Nietzsche
NAME:
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
NICKNAME/ALIAS:
None
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH:
15 October 1844, Rocken, nr Leipzig, Germany
DATE AND PLACE OF DEATH AND AGE AT DEATH:
25 August 1900, Weimar, Germany. Aged 56
CATEGORY:
Philosopher
PROFESSIONAL/CRAFT ORGANISATION:
Philosophy
LANGUAGE:
German
PARENTS:
Father: Karl Ludwig Nietzsche
Mother: Franziska Oehler
SIBLINGS:
1 brother: Joseph
1 sister: Elizabeth
SPOUSE:
None
CHILDREN:
None
EDUCATION:
Local schools, Naumburg
Secondary school, Pforta
University of Bonn
University of Leipzig
ACHIEVEMENTS:
Philosophical writings
MAJOR WORK:
"Thus Spake Zarathustra" (1883-4)
LIFE AND TIMES:
In 1864 Nietzche went to the University of Bonn to study theology, although he had already given up his Christian faith and his main interest was poetry and music. After ten months he left Bonn for Leipzig University where he studied philology for four years, interrupted by a year's military service.
Soon after going to Leipzig he discovered the philosopher, <influenced by> Schopenhauer's* book "The World as Will and Idea". Nietzsche took his notion of the primacy of the will from Schopenhauer.
In 1868 Nietzsche heard a performance of "Tristan and Isolde" and was overwhelmed by feelings of excitement and awe. A few days later he met <father figure was> Wagner* and was similarly overwhelmed.
Nietzsche took Swiss nationality and became the professor of classical philology at Basel University. He was twenty-four years old and accepted the job in a spirit of fatalism because he had no other prospect of income. He remained in the post for the next ten years. He discovered that he was a talented teacher and could inspire the enthusiasm of his students.
During the Franco-Prussian war he got leave to go and serve in the medical services with the Prussian forces in August 1870. He worked as a nursing orderly treating casualties at the front (Erlangen, Luneville, and Nancy among other places) for a short time before becoming ill and returning to Basel in November 1870.
He had his first spell of serious illness in 1871, with migraines and periods of extreme exhaustion necessitating leave of absence. He was a frequent visitor to the Wagner family at Trebischen above Lake Lucerne. At Christmas 1870 he was one of a small house party who heard the first performance of the "Siegried Idyll". Wagner became a father figure and Nietzsche a devoted follower.
Nietzsche was also influenced by the evolutionary theory of <influenced by> Charles Darwin*. He accepted the theory which, for Nietzsche, meant that there was no organising force in the universe and that "the total nature of the world", he wrote, was "to all eternity, chaos". His view was essentially pessimistic because he felt that the lack of a god or an organizing force implied a lack of meaning in life.
In 1872 his first book "The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music" was published. It was heavily influenced by Wagner, and Nietzsche declared that its real object was to show the affinity between Wagner and Greek tragedy and the hope that Wagner's music dramas would signal rebirth of the tragedy.
In 1879, after period of severe migraines and a collapse in his health, he resigned from Basle University. He never settled in one place again, travelling in Switzerland and Germany and staying for periods in Genoa, Nice, Venice, Turin and spending several winters in a single room he kept in the house of the Burgermaster in an Alpine village (Sils-Maria in the Ober-Engadine). He lived in lodgings and hotel rooms and travelled only with one large trunk of clothes and papers.
He wrote several works, full of psychological insight, which are sometimes called aphoristic works, because he used the aphorism so much and to such good effect. Writing became a compulsion for Nietzsche. Among these are "Human, All Too Human" - his view of a reality which exists without the framework of abstract ideas. In it, he looks at what man has in common with animals: a desire for power.
In 1881 "Dawn" was published and in 1882 "The Gay Science". These works were based on the lack of a metaphysical world and Nietzsche postulated that morality in itself does not exist - it comes first through custom, and this is the origin of civilization. Morality is obedience to custom, nothing more.
Despite his constant travelling, Nietzsche spoke often of wanting to find a wife. In 1882, he became involved with <affair with> Salome*, a beautiful and unconventional young Russian. Nietzsche's friend Paul Ree was also in love with her. For a time the three of them shared their lives but Ree and Salome eventually left Nietzsche on his own. He ended 1882 in depression and ill health. The relationship and its ending, stimulated Nietzsche to write a work which would set out his world view.
In 1883 he published the first two parts of "Thus Spake Zarathustra" and in 1884 the third part. Although this is now the work for which Nietzsche is probably best known, it was created little interest at the time.
In "Zarathustra", he sets out the theories he had now reached, of which the first was that all actions are motivated by a desire for power. He called this the 'will to power.' He saw Darwinian struggle as the will to power. Will had to be sublimated or overcome. From this stand, Nietzsche went on to say that great evil was better than weakness if the energy involved in evil were sublimated or overcome, then more good would come out of it. Good was sublimated by evil, therefore evil had a value.
The book also introduced the superman: he who overcame the will to power, who achieved in himself what nations had once achieved when they raised themselves from the level of the animal herd. The difference between man and animals, Nietszche claimed, was that all creatures desired power but only man was able to desire power over himself. The superman was a passionate man who could employ his passions creatively. (This was the first use of “sublimation” in the modern sense).
Instead of eternal life Nietszche postulated the idea of the eternal recurrence. The idea of a metaphysical reality was simply an idea that recurred in the phenomenal world and there would be no breakthrough to another level of reality because, however deep we went, we could not get escape from the world of phenomena. Instead of worshipping gods in a mythical heaven, man should concentrate on his own elevation.
Nietzsche developed these ideas in "Beyond God and Evil" in 1886, "Towards a Genealogy of Morals" in 1887 and "The Twilight of the Idols" in 1889.
Throughout 1888 he was feeling in much better health and having intense feelings of euphoria. He wrote six short works in this year. However, his bursts of euphoria were the signs that he was becoming seriously ill.
In January 1889, he was taken to a clinic in Jena and was diagnosed with a general paralysis suffered by the insane and caused by syphilitic infection. He never recovered his rationality and died eleven years later at his sister's house in Weimar.
ASSESSMENT: During the twentieth century, he influenced many people including the Existentialists and the early founders of psychoanalysis.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: He influenced <influenced> Shaw*
His ideas were misused by <ideas misused by> Hitler*
He was an admirer of <a fan of> Strindberg*
He was a close friend of <a pal of> Cosima von Bulow*
He inspired <inspired> Sinclair*, <inspired> Mann*
He met <met> Mazzini*
He was influenced by <influenced by> La Rochefoucauld*
<written about by> Mencken* wrote about him
His favorite composer was <favorite composer was> Robert Schumann*.
ONELINER: FW Nietszche, major nineteenth-century philosopher
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Hollingdale, R. J., Nietzsche, The Man and His Philosophy, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1965
Kaufmann, Walter, Nietzsche, Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1974