Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; German: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç
ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈniːtʃə] (listen) or [- ˈniːtsʃə];
15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a
German philosopher, cultural critic, composer,
poet, philologist, and a Latin and Greek scholar
whose work has exerted a profound influence
on Western philosophy and modern intellectual
history. He began his career as a classical
philologist before turning to philosophy.
He became the youngest ever to hold the Chair
of Classical Philology at the University of
Basel in 1869 at the age of 24. Nietzsche
resigned in 1879 due to health problems that
plagued him most of his life; he completed
much of his core writing in the following
decade. In 1889 at age 44, he suffered a collapse
and afterward, a complete loss of his mental
faculties. He lived his remaining years in
the care of his mother until her death in
1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche.
Nietzsche died in 1900.Nietzsche's body of
work touched a wide range of topics, including
art, philology, history, religion, tragedy,
culture and science. His early inspiration
was drawn from figures such as Arthur Schopenhauer,
Richard Wagner and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
His writing spans philosophical polemics,
poetry, cultural criticism and fiction while
displaying a fondness for aphorism and irony.
Prominent elements of his philosophy include
his radical critique of truth in favor of
perspectivism; his genealogical critique of
religion and Christian morality and his related
theory of master–slave morality; his aesthetic
affirmation of existence in response to the
"death of God" and the profound crisis of
nihilism; his notion of the Apollonian and
Dionysian; and his characterization of the
human subject as the expression of competing
wills, collectively understood as the will
to power. He also developed influential concepts
such as the Übermensch and the doctrine of
eternal return. In his later work, he became
increasingly preoccupied with the creative
powers of the individual to overcome social,
cultural and moral contexts in pursuit of
new values and aesthetic health.Nietzsche
was explicitly opposed to antisemitism and
nationalism, although his sister attempted
to associate his work with fascism and Nazism.Nietzsche's
thought enjoyed renewed popularity in the
1960s and his ideas have since had a profound
impact on 20th and early-21st century thinkers
across philosophy—especially in schools
of continental philosophy such as existentialism,
postmodernism and post-structuralism—as
well as art, literature, psychology, politics
and popular culture.
== Life ==
=== Youth (1844–1868) ===
Born on 15 October 1844, Nietzsche grew up
in the small town of Röcken, near Leipzig,
in the Prussian Province of Saxony. He was
named after King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia,
who turned 49 on the day of Nietzsche's birth
(Nietzsche later dropped his middle name Wilhelm).
Nietzsche's parents, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche
(1813–1849), a Lutheran pastor and former
teacher; and Franziska Nietzsche (1826–1897),
married in 1843, the year before their son's
birth. They had two other children: a daughter,
Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, born in 1846;
and a second son, Ludwig Joseph, born in 1848.
Nietzsche's father died from a brain ailment
in 1849; Ludwig Joseph died six months later
at age two. The family then moved to Naumburg,
where they lived with Nietzsche's maternal
grandmother and his father's two unmarried
sisters. After the death of Nietzsche's grandmother
in 1856, the family moved into their own house,
now Nietzsche-Haus, a museum and Nietzsche
study centre.
Nietzsche attended a boys' school and then
a private school, where he became friends
with Gustav Krug, Rudolf Wagner and Wilhelm
Pinder, all of whom came from highly respected
families.
In 1854, he began to attend Domgymnasium in
Naumburg. Because his father had worked for
the state (as a pastor) the now-fatherless
Nietzsche was offered a scholarship to study
at the internationally recognized Schulpforta
(the claim that Nietzsche was admitted on
the strength of his academic competence has
been debunked: his grades were nowhere near
the top of the class). He transferred and
studied there from 1858 to 1864, becoming
friends with Paul Deussen and Carl von Gersdorff.
He also found time to work on poems and musical
compositions. Nietzsche led "Germania", a
music and literature club, during his summers
in Naumburg. At Schulpforta, Nietzsche received
an important grounding in languages—Greek,
Latin, Hebrew, and French—so as to be able
to read important primary sources; he also
experienced for the first time being away
from his family life in a small-town conservative
environment. His end-of-semester exams in
March 1864 showed a 1 in Religion and German;
a 2a in Greek and Latin; a 2b in French, History,
and Physics; and a "lackluster" 3 in Hebrew
and Mathematics.While at Pforta, Nietzsche
had a penchant for pursuing subjects that
were considered unbecoming. He became acquainted
with the work of the then almost-unknown poet
Friedrich Hölderlin, calling him "my favorite
poet" and composing an essay in which he said
that the mad poet raised consciousness to
"the most sublime ideality." The teacher who
corrected the essay gave it a good mark but
commented that Nietzsche should concern himself
in the future with healthier, more lucid,
and more "German" writers. Additionally, he
became acquainted with Ernst Ortlepp, an eccentric,
blasphemous, and often drunken poet who was
found dead in a ditch weeks after meeting
the young Nietzsche but who may have introduced
Nietzsche to the music and writing of Richard
Wagner. Perhaps under Ortlepp's influence,
he and a student named Richter returned to
school drunk and encountered a teacher, resulting
in Nietzsche's demotion from first in his
class and the end of his status as a prefect.
After graduation in September 1864, Nietzsche
commenced studies in theology and classical
philology at the University of Bonn with hope
of becoming a minister. For a short time he
and Deussen became members of the Burschenschaft
Frankonia. After one semester (and to the
anger of his mother), he stopped his theological
studies and lost his faith. As early as his
1862 essay "Fate and History", Nietzsche had
argued that historical research had discredited
the central teachings of Christianity, but
David Strauss's Life of Jesus also seems to
have had a profound effect on the young man.
In addition, Ludwig Feuerbach's The Essence
of Christianity influenced young Nietzsche
with its argument that people created God,
and not the other way around. In June 1865,
at the age of 20, Nietzsche wrote to his sister
Elisabeth, who was deeply religious, a letter
regarding his loss of faith. This letter contains
the following statement:
Hence the ways of men part: if you wish to
strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then
believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth,
then inquire...
Nietzsche subsequently concentrated on studying
philology under Professor Friedrich Wilhelm
Ritschl, whom he followed to the University
of Leipzig in 1865. There, he became close
friends with his fellow student Erwin Rohde.
Nietzsche's first philological publications
appeared soon after.
In 1865, Nietzsche thoroughly studied the
works of Arthur Schopenhauer. He owed the
awakening of his philosophical interest to
reading Schopenhauer's The World as Will and
Representation and later admitted that Schopenhauer
was one of the few thinkers whom he respected,
dedicating the essay "Schopenhauer as Educator"
in the Untimely Meditations to him.
In 1866, he read Friedrich Albert Lange's
History of Materialism. Lange's descriptions
of Kant's anti-materialistic philosophy, the
rise of European Materialism, Europe's increased
concern with science, Charles Darwin's theory
of evolution, and the general rebellion against
tradition and authority intrigued Nietzsche
greatly. The cultural environment encouraged
him to expand his horizons beyond philology
and continue his study of philosophy, although
Nietzsche would ultimately argue the impossibility
of an evolutionary explanation of the human
aesthetic sense.In 1867, Nietzsche signed
up for one year of voluntary service with
the Prussian artillery division in Naumburg.
He was regarded as one of the finest riders
among his fellow recruits, and his officers
predicted that he would soon reach the rank
of captain. However, in March 1868, while
jumping into the saddle of his horse, Nietzsche
struck his chest against the pommel and tore
two muscles in his left side, leaving him
exhausted and unable to walk for months. Consequently,
Nietzsche turned his attention to his studies
again, completing them in 1868 and meeting
with Richard Wagner for the first time later
that year.
=== Professor at Basel (1869–1878) ===
In part because of Ritschl's support, Nietzsche
received a remarkable offer in 1869 to become
professor of classical philology at the University
of Basel in Switzerland. He was only 24 years
old and had neither completed his doctorate
nor received a teaching certificate ("habilitation").
He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the
University of Leipzig, again with Ritschl's
support.Despite the fact that the offer came
at a time when he was considering giving up
philology for science, he accepted. To this
day, Nietzsche is still among the youngest
of the tenured Classics professors on record.Nietzsche's
1870 projected doctoral thesis, Contribution
toward the Study and the Critique of the Sources
of Diogenes Laertius (Beiträge zur Quellenkunde
und Kritik des Laertius Diogenes), examined
the origins of the ideas of Diogenes Laërtius.
Though never submitted, it was later published
as a Gratulationsschrift (congratulatory publication)
at Basel.Before moving to Basel, Nietzsche
renounced his Prussian citizenship: for the
rest of his life he remained officially stateless.Nevertheless,
Nietzsche served in the Prussian forces during
the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) as a
medical orderly. In his short time in the
military, he experienced much and witnessed
the traumatic effects of battle. He also contracted
diphtheria and dysentery. Walter Kaufmann
speculates that he might also have contracted
syphilis at a brothel along with his other
infections at this time. On returning to Basel
in 1870, Nietzsche observed the establishment
of the German Empire and Otto von Bismarck's
subsequent policies as an outsider and with
a degree of skepticism regarding their genuineness.
His inaugural lecture at the university was
"Homer and Classical Philology". Nietzsche
also met Franz Overbeck, a professor of theology
who remained his friend throughout his life.
Afrikan Spir, a little-known Russian philosopher
responsible for the 1873 Thought and Reality,
and Nietzsche's colleague the famed historian
Jacob Burckhardt, whose lectures Nietzsche
frequently attended, began to exercise significant
influence on him during this time.Nietzsche
had already met Richard Wagner in Leipzig
in 1868 and later Wagner's wife, Cosima. Nietzsche
admired both greatly and during his time at
Basel frequently visited Wagner's house in
Tribschen in Lucerne. The Wagners brought
Nietzsche into their most intimate circle—including
Franz Liszt, of whom Nietzsche colloquially
described: "Liszt or the art of running after
women!". Nietzsche enjoyed the attention he
gave to the beginning of the Bayreuth Festival.
In 1870, he gave Cosima Wagner the manuscript
of "The Genesis of the Tragic Idea" as a birthday
gift. In 1872, Nietzsche published his first
book, The Birth of Tragedy. However, his colleagues
within his field, including Ritschl, expressed
little enthusiasm for the work in which Nietzsche
eschewed the classical philologic method in
favor of a more speculative approach. In his
polemic Philology of the Future, Ulrich von
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff dampened the book's
reception and increased its notoriety. In
response, Rohde (then a professor in Kiel)
and Wagner came to Nietzsche's defense. Nietzsche
remarked freely about the isolation he felt
within the philological community and attempted
unsuccessfully to transfer to a position in
philosophy at Basel instead.
In 1873, Nietzsche began to accumulate notes
that would be posthumously published as Philosophy
in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. Between 1873
and 1876, he published four separate long
essays: "David Strauss: the Confessor and
the Writer", "On the Use and Abuse of History
for Life", "Schopenhauer as Educator" and
"Richard Wagner in Bayreuth". These four later
appeared in a collected edition under the
title Untimely Meditations. The essays shared
the orientation of a cultural critique, challenging
the developing German culture along lines
suggested by Schopenhauer and Wagner. During
this time in the circle of the Wagners, he
met Malwida von Meysenbug and Hans von Bülow.
He also began a friendship with Paul Rée,
who in 1876 influenced him into dismissing
the pessimism in his early writings. However,
he was deeply disappointed by the Bayreuth
Festival of 1876, where the banality of the
shows and baseness of the public repelled
him. He was also alienated by Wagner's championing
of "German culture", which Nietzsche felt
a contradiction in terms as well as by Wagner's
celebration of his fame among the German public.
All this contributed to his subsequent decision
to distance himself from Wagner.
With the publication in 1878 of Human, All
Too Human (a book of aphorisms ranging from
metaphysics to morality to religion to gender
studies), a new style of Nietzsche's work
became clear, highly influenced by Afrikan
Spir's Thought and Reality and reacting against
the pessimistic philosophy of Wagner and Schopenhauer.
Nietzsche's friendship with Deussen and Rohde
cooled as well. In 1879, after a significant
decline in health, Nietzsche had to resign
his position at Basel. Since his childhood,
various disruptive illnesses had plagued him,
including moments of shortsightedness that
left him nearly blind, migraine headaches,
and violent indigestion. The 1868 riding accident
and diseases in 1870 may have aggravated these
persistent conditions, which continued to
affect him through his years at Basel, forcing
him to take longer and longer holidays until
regular work became impractical.
=== Independent philosopher (1879–1888)
===
Living off his pension from Basel and aid
from friends, Nietzsche travelled frequently
to find climates more conducive to his health
and lived until 1889 as an independent author
in different cities. He spent many summers
in Sils Maria near St. Moritz in Switzerland.
He spent his winters in the Italian cities
of Genoa, Rapallo, and Turin and the French
city of Nice. In 1881, when France occupied
Tunisia, he planned to travel to Tunis to
view Europe from the outside but later abandoned
that idea, probably for health reasons. Nietzsche
occasionally returned to Naumburg to visit
his family, and, especially during this time,
he and his sister had repeated periods of
conflict and reconciliation.
While in Genoa, Nietzsche's failing eyesight
prompted him to explore the use of typewriters
as a means of continuing to write. He is known
to have tried using the Hansen Writing Ball,
a contemporary typewriter device. In the end,
a past student of his, Heinrich Köselitz
or Peter Gast, became a sort of private secretary
to Nietzsche. In 1876, Gast transcribed the
crabbed, nearly illegible handwriting of Nietzsche
for the first time with Richard Wagner in
Bayreuth. He subsequently transcribed and
proofread the galleys for almost all of Nietzsche's
work from then on. On at least one occasion
on 23 February 1880, the usually poor Gast
received 200 marks from their mutual friend,
Paul Rée. Gast was one of the very few friends
Nietzsche allowed to criticize him. In responding
most enthusiastically to Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
Gast did feel it necessary to point out that
what were described as "superfluous" people
were in fact quite necessary. He went on to
list the number of people Epicurus, for example,
had to rely on even to supply his simple diet
of goat cheese.To the end of his life, Gast
and Overbeck remained consistently faithful
friends. Malwida von Meysenbug remained like
a motherly patron even outside the Wagner
circle. Soon Nietzsche made contact with the
music-critic Carl Fuchs. Nietzsche stood at
the beginning of his most productive period.
Beginning with Human, All Too Human in 1878,
Nietzsche published one book or major section
of a book each year until 1888, his last year
of writing; that year, he completed five.
In 1882, Nietzsche published the first part
of The Gay Science. That year he also met
Lou Andreas-Salomé, through Malwida von Meysenbug
and Paul Rée.
Salomé's mother took her to Rome when Salomé
was 21. At a literary salon in the city, Salomé
became acquainted with Paul Rée. Rée proposed
marriage to her, but she instead proposed
that they should live and study together as
'brother and sister', along with another man
for company, where they would establish an
academic commune. Rée accepted the idea,
and suggested that they be joined by his friend
Nietzsche. The two met Nietzsche in Rome in
April 1882, and Nietzsche is believed to have
instantly fallen in love with Salome, as Rée
had done. Nietzsche asked Rée to propose
marriage to Salome, which she rejected. She
had been interested in Nietzsche as a friend,
but not as a husband. Nietzsche nonetheless
was content to join together with Rée and
Salome touring through Switzerland and Italy
together, planning their commune. The three
traveled with Salomé's mother through Italy
and considered where they would set up their
"Winterplan" commune. This commune was intended
to be set up in an abandoned monastery, but
no suitable location was found. On 13 May,
in Lucerne, when Nietzsche was alone with
Salome, he earnestly proposed marriage to
her again, which she rejected. He nonetheless
was happy to continue with the plans for an
academic commune.
. After discovering the situation, Nietzsche's
sister Elizabeth became determined to get
Nietzsche away from the "immoral woman".
Nietzsche and Salomé spent the summer together
in Tautenburg in Thuringia, often with Nietzsche's
sister Elisabeth as a chaperone. Salomé reports
that he asked her to marry him on three separate
occasions and that she refused, though the
reliability of her reports of events has come
into question. Arriving in Leipzig, (Germany)
in October, Salomé and Rée separated from
Nietzsche after a falling-out between Nietzsche
and Salomé, in which Salomé believed that
Nietzsche was desperately in love with her.
While the three spent a number of weeks together
in Leipzig in October 1882, the following
month Rée and Salome ditched Nietzsche, leaving
for Stibbe without any plans to meet again.
Nietzsche soon fell into a period of mental
anguish, although he continued to write to
Rée, stating "We shall see one another from
time to time, won't we?" In later recriminations,
Nietzsche would blame on separate occasions
the failure in his attempts to woo Salome
both on Salome, Rée, and on the intrigues
of his sister (who had written letters to
the family of Salome and Rée to disrupt the
plans for the commune). Nietzsche wrote of
the affair in 1883, that he now felt "genuine
hatred for my sister."Amidst renewed bouts
of illness, living in near-isolation after
a falling out with his mother and sister regarding
Salomé, Nietzsche fled to Rapallo, where
he wrote the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
in only ten days.
By 1882, Nietzsche was taking huge doses of
opium, but he was still having trouble sleeping.
In 1883, while staying in Nice, he was writing
out his own prescriptions for the sedative
chloral hydrate, signing them "Dr. Nietzsche".After
severing his philosophical ties with Schopenhauer
(who was long dead and never met Nietzsche)
and his social ties with Wagner, Nietzsche
had few remaining friends. Now, with the new
style of Zarathustra, his work became even
more alienating, and the market received it
only to the degree required by politeness.
Nietzsche recognized this and maintained his
solitude, though he often complained about
it. His books remained largely unsold. In
1885, he printed only 40 copies of the fourth
part of Zarathustra and distributed only a
fraction of these among close friends, including
Helene von Druskowitz.
In 1883, he tried and failed to obtain a lecturing
post at the University of Leipzig. It was
made clear to him that, in view of his attitude
towards Christianity and his concept of God,
he had become effectively unemployable by
any German university. The subsequent "feelings
of revenge and resentment" embittered him:
"And hence my rage since I have grasped in
the broadest possible sense what wretched
means (the depreciation of my good name, my
character, and my aims) suffice to take from
me the trust of, and therewith the possibility
of obtaining, pupils."In 1886, Nietzsche broke
with his publisher Ernst Schmeitzner, disgusted
by his antisemitic opinions. Nietzsche saw
his own writings as "completely buried and
unexhumeable in this anti-Semitic dump" of
Schmeitzner—associating the publisher with
a movement that should be "utterly rejected
with cold contempt by every sensible mind".
He then printed Beyond Good and Evil at his
own expense. He also acquired the publication
rights for his earlier works and over the
next year issued second editions of The Birth
of Tragedy, Human, All Too Human, Daybreak,
and The Gay Science with new prefaces placing
the body of his work in a more coherent perspective.
Thereafter, he saw his work as completed for
a time and hoped that soon a readership would
develop. In fact, interest in Nietzsche's
thought did increase at this time, if rather
slowly and hardly perceptibly to him. During
these years Nietzsche met Meta von Salis,
Carl Spitteler, and Gottfried Keller.
In 1886, his sister Elisabeth married the
antisemite Bernhard Förster and travelled
to Paraguay to found Nueva Germania, a "Germanic"
colony—a plan Nietzsche responded to with
mocking laughter. Through correspondence,
Nietzsche's relationship with Elisabeth continued
through cycles of conflict and reconciliation,
but they met again only after his collapse.
He continued to have frequent and painful
attacks of illness, which made prolonged work
impossible.
In 1887, Nietzsche wrote the polemic On the
Genealogy of Morality. During the same year,
he encountered the work of Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
to whom he felt an immediate kinship. He also
exchanged letters with Hippolyte Taine and
Georg Brandes. Brandes, who had started to
teach the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard
in the 1870s, wrote to Nietzsche asking him
to read Kierkegaard, to which Nietzsche replied
that he would come to Copenhagen and read
Kierkegaard with him. However, before fulfilling
this promise, he slipped too far into illness.
In the beginning of 1888, Brandes delivered
in Copenhagen one of the first lectures on
Nietzsche's philosophy.
Although Nietzsche had previously announced
at the end of On the Genealogy of Morality
a new work with the title The Will to Power:
Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values, he
eventually seems to have abandoned this idea
and instead used some of the draft passages
to compose Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist
in 1888.His health seemed to improve and he
spent the summer in high spirits. In the fall
of 1888, his writings and letters began to
reveal a higher estimation of his own status
and "fate". He overestimated the increasing
response to his writings, however, especially
to the recent polemic, The Case of Wagner.
On his 44th birthday, after completing Twilight
of the Idols and The Antichrist, he decided
to write the autobiography Ecce Homo. In its
preface—which suggests Nietzsche was well
aware of the interpretive difficulties his
work would generate—he declares, "Hear me!
For I am such and such a person. Above all,
do not mistake me for someone else." In December,
Nietzsche began a correspondence with August
Strindberg and thought that, short of an international
breakthrough, he would attempt to buy back
his older writings from the publisher and
have them translated into other European languages.
Moreover, he planned the publication of the
compilation Nietzsche contra Wagner and of
the poems that made up his collection Dionysian-Dithyrambs.
=== Psychological illness and death (1889–1900)
===
On 3 January 1889, Nietzsche suffered a mental
breakdown. Two policemen approached him after
he caused a public disturbance in the streets
of Turin. What happened remains unknown, but
an often-repeated tale from shortly after
his death states that Nietzsche witnessed
the flogging of a horse at the other end of
the Piazza Carlo Alberto, ran to the horse,
threw his arms up around its neck to protect
it, and then collapsed to the ground.In the
following few days, Nietzsche sent short writings—known
as the Wahnzettel ("Madness Letters")—to
a number of friends including Cosima Wagner
and Jacob Burckhardt. Most of them were signed
"Dionysos", though some were also signed "der
Gekreuzigte" meaning "the crucified one".
To his former colleague Burckhardt, Nietzsche
wrote: "I have had Caiaphas put in fetters.
Also, last year I was crucified by the German
doctors in a very drawn-out manner. Wilhelm,
Bismarck, and all anti-Semites abolished."
Additionally, he commanded the German emperor
to go to Rome to be shot and summoned the
European powers to take military action against
Germany, that the pope should be put in jail
and that he, Nietzsche, created the world
and was in the process of having all anti-Semites
shot dead.On 6 January 1889, Burckhardt showed
the letter he had received from Nietzsche
to Overbeck. The following day, Overbeck received
a similar letter and decided that Nietzsche's
friends had to bring him back to Basel. Overbeck
travelled to Turin and brought Nietzsche to
a psychiatric clinic in Basel. By that time
Nietzsche appeared fully in the grip of a
serious mental illness, and his mother Franziska
decided to transfer him to a clinic in Jena
under the direction of Otto Binswanger. In
January 1889, they proceeded with the planned
release of Twilight of the Idols, by that
time already printed and bound. From November
1889 to February 1890, the art historian Julius
Langbehn attempted to cure Nietzsche, claiming
that the methods of the medical doctors were
ineffective in treating Nietzsche's condition.
Langbehn assumed progressively greater control
of Nietzsche until his secretiveness discredited
him. In March 1890, Franziska removed Nietzsche
from the clinic and, in May 1890, brought
him to her home in Naumburg. During this process
Overbeck and Gast contemplated what to do
with Nietzsche's unpublished works. In February,
they ordered a fifty-copy private edition
of Nietzsche contra Wagner, but the publisher
C. G. Naumann secretly printed one hundred.
Overbeck and Gast decided to withhold publishing
The Antichrist and Ecce Homo because of their
more radical content. Nietzsche's reception
and recognition enjoyed their first surge.In
1893, Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth returned
from Nueva Germania in Paraguay following
the suicide of her husband. She read and studied
Nietzsche's works and, piece by piece, took
control of them and their publication. Overbeck
eventually suffered dismissal and Gast finally
co-operated. After the death of Franziska
in 1897, Nietzsche lived in Weimar, where
Elisabeth cared for him and allowed visitors,
including Rudolf Steiner (who in 1895 had
written one of the first books praising Nietzsche),
to meet her uncommunicative brother. Elisabeth
at one point went so far as to employ Steiner
as a tutor to help her to understand her brother's
philosophy. Steiner abandoned the attempt
after only a few months, declaring that it
was impossible to teach her anything about
philosophy.
Nietzsche's mental illness was originally
diagnosed as tertiary syphilis, in accordance
with a prevailing medical paradigm of the
time. Although most commentators regard his
breakdown as unrelated to his philosophy,
Georges Bataille dropped dark hints ("'Man
incarnate' must also go mad") and René Girard's
postmortem psychoanalysis posits a worshipful
rivalry with Richard Wagner. Nietzsche had
previously written, "All superior men who
were irresistibly drawn to throw off the yoke
of any kind of morality and to frame new laws
had, if they were not actually mad, no alternative
but to make themselves or pretend to be mad."
(Daybreak, 14) The diagnosis of syphilis has
since been challenged and a diagnosis of "manic-depressive
illness with periodic psychosis followed by
vascular dementia" was put forward by Cybulska
prior to Schain's study. Leonard Sax suggested
the slow growth of a right-sided retro-orbital
meningioma as an explanation of Nietzsche's
dementia; Orth and Trimble postulated frontotemporal
dementia while other researchers have proposed
a hereditary stroke disorder called CADASIL.
Poisoning by mercury, a treatment for syphilis
at the time of Nietzsche's death, has also
been suggested.In 1898 and 1899, Nietzsche
suffered at least two strokes. This partially
paralyzed him, leaving him unable to speak
or walk. He likely suffered from clinical
hemiparesis/hemiplegia on the left side of
his body by 1899. After contracting pneumonia
in mid-August 1900, he had another stroke
during the night of 24–25 August and died
at about noon on 25 August. Elisabeth had
him buried beside his father at the church
in Röcken bei Lützen. His friend and secretary
Gast gave his funeral oration, proclaiming:
"Holy be your name to all future generations!"
Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche compiled The
Will to Power from Nietzsche's unpublished
notebooks and published it posthumously. Because
his sister arranged the book based on her
own conflation of several of Nietzsche's early
outlines and took great liberties with the
material, the scholarly consensus has been
that it does not reflect Nietzsche's intent.
(For example, Elisabeth removed aphorism 35
of The Antichrist, where Nietzsche rewrote
a passage of the Bible.) Indeed, Mazzino Montinari,
the editor of Nietzsche's Nachlass, called
it a forgery.
=== Citizenship, nationality and ethnicity
===
General commentators and Nietzsche scholars,
whether emphasizing his cultural background
or his language, overwhelmingly label Nietzsche
as a "German philosopher". Others do not assign
him a national category. Germany had not yet
been unified into a nation-state, but Nietzsche
was born a citizen of Prussia, which was then
part of the German Confederation. His birthplace,
Röcken, is in the modern German state of
Saxony-Anhalt. When he accepted his post at
Basel, Nietzsche applied for the annulment
of his Prussian citizenship. The official
response confirming the revocation of his
citizenship came in a document dated 17 April
1869, and for the rest of his life he remained
officially stateless.
Nietzsche believed his ancestors were Polish,
at least toward the end of his life. He wore
a signet ring bearing the Radwan coat of arms,
traceable back to Polish nobility of medieval
times and the surname "Nicki" of the Polish
noble (szlachta) family bearing that coat
of arms. Gotard Nietzsche, a member of the
Nicki family, left Poland for Prussia. His
descendants later settled in the Electorate
of Saxony circa the year 1700. Nietzsche wrote
in 1888, "My ancestors were Polish noblemen
(Nietzky); the type seems to have been well
preserved despite three generations of German
mothers." At one point, Nietzsche becomes
even more adamant about his Polish identity.
"I am a pure-blooded Polish nobleman, without
a single drop of bad blood, certainly not
German blood." On yet another occasion, Nietzsche
stated, "Germany is a great nation only because
its people have so much Polish blood in their
veins ... I am proud of my Polish descent."
Nietzsche believed his name might have been
Germanized, in one letter claiming, "I was
taught to ascribe the origin of my blood and
name to Polish noblemen who were called Niëtzky
and left their home and nobleness about a
hundred years ago, finally yielding to unbearable
suppression: they were Protestants."Most scholars
dispute Nietzsche's account of his family's
origins. Hans von Müller debunked the genealogy
put forward by Nietzsche's sister in favor
of a Polish noble heritage. Max Oehler, the
curator of the Nietzsche Archive at Weimar,
argued that all of Nietzsche's ancestors bore
German names, including the wives' families.
Oehler claims that Nietzsche came from a long
line of German Lutheran clergymen on both
sides of his family, and modern scholars regard
the claim of Nietzsche's Polish ancestry as
a "pure invention". Colli and Montinari, the
editors of Nietzsche's assembled letters,
gloss Nietzsche's claims as a "mistaken belief"
and "without foundation." The name Nietzsche
itself is not a Polish name, but an exceptionally
common one throughout central Germany, in
this and cognate forms (such as Nitsche and
Nitzke). The name derives from the forename
Nikolaus, abbreviated to Nick; assimilated
with the Slavic Nitz, it first became Nitsche
and then Nietzsche.It is not known why Nietzsche
wanted to be thought of as Polish nobility.
According to biographer R. J. Hollingdale,
Nietzsche's propagation of the Polish ancestry
myth may have been part of his "campaign against
Germany".
=== Relationships and sexuality ===
Nietzsche never married. He proposed to Lou
Salomé three times, but his proposal was
rejected each time. There is a theory that
blamed Salomé's view on sexuality as one
of the reasons for her alienation from Nietzsche.
As articulated in the 1898 novella Fenitschka,
she viewed the idea of sexual intercourse
as prohibitive and marriage as a violation,
with some suggesting that they indicated sexual
repression and neurosis.Nietzsche scholar
Joachim Köhler has attempted to explain Nietzsche's
life history and philosophy by claiming that
Nietzsche was homosexual. Köhler argues that
Nietzsche's syphilis, which is "...usually
considered to be the product of his encounter
with a prostitute in a brothel in Cologne
or Leipzig, is equally likely, it is now held,
to have been contracted in a male brothel
in Genoa." The acquisition of the infection
from a homosexual brothel was confirmed by
Sigmund Freud, who cited Otto Binswanger as
his source. Köhler also suggests Nietzsche
may have had a romantic relationship as well
as a friendship with Paul Rée. There is the
claim that Nietzsche's homosexuality is widely
known in the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society,
with Nietzsche's friend Paul Deussen claiming
that the philosopher never "touched a woman".Köhler's
views have not found wide acceptance among
Nietzsche scholars and commentators. Allan
Megill argues that, while Köhler's claim
that Nietzsche was in a confrontation with
his homosexual desire cannot simply be dismissed,
"the evidence is very weak," and Köhler may
be projecting twentieth-century understandings
of sexuality on nineteenth-century notions
of friendship. It is also known that Nietzsche
frequented heterosexual brothels. Some like
Nigel Rodgers and Mel Thompson have argued
that continuous sickness and headaches hindered
Nietzsche from engaging much with women. Yet,
they bring other examples in which Nietzsche
expressed his affections to other women, including
Wagner's wife Cosima Wagner.Other scholars
have argued that Köhler's sexuality-based
interpretation is not helpful in understanding
Nietzsche's philosophy. However, there are
also those who stressed that, if Nietzsche
preferred men - with this preference constituting
his psycho-sexual make-up - but could not
admit his desires to himself, it meant he
acted in conflict with his philosophy.
== Philosophy ==
Because of Nietzsche's evocative style and
provocative ideas, his philosophy generates
passionate reactions. His works remain controversial,
due to their varying interpretations and misinterpretations.
In the Western philosophy tradition, Nietzsche's
writings have been described as the unique
case of free revolutionary thought, that is,
revolutionary in its structure and problems,
although not tied to any revolutionary project.
His writings have also been described as a
revolutionary project in which his philosophy
serves as the foundation of a European cultural
rebirth.
=== Apollonian and Dionysian ===
The Apollonian and Dionysian is a two-fold
philosophical concept, based on certain features
of ancient Greek mythology: Apollo and Dionysus.
Even though the concept is famously related
to The Birth of Tragedy, the poet Hölderlin
had already spoken of it, and Winckelmann
had talked of Bacchus. One year before the
publication of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche
wrote a fragment titled "On Music and Words".
In it he asserted the Schopenhauerian judgment
that music is a primary expression of the
essence of everything. Secondarily derivative
are lyrical poetry and drama, which represent
mere phenomenal appearances of objects. In
this way, tragedy is born from music.
Nietzsche found in classical Athenian tragedy
an art form that transcended the pessimism
found in the so-called wisdom of Silenus.
The Greek spectators, by looking into the
abyss of human suffering depicted by characters
on stage, passionately and joyously affirmed
life, finding it worth living. A main theme
in The Birth of Tragedy was that the fusion
of Dionysian and Apollonian Kunsttrieben ("artistic
impulses") forms dramatic arts, or tragedies.
He goes on to argue that this fusion has not
been achieved since the ancient Greek tragedians.
Apollo represents harmony, progress, clarity
and logic, whereas Dionysus represents disorder,
intoxication, emotion and ecstasy. Nietzsche
used these two forces because, for him, the
world of mind and order on one side, and passion
and chaos on the other formed principles that
were fundamental to the Greek culture: the
Apollonian side being a dreaming state, full
of illusions; and Dionysian being the state
of intoxication, representing the liberations
of instinct and dissolution of boundaries.
In this mold, man appears as the satyr. He
is the horror of the annihilation of the principle
of individuality and at the same time someone
who delights in its destruction. Both of these
principles are meant to represent cognitive
states that appear through art as the power
of nature in man.The relationship between
the Apollonian and Dionysian juxtapositions
is apparent, in the interplay of tragedy:
the tragic hero of the drama, the main protagonist,
struggles to make order (in the Apollonian
sense) of his unjust and chaotic (Dionysian)
fate, though he dies unfulfilled in the end.
Elaborating on the conception of Hamlet as
an intellectual who cannot make up his mind,
and therefore is a living antithesis to the
man of action, Nietzsche argues that a Dionysian
figure possesses knowledge to realize that
his actions cannot change the eternal balance
of things, and it disgusts him enough not
to be able to make any act at all. Hamlet
falls under this category—he has glimpsed
the supernatural reality through the Ghost,
he has gained true knowledge and knows that
no action of his has the power to change this.
For the audience of such drama, this tragedy
allows them to sense an underlying essence,
what Nietzsche called the Primordial Unity,
which revives Dionysian nature. He describes
this primordial unity as the increase of strength,
experience of fullness and plenitude bestowed
by frenzy. Frenzy acts as an intoxication,
and is crucial for the physiological condition
that enables making of any art. Stimulated
by this state, a person's artistic will is
enhanced:
In this state one enriches everything out
of one's own fullness: whatever one sees,
whatever wills is seen swelled, taut, strong,
overloaded with strength. A man in this state
transforms things until they mirror his power—until
they are reflections of his perfection. This
having to transform into perfection is—art.
Nietzsche is adamant that the works of Aeschylus
and Sophocles represent the apex of artistic
creation, the true realization of tragedy;
it is with Euripides, he states, that tragedy
begins its Untergang (literally "going under"
or "downward-way," meaning decline, deterioration,
downfall, death, etc.). Nietzsche objects
to Euripides' use of Socratic rationalism
and morality in his tragedies, claiming that
the infusion of ethics and reason robs tragedy
of its foundation, namely the fragile balance
of the Dionysian and Apollonian. Socrates
emphasized reason to such a degree that he
diffused the value of myth and suffering to
human knowledge. Plato continued with this
path in his dialogues, and the modern world
eventually inherited reason at the expense
of artistic impulses that could be found only
in the Apollonian and Dionysus dichotomy.
This leads to his conclusion that European
culture from the time of Socrates had always
been only Apollonian and thus decadent and
unhealthy. He notes that whenever Apollonian
culture dominates, the Dionysian lacks the
structure to make a coherent art, and when
Dionysian dominates, the Apollonian lacks
the necessary passion. Only the beautiful
middle, the interplay of these two forces,
brought together as an art, represented real
Greek tragedy.An example of the impact of
this idea can be seen in the book Patterns
of Culture, where anthropologist Ruth Benedict
uses Nietzschean opposites of "Apollonian"
and "Dionysian" as the stimulus for her thoughts
about Native American cultures. Carl Jung
has written extensively on the dichotomy in
Psychological Types. Michel Foucault has commented
that his book Madness and Civilization should
be read "under the sun of the great Nietzschean
inquiry". Here Foucault references Nietzsche's
description of the birth and death of tragedy
and his explanation that the subsequent tragedy
of the Western world was the refusal of the
tragic and, with that, refusal of the sacred.
Painter Mark Rothko was influenced by Nietzsche's
view of tragedy, which were presented in The
Birth of Tragedy.
=== Perspectivism ===
Nietzsche claimed the death of God would eventually
lead to the loss of any universal perspective
on things, and along with it any coherent
sense of objective truth. Nietzsche himself
rejected the idea of objective reality, arguing
that knowledge is contingent and conditional,
relative to various fluid perspectives or
interests. This leads to constant reassessment
of rules (i.e., those of philosophy, the scientific
method, etc.) according to the circumstances
of individual perspectives. This view has
acquired the name perspectivism.
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche proclaims
that a table of values hangs above every great
person. He points out that what is common
among different peoples is the act of esteeming,
of creating values, even if the values are
different from one people to the next. Nietzsche
asserts that what made people great was not
the content of their beliefs, but the act
of valuing. Thus the values a community strives
to articulate are not as important as the
collective will to see those values come to
pass. The willing is more essential than the
intrinsic worth of the goal itself, according
to Nietzsche. "A thousand goals have there
been so far," says Zarathustra, "for there
are a thousand peoples. Only the yoke for
the thousand necks is still lacking: the one
goal is lacking. Humanity still has no goal."
Hence, the title of the aphorism, "On The
Thousand And One Goals". The idea that one
value-system is no more worthy than the next,
although it may not be directly ascribed to
Nietzsche, has become a common premise in
modern social science. Max Weber and Martin
Heidegger absorbed it and made it their own.
It shaped their philosophical and cultural
endeavor, as well as their political understanding.
Weber, for example, relies on Nietzsche's
perspectivism by maintaining that objectivity
is still possible—but only after a particular
perspective, value, or end has been established.Among
his critique of traditional philosophy of
Kant, Descartes and Plato in Beyond Good and
Evil, Nietzsche attacked thing in itself and
cogito ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am")
as unfalsifiable beliefs based on naive acceptance
of previous notions and fallacies. Philosopher
Alasdair MacIntyre puts Nietzsche in a high
place in the history of philosophy. While
criticizing nihilism and Nietzsche together
as a sign of general decay, he still commends
him for recognizing psychological motives
behind Kant and Hume's moral philosophy:
For it was Nietzsche's historic achievement
to understand more clearly than any other
philosopher...not only that what purported
to be appeals of objectivity were in fact
expressions of subjective will, but also the
nature of the problems that this posed for
philosophy.
=== The "slave revolt" in morals ===
In Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy
of Morality, Nietzsche's genealogical account
of the development of modern moral systems
occupies a central place. For Nietzsche, a
fundamental shift took place during human
history from thinking in terms of good and
bad toward good and evil.
The initial form of morality was set by a
warrior aristocracy and other ruling castes
of ancient civilizations. Aristocratic values
of good and bad coincided with and reflected
their relationship to lower castes such as
slaves. Nietzsche presents this "master morality"
as the original system of morality—perhaps
best associated with Homeric Greece. To be
"good" was to be happy and to have the things
related to happiness: wealth, strength, health,
power, etc. To be "bad" was to be like the
slaves the aristocracy ruled over: poor, weak,
sick, pathetic—an object of pity or disgust
rather than hatred.
"Slave morality" comes about as a reaction
to master-morality. Here, value emerges from
the contrast between good and evil: good being
associated with other-worldliness, charity,
piety, restraint, meekness, and submission;
and evil seen as worldly, cruel, selfish,
wealthy, and aggressive. Nietzsche sees slave
morality as pessimistic and fearful, values
for them serving only to ease the existence
for those who suffer from the very same thing.
He associates slave-morality with the Jewish
and Christian traditions, in a way that slave-morality
is born out of the ressentiment of slaves.
Nietzsche argued that the idea of equality
allowed slaves to overcome their own condition
without hating themselves. And by denying
the inherent inequality of people (such as
success, strength, beauty or intelligence),
slaves acquired a method of escape, namely
by generating new values on the basis of rejecting
something that was seen as a perceived source
of frustration. It was used to overcome the
slave's own sense of inferiority before the
(better-off) masters. It does so by making
out slave weakness to be a matter of choice,
by, e.g., relabeling it as "meekness". The
"good man" of master morality is precisely
the "evil man" of slave morality, while the
"bad man" is recast as the "good man".
Nietzsche sees the slave-morality as a source
of the nihilism that has overtaken Europe.
Modern Europe and Christianity exist in a
hypocritical state due to a tension between
master and slave morality, both values contradictorily
determining, to varying degrees, the values
of most Europeans (who are "motley"). Nietzsche
calls for exceptional people to no longer
be ashamed of their uniqueness in the face
of a supposed morality-for-all, which he deems
to be harmful to the flourishing of exceptional
people. He cautions, however, that morality,
per se, is not bad; it is good for the masses,
and should be left to them. Exceptional people,
on the other hand, should follow their own
"inner law". A favorite motto of Nietzsche,
taken from Pindar, reads: "Become what you
are."
A long standing assumption about Nietzsche
is that he preferred master over slave morality.
However, the Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann
rejected this interpretation, writing that
Nietzsche's analyses of these two types of
morality were only used in a descriptive and
historic sense, they were not meant for any
kind of acceptance or glorifications. On the
other hand, it is clear from his own writings
that Nietzsche wanted the victory of master
morality. He linked the "salvation and future
of the human race with the unconditional dominance"
of master morality and called master morality
"a higher order of values, the noble ones,
those that say Yes to life, those that guarantee
the future." Just as "there is an order of
rank between man and man," there is also an
order of rank "between morality and morality."
Indeed, Nietzsche waged a philosophic war
against the slave morality of Christianity
in his "revaluation of all values" in order
to bring about the victory of a new master
morality that he called the "philosophy of
the future" (Beyond Good and Evil is subtitled
Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future).In
Daybreak, Nietzsche begins his "Campaign against
Morality". He calls himself an "immoralist"
and harshly criticizes the prominent moral
philosophies of his day: Christianity, Kantianism,
and utilitarianism. Nietzsche's concept "God
is dead" applies to the doctrines of Christendom,
though not to all other faiths: he claimed
that Buddhism is a successful religion that
he compliments for fostering critical thought.
Still, Nietzsche saw his philosophy as a counter-movement
to nihilism through appreciation of art:
Art as the single superior counterforce against
all will to negation of life, art as the anti-Christian,
anti-Buddhist, anti-Nihilist par excellence."
Nietzsche claimed that the Christian faith
as practised was not a proper representation
of Jesus' teachings, as it forced people merely
to believe in the way of Jesus but not to
act as Jesus did, in particular his example
of refusing to judge people, something that
Christians had constantly done the opposite
of. He condemned institutionalized Christianity
for emphasizing a morality of pity (Mitleid),
which assumes an inherent illness in society:
Christianity is called the religion of pity.
Pity stands opposed to the tonic emotions
which heighten our vitality: it has a depressing
effect. We are deprived of strength when we
feel pity. That loss of strength which suffering
as such inflicts on life is still further
increased and multiplied by pity. Pity makes
suffering contagious.
In Ecce Homo Nietzsche called the establishment
of moral systems based on a dichotomy of good
and evil a "calamitous error", and wished
to initiate a re-evaluation of the values
of the Judeo-Christian world. He indicates
his desire to bring about a new, more naturalistic
source of value in the vital impulses of life
itself.
While Nietzsche attacked the principles of
Judaism, he was not antisemitic: in his work
On the Genealogy of Morality, he explicitly
condemns antisemitism, and points out that
his attack on Judaism was not an attack on
contemporary Jewish people but specifically
an attack upon the ancient Jewish priesthood
whom he claims antisemitic Christians paradoxically
based their views upon. An Israeli historian
who performed a statistical analysis of everything
Nietzsche wrote about Jews claims that cross
references and context make clear that almost
all (85%) negative comments are actually attacks
on Christian doctrine or, sarcastically, on
Richard Wagner.Nietzsche felt that modern
antisemitism was "despicable" and against
European ideals. Its cause, in his opinion,
was the growth in European nationalism and
the endemic "jealousy and hatred" of Jewish
success. He wrote that Jews should be thanked
for helping uphold a respect for the philosophies
of ancient Greece, and for giving rise to
"the noblest human being (Christ), the purest
philosopher (Baruch Spinoza), the mightiest
book, and the most effective moral code in
the world."
=== Death of God and nihilism ===
The statement "God is dead", occurring in
several of Nietzsche's works (notably in The
Gay Science), has become one of his best-known
remarks. On the basis of it, most commentators
regard Nietzsche as an atheist; others (such
as Kaufmann) suggest that this statement reflects
a more subtle understanding of divinity. Recent
developments in modern science and the increasing
secularization of European society had effectively
'killed' the Abrahamic God, who had served
as the basis for meaning and value in the
West for more than a thousand years. The death
of God may lead beyond bare perspectivism
to outright nihilism, the belief that nothing
has any inherent importance and that life
lacks purpose. Here he states that the Christian
moral doctrine provides people with intrinsic
value, belief in God (which justifies the
evil in the world) and a basis for objective
knowledge. In this sense, in constructing
a world where objective knowledge is possible,
Christianity is an antidote to a primal form
of nihilism—the despair of meaninglessness.
As Heidegger put the problem, "If God as the
suprasensory ground and goal of all reality
is dead, if the suprasensory world of the
ideas has suffered the loss of its obligatory
and above it its vitalizing and upbuilding
power, then nothing more remains to which
man can cling and by which he can orient himself."One
such reaction to the loss of meaning is what
Nietzsche calls passive nihilism, which he
recognises in the pessimistic philosophy of
Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer's doctrine—which
Nietzsche also refers to as Western Buddhism—advocates
separating oneself from will and desires in
order to reduce suffering. Nietzsche characterises
this ascetic attitude as a "will to nothingness",
whereby life turns away from itself, as there
is nothing of value to be found in the world.
This moving away of all value in the world
is characteristic of the nihilist, although
in this, the nihilist appears to be inconsistent:
A nihilist is a man who judges that the real
world ought not to be, and that the world
as it ought to be does not exist. According
to this view, our existence (action, suffering,
willing, feeling) has no meaning: this 'in
vain' is the nihilists' pathos—an inconsistency
on the part of the nihilists.
Nietzsche approaches the problem of nihilism
as a deeply personal one, stating that this
problem of the modern world is a problem that
has "become conscious" in him. Furthermore,
he emphasizes both the danger of nihilism
and the possibilities it offers, as seen in
his statement that "I praise, I do not reproach,
[nihilism's] arrival. I believe it is one
of the greatest crises, a moment of the deepest
self-reflection of humanity. Whether man recovers
from it, whether he becomes master of this
crisis, is a question of his strength!" According
to Nietzsche, it is only when nihilism is
overcome that a culture can have a true foundation
on which to thrive. He wished to hasten its
coming only so that he could also hasten its
ultimate departure. Heidegger interprets the
death of God with what he explains as the
death of metaphysics. He concludes that metaphysics
has reached its potential and that the ultimate
fate and downfall of metaphysics was proclaimed
with the statement "God is dead".
=== Will to power ===
A basic element in Nietzsche's philosophical
outlook is the "will to power" (der Wille
zur Macht), which he maintained provides a
basis for understanding human behavior—more
so than competing explanations, such as the
ones based on pressure for adaptation or survival.
As such, according to Nietzsche, the drive
for conservation appears as the major motivator
of human or animal behavior only in exceptions,
as the general condition of life is not one
of emergency, of 'struggle for existence'.
More often than not, self-conservation is
but a consequence of a creature's will to
exert its strength on the outside world.
In presenting his theory of human behavior,
Nietzsche also addressed, and attacked, concepts
from philosophies popularly embraced in his
days, such as Schopenhauer's notion of an
aimless will or that of utilitarianism. Utilitarians
claim that what moves people is mainly the
desire to be happy, to accumulate pleasure
in their lives. But such a conception of happiness
Nietzsche rejected as something limited to,
and characteristic of, the bourgeois lifestyle
of the English society, and instead put forth
the idea that happiness is not an aim per
se—it is instead a consequence of a successful
pursuit of one's aims, of the overcoming of
hurdles to one's actions—in other words,
of the fulfillment of the will.Related to
his theory of the will to power is his speculation,
which he did not deem final, regarding the
reality of the physical world, including inorganic
matter—that, like man's affections and impulses,
the material world is also set by the dynamics
of a form of the will to power. At the core
of his theory is a rejection of atomism—the
idea that matter is composed of stable, indivisible
units (atoms). Instead, he seems to have accepted
the conclusions of Ruđer Bošković, who
explained the qualities of matter as a result
of an interplay of forces. One study of Nietzsche
defines his fully developed concept of the
will to power as "the element from which derive
both the quantitative difference of related
forces and the quality that devolves into
each force in this relation" revealing the
will to power as "the principle of the synthesis
of forces." Of such forces Nietzsche said
they could perhaps be viewed as a primitive
form of the will. Likewise he rejected as
a mere interpretation the view that the movement
of bodies is ruled by inexorable laws of nature,
positing instead that movement was governed
by the power relations between bodies and
forces. Other scholars disagree that Nietzsche
considered the material world to be a form
of the will to power: Nietzsche thoroughly
criticized metaphysics, and by including the
will to power in the material world, he would
simply be setting up a new metaphysics. Other
than aphorism 36 in Beyond Good and Evil,
where he raised a question regarding will
to power as being in the material world, it
was only in his notes (unpublished by himself),
where he wrote about a metaphysical will to
power. Nietzsche directed his landlord to
burn those notes in 1888 when he left Sils
Maria for the last time.
=== Eternal return ===
"Eternal return" (also known as "eternal recurrence")
is a hypothetical concept that posits that
the universe has been recurring, and will
continue to recur, in a self-similar form
for an infinite number of times across infinite
time or space. It is a purely physical concept,
involving no supernatural reincarnation, but
the return of beings in the same bodies. Nietzsche
first invokes the idea of eternal return in
a parable in Section 341 of The Gay Science,
and also in the chapter "Of the Vision and
the Riddle" in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, among
other places. Nietzsche contemplates the idea
as potentially "horrifying and paralyzing,"
and says that its burden is the "heaviest
weight" imaginable ("das schwerste Gewicht").
The wish for the eternal return of all events
would mark the ultimate affirmation of life,
a reaction to Schopenhauer's praise of denying
the will‐to‐live. To comprehend eternal
recurrence in his thought, and to not merely
come to peace with it but to embrace it, requires
amor fati, "love of fate". As Heidegger points
out in his lectures on Nietzsche, Nietzsche's
first mention of eternal recurrence presents
this concept as a hypothetical question rather
than postulating it as a fact. According to
Heidegger, it is the burden imposed by the
question of eternal recurrence—whether or
not such a thing could possibly be true—that
is so significant in modern thought: "The
way Nietzsche here patterns the first communication
of the thought of the 'greatest burden' [of
eternal recurrence] makes it clear that this
'thought of thoughts' is at the same time
'the most burdensome thought.'"Not only does
Nietzsche posit that the universe is recurring
over infinite time and space, but that the
different versions of events that have occurred
in the past may at one point or another take
place again, hence "all configurations that
have previously existed on this earth must
yet meet..." And with each version of events
is hoping that some knowledge or awareness
is gained to better the individual, hence
"And thus it will happen one day that a man
will be born again, just like me and a woman
will be born, just like Mary—only that it
is hoped to be that the head of this man may
contain a little less foolishness..."Alexander
Nehamas writes in Nietzsche: Life as Literature
of three ways of seeing the eternal recurrence:
"(A) My life will recur in exactly identical
fashion." This expresses a totally fatalistic
approach to the idea. "(B) My life may recur
in exactly identical fashion." This second
view conditionally asserts cosmology, but
fails to capture what Nietzsche refers to
in The Gay Science, 341. Finally, "(C) If
my life were to recur, then it could recur
only in identical fashion." Nehamas shows
that this interpretation exists totally independently
of physics and does not presuppose the truth
of cosmology. Nehamas draws the conclusion
that if individuals constitute themselves
through their actions, then they can only
maintain themselves in their current state
by living in a recurrence of past actions
(Nehamas 153). Nietzsche's thought is the
negation of the idea of a history of salvation.
=== Übermensch ===
Another concept important to an understanding
of Nietzsche's thought is the Übermensch
Developing the idea of nihilism, Nietzsche
wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra, therein introducing
the concept of a value-creating Übermensch,
not as a project, but as an anti-project,
the absence of any project. According to Lampert,
"the death of God must be followed by a long
twilight of piety and nihilism (II. 19; III.
8). Zarathustra's gift of the overman is given
to a mankind not aware of the problem to which
the overman is the solution." Zarathustra
presents the overman as the creator of new
values, and he appears as a solution to the
problem of the death of God and nihilism.
The overman does not follow morality of common
people since that favors mediocrity but instead
rises above the notion of good and evil and
above the "herd". In this way Zarathustra
proclaims his ultimate goal as the journey
towards the state of overman. He wants a kind
of spiritual evolution of self-awareness and
overcoming of traditional views on morality
and justice that stem from the superstition
beliefs still deeply rooted or related to
the notion of God and Christianity.While interpretations
of Nietzsche's overman vary wildly, here is
one of his quotations from Thus Spoke Zarathustra
(Prologue, §§3–4):
I teach you the overman. Man is something
that shall be overcome. What have you done
to overcome him?... All beings so far have
created something beyond themselves; and do
you want to be the ebb of this great flood,
and even go back to the beasts rather than
overcome man? What is ape to man? A laughing
stock or painful embarrassment. And man shall
be that to overman: a laughing stock or painful
embarrassment. You have made your way from
worm to man, and much in you is still worm.
Once you were apes, and even now, too, man
is more ape than any ape... The overman is
the meaning of the earth. Let your will say:
the overman shall be the meaning of the earth...
Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman—a
rope over an abyss ... what is great in man
is that he is a bridge and not an end.
Zarathustra contrasts the overman with the
last man of egalitarian modernity (most obvious
example being democracy), an alternative goal
humanity might set for itself. The last man
is possible only by mankind's having bred
an apathetic creature who has no great passion
or commitment, who is unable to dream, who
merely earns his living and keeps warm. This
concept appears only in Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
and is presented as a condition that would
render the creation of the overman impossible.Some
have suggested that the notion of eternal
return is related to the overman, since willing
the eternal return of the same is a necessary
step if the overman is to create new values,
untainted by the spirit of gravity or asceticism.
Values involve a rank-ordering of things,
and so are inseparable from approval and disapproval;
yet it was dissatisfaction that prompted men
to seek refuge in other-worldliness and embrace
other-worldly values. It could seem that the
overman, in being devoted to any values at
all, would necessarily fail to create values
that did not share some bit of asceticism.
Willing the eternal recurrence is presented
as accepting the existence of the low while
still recognizing it as the low, and thus
as overcoming the spirit of gravity or asceticism.
One must have the strength of the overman
in order to will the eternal recurrence; that
is, only the overman will have the strength
to fully accept all of his past life, including
his failures and misdeeds, and to truly will
their eternal return. This action nearly kills
Zarathustra, for example, and most human beings
cannot avoid other-worldliness because they
really are sick, not because of any choice
they made.
The Nazis tried to incorporate the concept
into their ideology. After his death, Elisabeth
Förster-Nietzsche became the curator and
editor of her brother's manuscripts. She reworked
Nietzsche's unpublished writings to fit her
own German nationalist ideology while often
contradicting or obfuscating Nietzsche's stated
opinions, which were explicitly opposed to
antisemitism and nationalism. Through her
published editions, Nietzsche's work became
associated with fascism and Nazism; 20th century
scholars contested this interpretation of
his work and corrected editions of his writings
were soon made available.
Although Nietzsche has famously been misrepresented
as a predecessor to Nazism, he criticized
anti-Semitism, pan-Germanism and, to a lesser
extent, nationalism. Thus, he broke with his
editor in 1886 because of his opposition to
his editor's anti-Semitic stances, and his
rupture with Richard Wagner, expressed in
The Case of Wagner and Nietzsche contra Wagner,
both of which he wrote in 1888, had much to
do with Wagner's endorsement of pan-Germanism
and anti-Semitism — and also of his rallying
to Christianity. In a March 29, 1887 letter
to Theodor Fritsch, Nietzsche mocked anti-Semites,
Fritsch, Eugen Dühring, Wagner, Ebrard, Wahrmund,
and the leading advocate of pan-Germanism,
Paul de Lagarde, who would become, along with
Wagner and Houston Chamberlain, the main official
influences of Nazism. This 1887 letter to
Fritsch ended by: "And finally, how do you
think I feel when the name Zarathustra is
mouthed by anti-Semites?"
=== Critique of mass culture ===
Friedrich Nietzsche held a pessimistic view
on modern society and culture. His views stand
against the concept of popular culture. He
believed the press and mass culture led to
conformity and brought about mediocrity. Nietzsche
saw a lack of intellectual progress, leading
to the decline of the human species. According
to Nietzsche, individuals needed to overcome
this form of mass culture. He believed some
people were able to become superior individuals
through the use of will power. By rising above
mass culture, society would produce higher,
brighter and healthier human beings.
== Reading and influence ==
A trained philologist, Nietzsche had a thorough
knowledge of Greek philosophy. He read Kant,
Plato, Mill, Schopenhauer and Spir, who became
his main opponents in his philosophy, and
later Baruch Spinoza, whom he saw as his "precursor"
in many respects but as a personification
of the "ascetic ideal" in others. However,
Nietzsche referred to Kant as a "moral fanatic",
Plato as "boring", Mill as a "blockhead",
and of Spinoza he said: "How much of personal
timidity and vulnerability does this masquerade
of a sickly recluse betray?" He likewise expressed
contempt for British author George Eliot.Nietzsche's
philosophy, while innovative and revolutionary,
was indebted to many predecessors. While at
Basel, Nietzsche offered lecture courses on
pre-Platonic philosophers for several years,
and the text of this lecture series has been
characterized as a "lost link" in the development
of his thought. "In it concepts such as the
will to power, the eternal return of the same,
the overman, gay science, self-overcoming
and so on receive rough, unnamed formulations
and are linked to specific pre-Platonics,
especially Heraclitus, who emerges as a pre-Platonic
Nietzsche." The pre-Socratic thinker Heraclitus
was known for the rejection of the concept
of being as a constant and eternal principle
of universe, and his embrace of "flux" and
incessant change. His symbolism of the world
as "child play" marked by amoral spontaneity
and lack of definite rules was appreciated
by Nietzsche. From his Heraclitean sympathy,
Nietzsche was also a vociferous detractor
of Parmenides, who opposed Heraclitus and
believed all world is a single Being with
no change at all.In his Egotism in German
Philosophy, Santayana claimed that Nietzsche's
whole philosophy was a reaction to Schopenhauer.
Santayana wrote that Nietzsche's work was
"an emendation of that of Schopenhauer. The
will to live would become the will to dominate;
pessimism founded on reflection would become
optimism founded on courage; the suspense
of the will in contemplation would yield to
a more biological account of intelligence
and taste; finally in the place of pity and
asceticism (Schopenhauer's two principles
of morals) Nietzsche would set up the duty
of asserting the will at all costs and being
cruelly but beautifully strong. These points
of difference from Schopenhauer cover the
whole philosophy of Nietzsche."Nietzsche expressed
admiration for 17th-century French moralists
such as La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère and
Vauvenargues, as well as for Stendhal. The
organicism of Paul Bourget influenced Nietzsche,
as did that of Rudolf Virchow and Alfred Espinas.
Nietzsche wrote in a letter in 1867 that he
was trying to improve his German style of
writing with the help of Lessing, Lichtenberg
and Schopenhauer. It was probably Lichtenberg
(along with Paul Rée) whose aphoristic style
of writing contributed to Nietzsche's own
use of aphorism instead of an essay. Nietzsche
early learned of Darwinism through Friedrich
Albert Lange. The essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
had a profound influence on Nietzsche, who
"loved Emerson from first to last", wrote
"Never have I felt so much at home in a book",
and called him "[the] author who has been
richest in ideas in this century so far."
Hippolyte Taine influenced Nietzsche's view
on Rousseau and Napoleon. Notably, he also
read some of the posthumous works of Charles
Baudelaire, Tolstoy's My Religion, Ernest
Renan's Life of Jesus and Fyodor Dostoyevsky's
Demons. Nietzsche called Dostoevsky "the only
psychologist from whom I have anything to
learn." While Nietzsche never mentions Max
Stirner, the similarities in their ideas have
prompted a minority of interpreters to suggest
a relationship between the two. In 1861 Nietzsche
wrote an enthusiastic essay on his "favorite
poet", Friedrich Hölderlin, mostly forgotten
at that time. He also expressed deep appreciation
for Stifter's Indian Summer, Byron's Manfred
and Twain's Tom Sawyer.
== Reception and legacy ==
Nietzsche's works did not reach a wide readership
during his active writing career. However,
in 1888 the influential Danish critic Georg
Brandes aroused considerable excitement about
Nietzsche through a series of lectures he
gave at the University of Copenhagen. In the
years after Nietzsche's death in 1900, his
works became better known, and readers have
responded to them in complex and sometimes
controversial ways. Many Germans eventually
discovered his appeals for greater individualism
and personality development in Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, but responded to them divergently.
He had some following among left-wing Germans
in the 1890s; in 1894–1895 German conservatives
wanted to ban his work as subversive. During
the late 19th century Nietzsche's ideas were
commonly associated with anarchist movements
and appear to have had influence within them,
particularly in France and the United States.
H. L. Mencken produced the first book on Nietzsche
in English in 1907, The Philosophy of Friedrich
Nietzsche, and in 1910 a book of translated
paragraphs from Nietzsche, increasing knowledge
of his philosophy in the United States. Nietzsche
is known today as a precursor to expressionism,
existentialism, and postmodernism.W. B. Yeats
and Arthur Symons described Nietzsche as the
intellectual heir to William Blake. Symons
went on to compare the ideas of the two thinkers
in The Symbolist Movement in Literature, while
Yeats tried to raise awareness of Nietzsche
in Ireland. A similar notion was espoused
by W. H. Auden who wrote of Nietzsche in his
New Year Letter (released in 1941 in The Double
Man): "O masterly debunker of our liberal
fallacies [...] all your life you stormed,
like your English forerunner Blake". Nietzsche
made an impact on composers during the 1890s.
Writer on music Donald Mitchell notes that
Gustav Mahler was "attracted to the poetic
fire of Zarathustra, but repelled by the intellectual
core of its writings." He also quotes Mahler
himself, and adds that he was influenced by
Nietzsche's conception and affirmative approach
to nature, which Mahler presented in his Third
Symphony using Zarathustra's roundelay. Frederick
Delius produced a piece of choral music, A
Mass of Life, based on a text of Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, while Richard Strauss (who also
based his Also sprach Zarathustra on the same
book), was only interested in finishing "another
chapter of symphonic autobiography". Famous
writers and poets influenced by Nietzsche
include André Gide, August Strindberg, Robinson
Jeffers, Pío Baroja, D. H. Lawrence, Edith
Södergran and Yukio Mishima.
Nietzsche was an early influence on the poetry
of Rainer Maria Rilke. Knut Hamsun counted
Nietzsche, along with Strindberg and Dostoyevsky,
as one of his primary influences. Author Jack
London wrote that he was more stimulated by
Nietzsche than by any other writer. Critics
have suggested that the character of David
Grief in A Son of the Sun was based on Nietzsche.
Nietzsche's influence on Muhammad Iqbal is
most evidenced in Asrar-i-Khudi (The Secrets
of the Self). Wallace Stevens was another
reader of Nietzsche, and elements of Nietzsche's
philosophy were found throughout Steven's
poetry collection Harmonium. Olaf Stapledon
was influenced by the idea of the Übermensch
and it is a central theme in his books Odd
John and Sirius. In Russia, Nietzsche has
influenced Russian symbolism and figures such
as Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Andrei Bely, Vyacheslav
Ivanov and Alexander Scriabin have all incorporated
or discussed parts of Nietzsche philosophy
in their works. Thomas Mann's novel Death
in Venice shows a use of Apollonian and Dionysian,
and in Doctor Faustus Nietzsche was a central
source for the character of Adrian Leverkühn.
Hermann Hesse, similarly, in his Narcissus
and Goldmund presents two main characters
in the sense of Apollonian and Dionysian as
the two opposite yet intertwined spirits.
Painter Giovanni Segantini was fascinated
by Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and he drew an
illustration for the first Italian translation
of the book. The Russian painter Lena Hades
created the oil painting cycle Also Sprach
Zarathustra dedicated to the book Thus Spoke
Zarathustra.By World War I, Nietzsche had
acquired a reputation as an inspiration for
both right-wing German militarism and leftist
politics. German soldiers received copies
of Thus Spoke Zarathustra as gifts during
World War I. The Dreyfus affair provides a
contrasting example of his reception: the
French antisemitic Right labelled the Jewish
and leftist intellectuals who defended Alfred
Dreyfus as "Nietzscheans". Nietzsche had a
distinct appeal for many Zionist thinkers
around the start of the 20th century, most
notable being Ahad Ha'am, Hillel Zeitlin,
Micha Josef Berdyczewski, A. D. Gordon and
Martin Buber, who went so far as to extoll
Nietzsche as a "creator" and "emissary of
life". Chaim Weizmann was a great admirer
of Nietzsche; the first president of Israel
sent Nietzsche's books to his wife, adding
a comment in a letter that "This was the best
and finest thing I can send to you." Israel
Eldad, the ideological chief of the Stern
Gang that fought the British in Palestine
in the 1940s, wrote about Nietzsche in his
underground newspaper and later translated
most of Nietzsche's books into Hebrew. Eugene
O'Neill remarked that Zarathustra influenced
him more than any other book he ever read.
He also shared Nietzsche's view of tragedy.
Plays The Great God Brown and Lazarus Laughed
are an example of Nietzsche's influence on
O'Neill. Nietzsche's influence on the works
of Frankfurt School philosophers Max Horkheimer
and Theodor W. Adorno can be seen in the popular
Dialectic of Enlightenment. Adorno summed
up Nietzsche's philosophy as expressing the
"humane in a world in which humanity has become
a sham."Nietzsche's growing prominence suffered
a severe setback when his works became closely
associated with Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.
Many political leaders of the twentieth century
were at least superficially familiar with
Nietzsche's ideas, although it is not always
possible to determine whether they actually
read his work. It is debated among scholars
whether Hitler read Nietzsche, although if
he did his reading of him may not have been
extensive. He was a frequent visitor to the
Nietzsche museum in Weimar and did use expressions
of Nietzsche's, such as "lords of the earth"
in Mein Kampf. The Nazis made selective use
of Nietzsche's philosophy. Mussolini, Charles
de Gaulle and Huey P. Newton read Nietzsche.
Richard Nixon read Nietzsche with "curious
interest," and his book Beyond Peace might
have taken its title from Nietzsche's book
Beyond Good and Evil which Nixon read beforehand.
Bertrand Russell wrote that Nietzsche had
exerted great influence on philosophers and
on people of literary and artistic culture,
but warned that the attempt to put Nietzsche's
philosophy of aristocracy into practice could
only be done by an organization similar to
the Fascist or the Nazi party.A decade after
World War II, there was a revival of Nietzsche's
philosophical writings thanks to exhaustive
translations and analyses by Walter Kaufmann
and R. J. Hollingdale. Others, well known
philosophers in their own right, wrote commentaries
on Nietzsche's philosophy, including Martin
Heidegger, who produced a four-volume study,
and Lev Shestov, who wrote a book called Dostoyevski,
Tolstoy and Nietzsche where he portrays Nietzsche
and Dostoyevski as the "thinkers of tragedy".
Georg Simmel compares Nietzsche's importance
to ethics to that of Copernicus for cosmology.
Sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies read Nietzsche
avidly from his early life, and later frequently
discussed many of his concepts in his own
works. Nietzsche has influenced philosophers
such as Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Oswald
Spengler, George Grant, Emil Cioran, Albert
Camus, Ayn Rand, Jacques Derrida, Leo Strauss,
Max Scheler, Michel Foucault and Bernard Williams.
Camus described Nietzsche as "the only artist
to have derived the extreme consequences of
an aesthetics of the absurd". Paul Ricœur
called Nietzsche one of the masters of the
"school of suspicion", alongside Karl Marx
and Sigmund Freud. Carl Jung was also influenced
by Nietzsche. In Memories, Dreams, Reflections,
a biography transcribed by his secretary,
he cites Nietzsche as a large influence. Aspects
of Nietzsche's philosophy, especially his
ideas of the self and his relation to society,
also run through much of late-twentieth and
early twenty-first century thought. His deepening
of the romantic-heroic tradition of the nineteenth
century, for example, as expressed in the
ideal of the "grand striver" appears in the
work of thinkers from Cornelius Castoriadis
to Roberto Mangabeira Unger. For Nietzsche
this grand striver overcomes obstacles, engages
in epic struggles, pursues new goals, embraces
recurrent novelty, and transcends existing
structures and contexts. No social or cultural
construct can contain this idealized individual.
== Works ==
The Birth of Tragedy (1872)
On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873)
Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks
(1873)
Untimely Meditations (1876)
Human, All Too Human (1878)
The Dawn (1881)
The Gay Science (1882)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883)
Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
The Case of Wagner (1888)
Twilight of the Idols (1888)
The Antichrist (1888)
Ecce Homo (1888; first published in 1908)
Nietzsche contra Wagner (1888)
The Will to Power (various unpublished manuscripts
edited by his sister Elisabeth; not recognized
as a unified work after ca 1960)
== See also ==
Anarchism and Friedrich Nietzsche
The Ascent of Man
Difference (poststructuralism)
Dionysos
Friedrich Nietzsche and free will
Genealogy (philosophy)
== References ==
=== Works cited ===
== Further reading ==
== External links ==
Entry on Nietzsche at the Encyclopædia Britannica
Nietzsche's brief autobiography
Works by Friedrich Nietzsche at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Friedrich Nietzsche at Internet
Archive
Works by Friedrich Nietzsche at LibriVox (public
domain audiobooks)
Publications by and about Friedrich Nietzsche
in the catalogue Helveticat of the Swiss National
Library
Wilkerson, Dale. "Friedrich Nietzsche". Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Jensen, Anthony
K. "Nietzsche's Philosophy of History". Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Wicks, Robert (14 November 2007). "Friedrich
Nietzsche". In Zalta, Edward N. Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy.Leiter, Brian (27 July 2007).
"Nietzsche's Moral and Political Philosophy".
In Zalta, Edward N. Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy.
Nietzsche Source: Digital version of the German
critical edition of the complete works and
Digital facsimile edition of the entire Nietzsche
estate
Lexido: Searchable Database index of Public
Domain editions of all Nietzsche's major works
Friedrich Nietzsche at Curlie
Free scores by Friedrich Nietzsche at the
International Music Score Library Project
(IMSLP)
Timeline of German Philosophers
Walter Kaufmann 1960 Prof. Nietzsche and the
Crisis in Philosophy Audio
Kierans, Kenneth (2010). "On the Unity of
Nietzsche's Philosophy" (PDF). Animus. 14.
ISSN 1209-0689. Retrieved 17 August 2011.
Brian Leiter's Nietzsche Blog: News, polls,
and discussion about Nietzsche and current
events in Nietzsche scholarship from Brian
Leiter (University of Chicago).
Burkhart Brückner, Robin Pape: Biography
of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche in: Biographical
Archive of Psychiatry (BIAPSY).
Newspaper clippings about Friedrich Nietzsche
in the 20th Century Press Archives of the
German National Library of Economics (ZBW)
