Fo Shizzle’ My Nietsizzle On Morality

I think Nietzche is the English spelling, and Nietzsche the American.

Several times on Amazon I’ve seen books I’m looking for depicted as a pair of shoes. That is, where the cover should be there’s a picture of a pair of shoes, usually high-heals. I refrain from ordering in fear that there’s a glitch in the system somewhere and I’ll actually get shoes. Also, the hardcover of Rawls’s collected papers on Amazon has had, for quite a long time, a funny cover mistake as well.

Marcel, Nietzsche’s name is spelled the same way both in Europe and North America. “Nietzche” is just a common typo.

As long as they don’t say ‘Neechee’, which seems common among Americans who should know better, I don’t care how they spell it.

I’ll adjust my Google alerts accordingly.

That’s “colleague”.

High-heals have done wonders for my posture….

FYI: My actual copy of the book, in those colours, has the right spelling.

Number of google results for:
nietzsche: 16,500,000
nietzche: 716,000
nietsche: 234,000
nietszche: 113,000
nietche: 28,200

Also, see if you can spot the error here.

Also, see if you can spot the error here.

The street is actually Califiorina, in honor of he former CEO of Hewlett Packard.

I was once called a horrible pedant (not here) for pointing out to another commenter after repeat offenses that Heidegger is not spelled “Hiedigger” – gotta love the internet.

When in fact you are a horrible pedant only because you made a point of reviving your correction here. Though I grant you that the risk of being called such was vanishingly slight.

Nietzsche is one that you should really know, though — simply because there are very few opportunities, in English, to assemble that distinctive set of consonants in sequence. A little dance on the left side of the keyboard for hunt-and-peck typists.

Still, when you look at it for more than a moment, all spellings appear incorrect.

that Heidegger is not spelled “Hiedigger”

Though there’s Alexander Pope’s ‘And lo! her bird, (a monster of a fowl, / Something betwixt a Heideggre and owl,)’ in The Dunciad; that refers to J. J. Heidegger, the Swiss impresario who moved to London, organised masquerades, and produced operas with Handel.

Leiter’s book is really good, btw — best book on N. that I’ve read, not that I read many of them.

And “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment”, by Nathanael Hawthorne.

“Yes, friends, ye are old again,” said Dr. Heidegger, “and lo! the Water of Youth is all lavished on the ground. Well–I bemoan it not; for if the fountain gushed at my very doorstep, I would not stoop to bathe my lips in it–no, though its delirium were for years instead of moments. Such is the lesson ye have taught me!”

No plausible way of connecting Hawthorne’s story to the philosopher presented itself to me.

In fairness, “tzsch” is a really preposterous combination of letters.

Maybe we could all just start calling him Freddy. It’ll probably make him seem a lot more friendly.

And how did the priest pronounce that?

There’s a proven theory that it doesn’t affect readability of a text if the letters of every word are randomly scrambled, provided that it starts and ends with the correct letters.

As in:

Terhe’s a pvroen terohy taht it deson’t afceft rialebiadty of a txet if the lretrtes of ervey wrod are rlmonady sbmlcrabed, podivred taht it strtas and edns wtih the crecort lreetts.

Oh, and by the way: It’s spelled Ncstizhee.

On the very first day of my philosophy undergrad programme the chair of undergraduate studies told us to avoid the common pitfalls of hapless philosophy undergrads. One of those she listed was misspelling ‘Nietzsche’…

made me smirk, whether it is true or not…

>30: In fairness, “tzsch” is a really preposterous combination of letters.

Works fine in German! Not the most common of combinations, but really not a big deal. Pronounce: Neets-shuh. Don’t get me started on Fetherstonhaugh pronounced Fanshaw…

37: Not true (no, not a convincing argument, but at least succinct)

Less a blog thread, more a hissy fit.

Okay, I’ll try to start a Lettermanesque top ten reasons why it says “Nietszche” on the cover of Brian Leiter’s book in the hopes that others will add the funnier contributions that go nearer the top of the list:

#10: The author lives in Austin and that’s the official Texan spelling (cf. “nucular weapon”).

#9: Font too large to fit into the spell checker.

#8: They did it to weed out the shallow customers who judge a book by its cover.

#6: They wanted to make the book slightly leiter.

Why do you assume the unfamiliar is wrong? Nietszche is a cat that belongs to a woman named Ariel, see http://tinyurl.com/24ulfv. I haven’t searched Amazon systematically* for books on the views of cats on morality, but there must be at least a few dozen, several put out by the New Yorker alone.

I grant you the first cover appears to be a mistake, if in fact it was associated with the same ISBN number (but where’s the evidence of that?).

The philosopher F. Nietszche is also known for his views on molarity (e.g., http://tinyurl.com/2nrq2n). Current developments in neuropsychology suggest the two topics are not unrelated.

*Nor unsystematically

Works fine in German!

The people misspelling it aren’t German! BTW, this applies just as much to English words like “thorough” and “straight”.

@37: In fact, no. Händel changed his name to Handel when he moved to London (at some point, not sure about the full story here – there are some use/mention difficulties concerning the last sentence here as well, but let’s just let that pass for now), so when J.J. Heidegger worked with him (@24), his name were – correctly – Handel.

#50: As you suggest, the Germans are not the ones misspelling “thorough” and “straight.”
Rather, they are the ones misspelling “through” and “strait.” Though not the first.

Ref: http://www.lute.de/generalbass.html, http://tinyurl.com/2pzpfz

Reminds me of how I dread having to use my mother’s maiden name for an identity verification — it was Fritzsch (I’m not sure about the final e) and I can never remember how many letters were dropped on emigration.

Back in the sub-beatnik era ca. 1960, when it was briefly considered good PR to affect a certain intellectual/cool style, the Casa Munras motel in Monterey, at that time the first thing one saw coming into town from the North, used to have a sign board with clever sayings, one I remember being “Nietzsche is peachy.”

The copyeditor to come will spell his name right.

I wonder if Brian gets to add both to his CV as extra publications…