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The problem of [Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human] lies in its divided intentions: the intention to revise philosophy and the intention, as it were, to revise humanity as a moralist rather than an analyst of the deep nature of morality itself. But as a writer, Nietzsche was always defined through divided intentions. He did not want at any time to give up his critique of the human, all too human, as he continued all the while to build the great philosophical account of human nature that in less gifted hands would have been a treatise, an essay, an enquiry, a dissertation.

He tried to practice philosophy in the way he thought of history as being practiced when in the service of life rather than in the production of academic scholars. His divided intentions very nearly queered his philosophical reputation, inasmuch as philosophers since his time have pretty largely just been academic philosophers, trained by codes of expressions Nietzsche fails to follow, whereas we might now see in him a model for how to do philosophy when we want to be taken seriously in the academy and at the same time effective in life. Human, All Too Human is a marvelous place to begin for readers with that sort of ideal, as it was precisely the right way for the writer to begin to be who he became.

Arthur C. Danto, Beginning to be Nietzsche, 1996.