to Basel, where Nietzsche had been a professor, and from there retraced Nietzsche’s escape into the Alps. When he arrived in Sils-Maria, Kaag stayed in the Nietzsche-Haus, where Nietzsche had lived for years and wrote some of his best-known books, and began slipping into an inspired madness. Sleep-deprived and starving, the young Kaag stood over a chasm and contemplated leaping. He would survive his 20s and 30s in part by shifting his attention to more tempered philosophers. But when his daughter asks about the frostbite scars the Alps left on Kaag’s ear, his wife suggests he revisit Nietzsche ... But while the book serves as an entry point to Nietzsche’s writing, its real success is as an embodiment of one of his core ideas — and one that you needn’t have read his works to appreciate: the imperative of becoming who you are. Kaag takes this challenge seriously and makes a sincere go at meeting it.
As in American Philosophy, Kaag deftly intertwines sympathetic biography, accessible philosophical analysis, and self-critical autobiography ... [Kaag's] book takes us on a hike through Nietzsche's manically prolific output, which occasionally feels like a forced march but more often feels like an invigorating excursion. Scrambling up treacherous rocky inclines in worn sneakers, Kaag reflects on the peaks and valleys of Nietzsche's life and philosophy ... Kaag extracts plenty of relevant ideas from Nietzsche and his followers in this stimulating book about combating despair and complacency with searching reflection. But, interestingly, it's while watching his daughter blissfully gather woodland wildflowers or a shepherd contentedly eating a hunk of cheese while checking his flock that he experiences the most resonant moments of grace and insight.
A serious mountaineer, Kaag negotiates difficult alpine paths by relying on a guide familiar with both intellectual and physical ascents: Friedrich Nietzsche. In this deeply personal narrative, Kaag recounts two mountain journeys under the tutelage of the great German climber and thinker ... Fusing intense emotion with unflinching analysis, Kaag invites readers to make philosophy a life-elevating adventure.
Hiking With Nietzsche explores two related but distinct reckonings with the blandishments of modern life, Kaag’s and Nietzsche’s ... Blending biography, intellectual history, and personal essay, Kaag follows three related journeys: Nietzsche’s evolution from adolescent upstart to middle-aged iconoclast, Kaag’s youthful attempt to retrace Nietzsche’s footsteps through the Swiss Alps, and Kaag’s adult effort to retrace his own retracing, this time with Hay and their 3-year-old daughter in tow. The result is not just an approachable introduction to Nietzsche’s thought. Kaag’s book is also, despite its cloying title, a confirmation that philosophy thrives when it provides an antidote to the wholesome doldrums of sanity.
... Mr. Kaag deftly weaves his philosophical concerns with the small and large crises of daily life ... As narrator of his own story, Mr. Kaag is not as likable in Hiking With Nietzsche as he was in American Philosophy. He is frequently angry, self-absorbed, compulsive and perfectionist. But his honesty is bracing...
When (philosopher John Kaag) was 19 years old, he left his home in central Pennsylvania and ascended into the Swiss Alps, following the lofty path of his hero. There he found solitude and independence. He also got lost and nearly died of exposure. Undaunted, Kaag returns to Switzerland in his new memoir. It artfully blends Nietzsche’s biography, an accessible yet subtle introduction to his big ideas, and Kaag’s own reminiscences.
It is surprising to see a professional philosopher talking of 'mere abstraction' here. Few people today will stand up for abstraction, but it is a keystone of all intellectual endeavour, as Nietzsche himself well knew ... Kaag has a pleasingly wry, compact style, and is particularly interesting on thinkers that Nietzsche influenced heavily: Herman Hesse and Theodor Adorno ... Nietzsche’s demand is that you should joyfully embrace such a prospect; indeed, to do so he calls the 'highest formula of affirmation'. Kaag rather spoils the moment here by reducing this awful existential task to a version of the old metaphysical idea 'that the movement of reality is best described in terms of cycles and epicycles'. But Nietzsche wasn’t making positive claims about the nature of material reality, he was throwing down a gauntlet; and we have still not picked it up.
Kaag mixes personal reflection and interpretation of Friedrich Nietzsche’s thought in this meditative work, framed by two trips to the philosopher’s home in Sils-Maria, Switzerland: once, when Kaag was a 19-year-old college student, and then, years later, when he returns as a philosophy professor with wife and child. The work reflects on adulthood and on squaring the notion of the Übermensch with the realities of adult life ... Kaag has crafted a stirring account of a personal encounter with a great mind.
The author follows Nietzsche, for whom the 'point of historical study was to enrich the present moment of experience.' The philosopher trekked the mountains 'to tread on the edge of the void.' Kaag’s present consists of a return trip to Sils Maria, Switzerland, where he had spent an intense period in his youth hiking, fasting, and reading Nietzsche, this time with his wife and young daughter. At the time, it wasn’t clear exactly what he was hoping to find the second time around, but as he wandered the Alps and continued to read Nietzsche—he provides helpful summaries and analyses—he approached a significant psychic breaking point. The connection between philosophy and the author’s life is not as seamless as it is in American Philosophy, but this is due in part to a difficulty of his subject ... A meditative work full of self-understanding that will resonate with anyone who has ever been drawn toward the void.
