A philoso­pher per­haps more wide­ly known for his prodi­gious mus­tache than for the vari­eties of his thought, Friedrich Niet­zsche often seems to be mis­read more than read. Even some­one like Michel Fou­cault could gloss over a cru­cial fact about Nietzsche’s body of work: Fou­cault remarked in an unpub­lished inter­view that Nietzsche’s “won­der­ful ideas” were “used by the Nazi Par­ty.” But that use, he neglect­ed to men­tion, came about through a scheme hatched by Nietzsche’s sis­ter, after his men­tal col­lapse and death, to edit, change, and oth­er­wise manip­u­late the thinker’s work in a way The Tele­graph deemed “crim­i­nal.” Fou­cault may not have known the full con­text, but Niet­zsche had about as much sym­pa­thy for fas­cism as he did for Christianity—both rea­sons for his break with com­pos­er Richard Wag­n­er. What Niet­zsche loved most was music. Even in the wake of this scan­dal, with Niet­zsche ful­ly reha­bil­i­tat­ed at the schol­ar­ly lev­el at least, the philoso­pher is gen­er­al­ly read piece­meal, used to prop up some ide­ol­o­gy or crit­i­cal the­o­ry or anoth­er, a ten­den­cy his anti-sys­tem­at­ic, apho­ris­tic work inspires. A more …