In this critical review essay, we examine Rüdiger Safranski’s “philosophical biography” approach to interpreting Nietzsche. We analyze Safranski’s various attempts tobring the biographical facts of Nietzsche’s life to bear on the philosophical narration in order to shed light on the development of Nietzsche’s philosophical thinking. We argue that there are a number of limitations to Safranski’s “philosophical biography” approach to reading Nietzsche, such as Safranski’s tendency to focus almost exclusively on the earlier stages in the development of Nietzsche’s philosophical thinking. However, we also try to show that the one redeeming virtue of Safranski’s book is that it focuses on the intriguing, but often overlooked, concept of “self-configuration” or “selffashioning” (Selbstgestaltung), and it treats this concept as a unifying thread that runs throughout the maze of Nietzsche’s various multifarious writings. We argue, in conclusion, that Safranski successfully connects Nietzsche’s “highly personal philosophy” to the multifaceted “maneuvers of self-configuration” and to the overall Nietzschean project of “fashioning one’s own identity” in an otherwise meaningless world.

The modern Russian linguistics still accepts V. V. Ivanov’s idea that there cannot be a unified (“uniform”) language for everybody. This view has a direct bearing on problems of education, especially mass education. Peculiarities of language for our contem-poraries arise; the main features of their “language behavior” are determined not only by the education system. It is not necessarily school. The centuries-old language experi-ence of family life, cultural traditions outside families, and, in addition, the quality of “near” and “distant” socio-cultural interaction influence people. Therefore, trying to adjust the language consciousness of pupils to the adopted system of education, the “nominative” Etalon, teacher often gains the opposite effect—strengthening of the forms of language (active, ergative or multi-structured), which he is striving to prohibit. But a multi-systemic multicultural society does not require each person to be the bearer of all possible forms. This requires a philosophy of education based on the modern philosophy of language that supports unprofane training and education and provides safety for the person.