Nietzsche neglected to undertake the philosophically respectable task of systematically criticising idealism. He was of the opinion that the idealist was an arrogant and presumptuous believer in the vague and in the improbable. Waging war against such men became an obsession with Nietzsche: he saw them and their ways everywhere; he saw different kinds of men and different ways nowhere. If the reader is interested in idealistic studies, he should be interested in this particular ad hominem and in the route (...) that it took, because, while there is little positive content in Nietzsche’s anti-idealism, the story sheds light on what, from one point of view, is and is not idealism. (shrink)