(1844-1900) philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche was born in Rocken, Germany, to Karl Ludwig Nietzsche, a Protestant pastor, and Franziska Nietzsche. Karl Ludwig died when his son was only five. The family moved to Naumburg, where Nietzsche attended Domgym-nasium, a private preparatory school connected with a cathedral. At Domgymnasium, Nietzsche demonstrated great potential as a scholar and was consequently offered a scholarship to Schulpforta, the most famous high school in all of Germany. Nietzsche attended Schulpforta for six years; he was considered to be one of the best students in his class. Although he apparently failed a mathematics class in his final year of studies and jeopardized his graduation, in Robert Holub’s 1995 biography, a teacher is quoted in defense of Nietzsche: “Do you wish perhaps that we allow the most gifted student that the school had since I have been here to fail?”
After graduating from Schulpforta in 1864, Nietzsche studied classical philology at the University of Bonn and the University of Leipzig. While studying at both universities, Nietzsche was influenced by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The philosophical works that Nietzsche wrote later in his life were in many ways a response to Schopenhauer’s philosophical ideas. In 1867, Nietzsche interrupted his studies for compulsory military service, but was declared unfit for duty in 1868 after falling off a horse. While recovering from the injury, he was befriended by the famous composer Richard Wagner and his wife, who became his mentors.
In 1869, at age 24, Nietzsche was appointed as a professor of classical philology at the University of Basel, Switzerland, where he remained for the next 10 years. The appointment was quite unusual because he never completed his dissertation. To accept this position, he had to renounce his Prussian citizenship and, because he never became a citizen of Switzerland, he remained a person without a country for the rest of his life. In 1870, at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, he enlisted in the Germany army as a medical orderly, but he contracted diphtheria and had to resign the post.
Critical Analysis
During the 1870s, Nietzsche became progressively dissatisfied with his work as a philologist. Although he remained at the University of Basel until 1879, he contributed very little to classical philology. In 1872, he published A Birth of Tragedy, which Robert Holub calls “an odd mixture of classical philology, half-baked enthusiasm for Schopenhauer, and Wagner veneration.” Using little philological evidence, Nietzsche attempted to connect the rise of tragedy with a coupling of Dionysian and Apollonian principles, to hinge the downfall of tragedy to rational thinking, and to present Richard Wagner as the renovator of German tragic art. His colleagues greeted The Birth of Tragedy with disparagement and perplexity, finding little relevance to philology in the work.
Nietzsche, suffering from numerous health problems and, utterly disappointed with his career as a philologist, retired from the university in 1879. With much more success, he turned his energy to cultural criticism, particularly focusing on the role of Christianity in the formation of Western ideas about psychology and social behavior. Human, All Too Human (1878-80) is the first published work in which he defends his famed perspectivism, the view that truths and all interpretations are formulated from particular perspectives. He claimed that, contrary to the claims of moralist theory, morality is not inherent in or determined by reality; it is, in fact, the invention of human beings. Moreover, Nietzsche sets morality against historical background, describing how the view of morality changed over time. The work explicitly contrasts Christian and Greek moral thought, typically claiming that Greek thought had been vastly superior.
Nietzsche further elaborates his critique of Christian morality in Daybreak (1881). In this work, he claims that Christianity somehow reshapes our notion of morality by implicating psychological guilt and constantly seeking spiritual reassurances—both acts that are destructive to the psychological and social health of society. In his famous work The Gay Science (1882), Nietzsche makes his perhaps most famous statement, proclaiming the death of God. Nietzsche once again renounces the Christian doctrine of afterlife and proposes an alternative system in which an individual should appreciate this life in its aesthetic terms. He suggests that ideal is the full experience of one’s life, with all the turns of fate and flaws. Furthermore, he proposes the doctrine of eternal recurrence in this work: a concept that describes time as circular rather than linear, in which cyclical events recur over and over again.
Needless to say, Nietzsche’s profound atheism was viewed as disturbing by his contemporaries. Yet, Nietzsche secured a small following, especially among the young members of the intelligentsia, with the publication of his major work Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-94). The work, a combination of poetry, prose, and epigrams, describes the journey of Zarathustra who comes down from a mountain after years of meditation to offer his thoughts to the world. The work, structured as a parody of the Bible, praises all things denounced by Christian teachings, such as vanity, war, cruelty, and pure aestheticism. The work, often described as a culmination of Nietzsche’s philosophical career but which breaks with conventional philosophical discourse, is his most widely read and appreciated work. Although Thus Spake Zarathus-tra was not widely appreciated during Nietzsche’s lifetime, it influenced generations of philosophers and artists after his death.
Late in his life, Nietzsche remained a prolific writer. He lived in seclusion in Italy and Switzerland, maintaining very few contacts. In 1889, he suffered a complete nervous breakdown after witnessing a brutal beating of a horse on a street in Turin. He was transferred from clinic to clinic for the next 10 years, but, unable to work or recover his health, he finally died just as his popularity began to spread all over the world.
Today, Nietzsche is remembered as one of the most influential philosophers and writers of the 19th century. His works were translated into virtually every major language around the world. Nietzsche questioned the accepted notions of morality and values in the context of Christianity to emphasize the importance of the material, aesthetic world. It is not surprising that many artists found his message attractive and powerful. Many of his works are still read, discussed, and debated in universities all over the world.
Other Works by Friedrich Nietzsche
The Anti-Christ. Translated by H. L. Mencken. London: Sharp Press, 1999.
Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer. Translated by Duncan Large. Oxford: oxford University Press, 1998. The Will to Power. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House, 1987.
Works about Friedrich Nietzsche
Holub, Robert. Friedrich Nietzsche. Boston: Twayne, 1995.
Kauffman, Walter. Basic Writings ofNietzsche. New York: Random House, 1968.
Safransky, Rudiger. Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography. New York: Norton, 2001.
