NIETZSCHE

THE NIHILIST (1844 - 1900)

"God is dead."

Overview Friedrich Nietzsche was a German classical scholar and philosopher of the late nineteenth century whose works have had a powerful influence on modern thought and literature. Nietzsche approaches the human condition from the point of view of a cultural historian. His ideas encompassed newly developed concepts in evolutionary biology, anthropology and psychology. He analyses the past and postulates an alternative future, often in prophetic and poetic language. He regarded his own time as degenerate and speculates about a new human ideal, anubermensch - an overman or superman, driven by a will to power. Nietzsche condemns all attempts by philosophy to identify absolute truths. He rejects all morality, but especially Christian morality, proposing instead an extreme form of ethical relativismwhich denies human accountability for any action. Each thinking individual should have the courage to develop his own good and evil, become his own law-giver. MAJOR WORKS

"The Birth of Tragedy" (1872) "Thoughts out of Season" (1873-76) "Thus spoke Zarathustra" (1883-84; 1885) "Human, All Too Human" (1886) "Beyond Good and Evil" (1886) "Daybreak" (1886) "On the Genealogy of Morals" (1887) "The Twilight of the Idols" (1889) "The Anti-Christ" (1895) "Ecce Homo" (pub 1908)

Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900

(Full name Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) German philosopher, philologist, poet, and autobiographer. The following entry presents an overview of Nietzsche's career.

INTRODUCTION

Nietzsche is considered one of the greatest philosophers of the modern era. Largely ignored and misunderstood during his lifetime, Nietzsche's revolutionary style of thinking and writing influenced a wide variety of twentieth-century disciplines, including psychoanalysis, existentialism, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. Trained as a classical philologist, Nietzsche's insight into the origins of ancient Greek culture provided the foundation for his critique of traditional philosophy. While he never achieved a systematic formulation of his ideas, Nietzsche's insights into the veiled motives of philosophy and morality inaugurated a wellspring of discoveries about the psychological, existential, and linguistic bases of human existence.

Biographical Information

Nietzsche was born in Rocken, Prussia, to a devout Lutheran couple. After considering and rejecting the study of theology, in 1865 he entered the University of Leipzig, where he concentrated on classical philology. Nietzsche acquired a reputation as a prodigy in his field, and though he had not yet finished his doctoral thesis, he was appointed as an associate professor at the University of Basel at the age of twenty-four. During this period, Nietzsche discovered the works of Arthur Schopenhauer, made the acquaintance of Richard Wagner, and published his first book, Die Geburt der Trago'die aus dem Geiste der Musik (The Birth of Tragedy). Nietzsche suffered chronically from numerous physical ailments, including severe headaches, gastrointestinal problems and partial blindness, and in 1879 he resigned his post at the university. With his retirement from teaching, Nietzsche devoted himself exclusively to the development of his philosophy. In 1889 he suffered a mental breakdown and partial paralysis. His condition gradually worsened over the ensuing decade. Nietzsche died in 1900.

Major Works
Many critics maintain that Nietzsche's works reflect three periods of development. The first, from 1872 to 1876, is exemplified by The Birth of Tragedy, in which Nietzsche contends that tragic drama and early Greek philosophy resulted from the interplay of Dionysian and Apollonian forces. Unzeitgemdsse Betrachtungen (Untimely Meditations) advances Nietzsche's thesis that metaphysical reasoning is a symptom of decadence, though with respect to German culture in the 1870s. In the second period, from 1878 to 1882, Nietzsche began to use an aphoristic style of writing to accommodate his radically skeptical and experimental mode of thinking. In such works as Die Morgenrilte (The Dawn) and Die Frdhliche Wissenschaft (The Gay Science), Nietzsche began to probe psychological phenomena and to describe the functions of the unconscious. His analysis of Christian virtue as a sublimated drive for power and a symptom of "slave morality" foreshadowed the more rigorous formulation of the will to power in his later works. In The Gay Science Nietzsche also

unveiled his dictum "God is dead," which metaphorically expresses the meaning of nihilism. The final period was initiated by Nietzsche's masterwork, Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra), a stylistic tour de force which embodies the central themes of Nietzsche's philosophy, particularly the eternal recurrence of the same. After the publication of Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche sought to disseminate his doctrines in a more accessible form in Jenseits von Gut und Bdse (Beyond Good and Evil) and Zur Genealogie der Moral (On The Genealogy of Morals). While he drafted plans for a magnum opus, variously titled The Will to Power or The Revaluation of All Values, he was either unwilling or unable to systematize his philosophy, and he abandoned the project. Nietzsche did, however, produce three important works in the year before his breakdown. In Die Gtzendaimmerung (The Twilight of the Idols) Nietzsche formulated in his most succinct and penetrating style his opposition to metaphysical thinking, demonstrating that Platonic doctrines constitute the source of European nihilism. Der Antichrist (The Antichrist) is vitriolic and uneven, but also a profoundly insightful polemic against Christianity as a nihilistic religion. Ecce Homo is Nietzsche's unorthodox attempt at autobiography. Boastful to the point of megalomania, it nevertheless exhibits profound psychological insight and styistic brilliance.

Critical Reception
While Nietzsche is now considered one of the greatest philosophers in history, his works were frequently denigrated by early commentators who objected to his "unphilosophical" use of aphorisms and irony. His professional isolation began with the bold but poorly documented insights of The Birth of Tragedy, which was scorned by a majority of classical scholars. By the turn of the century, however, Nietzsche's works began to generate considerable enthusiasm in literary circles, well in advance of his philosophical reception. Such authors as Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, and George Bernard Shaw embraced Nietzsche as a prophet of antihumanist modernism. Serious consideration of the strictly philosophical aspects of his work did not appear until the advent of psychoanalysis and existentialism, though the taint of its association with Nazi ideology prevented a more widespread acceptance. This situation was radically altered in 1961, with the publication of Heidegger's four-volume study of Nietzsche, which outlined the central themes of his philosophy and asserted that Nietzsche's critique of traditional thought and value was at once the end point and culmination of Western metaphysics. During the 1960s Nietzsche became a central touchstone for such thinkers as Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, who detected in his revolutionary experiments with style a proto-deconstructionist understanding of language and conceptual reason. Since then, the rehabilitation of Nietzsche's reputation has continued unabated, with a torrent of studies from such diverse perspectives as feminism, Marxism, hermeneutics, and poststructuralism, and

Nietzsche is commonly linked with Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud as a principal architect of the modern intellectual landscape.

Source: Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, 1995 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE - BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books:
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Ecce homo: Wie man wird, was man ist. 1908. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Ecce homo: Wie man wird, was man ist. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. November 1, 2005. Paperback, 144 pages, Language German, ISBN: 3423342498. Nietzsche, Friedrich and Walter Kaufmann (Editor and Translator). On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo.Vintage. December 17, 1989. Paperback, 384 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0679724621. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Der Antichrist. 1895. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Der Antichrist. Nikol Verlags-GmbH. January 2008. Hardcover, 148 pages, Language German, ISBN: 3937872736. Nietzsche, Friedrich. "The Antichrist" in: Nietzsche, Fredrich and Walter Kaufmann (Editor). Basic Writings of Nietzsche. Random House. 2000. Paperback, 862 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0679783393. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Gtzen-Dmmerung, oder Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert. 1888. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Gtzen-Dmmerung, oder Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert. Insel. April 1, 2000. Paperback, Language German, ISBN: 3458343806. Nietzsche, Friedrich. "Twilight of the Idols, or How One Philosophizes with a Hammer" in: Nietzsche, Friedrich and Walter Kaufmann. The Portable Nietzsche. Penguin Books. January 27, 1977. Paperback, 704 pages, Language English, ISBN:0140150625. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Der Fall Wagner, Ein Musikanten-Problem. 1888. Nietzsche, Friedrich. "Der Fall Wagner, Ein Musikanten-Problem": in Nietzsche, Friedrich and Giorgio Colli (Editor) and Mazzino Montinari. Der Fall Wagner. Gtzen- Dmmerung. Der Antichrist. Ecce homo. Dionysos- Dithyramben. Nietzsche contra Wagner. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. November 1, 1999. Nietzsche, Friedrich. "The Case of Wagner" in: Nietzsche, Fredrich and Walter Kaufmann (Editor). Basic Writings of Nietzsche. Random House. 2000. Paperback, 862 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0679783393. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Zur Genealogie der Moral, Eine Streitschrift. 1887. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Zur Genealogie der Moral, Eine Streitschrift. Reclam Ditzingen. 1988. Paperback, Language German, ISBN: 3150071232. Nietzsche, Friedrich and Walter Kaufmann (Editor and Translator). On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo.Vintage. December 17, 1989. Paperback, 384 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0679724621. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Die Geburt der Tragdie, Oder: Griechentum und Pessimismus. 1886. Nietzsche, Friedrich. "The Birth of Tragedy Or: Hellenism And Pessimism: New Edition With An Attempt at a Self Criticism." in: Nietzsche, Fredrich and Walter Kaufmann (Editor). Basic Writings of Nietzsche. Random House. 2000. Paperback, 862 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0679783393. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Jenseits von Gut und Bse. Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft. 1886. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Jenseits von Gut und Bse. Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft. Ditzingen Reclam. 1988. Paperback, 239 pages, Language German, ISBN: 3150071143. Nietzsche, Friedrich and Walter Kaufmann (Translator and Editor). Beyond Good and Evil. Vintage. December 17, 1989. Paperback, 288 pages, Language English, ISBN:0679724656. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Also sprach Zarathustra. 1883-5. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Also sprach Zarathustra. Anaconda. March 31, 2005. Hardcover, 256 pages, Language German, ISBN: 3938484217. Nietzsche, Friedrich and Robert Pippin (Editor) and Adrian Del Caro (Translator). Thus Spoke Zarathustra.Cambridge University Press. July 17, 2006. Paperback, 316 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0521602610.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Die Frhliche Wissenschaft. 1882. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Die Frhliche Wissenschaft. Ditzingen Reclam. January 2000. Paperback, 325 pages, Language German, ISBN: 3150071151. Nietzsche, Friedrich and Bernard Williams (Editor) and Josefine Nauckhoff (Translator) and Adrian Del Caro (Translator). The Gay Science. Cambridge University Press. November 2001. Paperback, 308 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0521636450. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Morgenrte. Gedanken ber die moralischen Vorurteile. 1881. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Morgenrte. Gedanken ber die moralischen Vorurteile. Insel Verlag. March 1, 1983. Paperback, 319 pages, Language German, ISBN: 3458323783. Nietzsche, Friedrich and J. M. Kennedy (Translator). The Dawn of Day. Dover Publications. June 5, 2007. Paperback, 416 pages, Language English, ISBN:0486457249. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Der Wanderer und sein Schatten. 1880. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Der Wanderer und sein Schatten. Gruyter. January 1, 1934. Unknown Binding, Language German, ASIN: B002KFID0C. Nietzsche, Friedrich. "The Wanderer and his Shadow" in: Nietzsche, Friedrich and Walter Kaufmann. The Portable Nietzsche. Penguin Books. January 27, 1977. Paperback, 704 pages, Language English, ISBN:0140150625. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Vermischte Meinungen und Sprche. 1879. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Nietzsches Werke Klassiker-Ausgabe Dritter Band: Menschliches Allzumenschliches I, Vermischte Meinungen und Sprche. Alfred Krner Verlag. 1922. Hardcover, Language German, ASIN: B002FDDPWU. Nietzsche, Friedrich. "Mixed opinions and aphorisms" in: Nietzsche, Fredrich and Walter Kaufmann (Editor). Basic Writings of Nietzsche. Random House. 2000. Paperback, 862 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0679783393. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Menschliches, Allzumenschliches. Ein Buch fr freie Geister. 1878-1880. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Menschliches, Allzumenschliches. Ein Buch fr freie Geister. Anaconda. January 31, 2006. Hardcover, 639 pages, Language German, ISBN: 3866470002. Nietzsche, Friedrich and R. J. Hollingdale (Editor) and Richard Schacht (Introduction). Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits. Cambridge University Press. November 13, 1996. paperback, 430 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0521567041. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Unzeitgeme Betrachtungen. 1873-1876. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Unzeitgeme Betrachtungen. Insel Verlag. February 2, 1981. Paperback, 387 pages, Language German, ISBN: 3458322094. Nietzsche, Friedrich and Daniel Breazeale (Editor) and R. J. Hollingdale (Translator). Untimely Meditations.Cambridge University Press. November 13, 1997. Paperback, 328 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0521585848. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Die Geburt der Tragdie aus dem Geiste der Musik. 1872. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Die Geburt der Tragdie aus dem Geiste der Musik. Insel Verlag. April 18, 2000. Paperback, 219 pages, Language German. ISBN: 3458343792. Nietzsche, Friedrich and Michael Tanner (Editor) and Shaun Whiteside (Translator). The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music. Penguin Classics. January 1, 1994. Paperback, 160 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0140433392. Nietzsche, Friedrich. ber Wahrheit und Lge im auermoralischen Sinn. Unpublished. 1873. Nietzsche, Friedrich. On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense. Language English.

Collected Works:
Nietzsche, Fredrich and Walter Kaufmann (Editor). Basic Writings of Nietzsche. Random House. 2000. Paperback, 862 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0679783393. Nietzsche, Friedrich and Walter Kaufmann. The Portable Nietzsche. Penguin Books. January 27, 1977. Paperback, 704 pages, Language English, ISBN:0140150625. Nietzsche, Friedrich and Walter Kaufmann (Editor and Translator) and R.J. Hollingdale (Translator). The Will to Power. Vintage. August 12, 1968. Paperback, 608 pages, Language English, ISBN: 394704371.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

1844 - 1900

German philosopher and poet whose wide-ranging theories of morality and human behaviour have been some of the most influential of the past centuries
Both a philosopher and a poet, who was appointed a professorship at an alarmingly early age. In 1889 he suffered from ill health and resigned from this position after a mental breakdown, from which he never properly recovered. He wrote about many ideas, though the most famous are the avowal of the Superhuman, the doctrine of power, and the dismissal of Christian morality as the morality of a slave.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Overview

Nietzsche was a splendidly impassioned writer who denounced social beliefs as empty fictions. Much of the work may have been a reaction to cramped personal circumstances, but the brilliance of Nietzsche's insights, and his championing ofaesthetics as an alternative to pallid rationalism continues to be influential in continental thought, not least in literary theory.

In tr od u ction

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) had no formal philosophic training but was a philologist a brilliant philologist, becoming professor of philology at Basle when 24. He published The Birth of Tragedyin the year of his retirement from the university on the grounds of ill-health in 1879, and then a handful of subsequently very influential books until madness overtook him in 1889. Nietzsche was not an philosopher on the Anglo-American pattern. He set out no carefully-argued position, nor composed any all-embracing system. His writing, with its cultural preoccupations, sweeping generalizations and attack on rationalism, is as much psychology, social comment and literature as philosophy. His first book distinguished two strains in Greek art, the reflective Apollonian and the rhapsodic Dionysian. The Human, All Too Human of 1878

was a volume of aphorisms and reflections. This style of thinking he developed further in Thus Spoke Zarathrusta (1883-5), Beyond Good and Evil(1886), On the Genealogy of Morals (1887) and finally a great mass of work in 1888 that were subsequently published as The Will to Power {1}
Nietzs che 's Th ou g ht

Nietzsche came of age in the disillusion that followed the failure of the 1848 revolutions. Philosophy had lost its direction, failing to emancipate European thought from eighteenth century dogmatism, and Nietzsche was not content to seek consolation in academic study. He had either to make rationalism more cogent and persuasive to a capitalist society, or reject rationalism altogether. He chose the latter. Nietzsche championed the wild, the irrational, the aristocratic individual with strength to follow his impulses. Given the autonomous, threefold categories of post-Kantian thought art, knowledge and morality Nietzsche inflated art, making an aesthetics to challenge logic and the slave mentality of the masses. {2} Many of society's deepest beliefs in law, religion, philosophy, and culture are fictions, declared Nietzsche. Possibly necessary for society's sense of wellbeing and common purpose, they nonetheless rest only on convention. The strong man will reject such secondhand notions, fashioning his own morality and purpose. No one can establish everything for himself, and the authentic man will take responsibility for what he does accept rather than excuse himself by quoting authorities or pointing to the incomplete nature of his investigations. The search for knowledge is commonly a search for power, and absolute truth is unobtainable, a dream of academic establishments. mathematics . science in particular led to barbarism, and the twentieth century would exact a terrible price for the unexamined optimism of its promoters. Like Schopenhauer, whose will to live he made into his Will to Power, Nietzsche was a pessimist. Life was boring, trivial, shallow, and had been since Greek rationalism and Christianity forgiveness. Greek tragedy had once given a deep-rooted sense of significance to life. By combining the terrifying Dionysian aspect of lawlessness with Apollonian control, the Greeks had created great works of art that enable societies "to look into the abyss". Socrates and Plato had destroyed all that, promoting reason as one true panacea, and pushing music, poetry and drama to the background as entertainments, dangerous if regarded as more than artisan skills.

This subterfuge we should attack, thought Nietzsche. Reasoning has its uses, giving us advantage in the competitive struggle for life, but it is a fiction all the same. Each individual has his own perspective, making truth relative. And if there are many truths, there cannot be one truth, so that truth as we commonly conceive it is an illusion. A logical disaster of an argument? Well, then, logic itself was a fiction.{3} That being the case, thought Nietzsche, the language of the Enlightenment with its pious hopes of a social order without oppression or dogmatism egalitarian, cooperative and consensual is a fraud. The weak live in fear, and their beliefs and value systems were only pitiful attempts to outlaw the vigour and moral superiority of the more splendidly endowed. The practical consequences of Nietzsche's Will to Power weren't precisely spelled out, making links to Nazism a pointless debate, but the real world where free aristocratic beings moved and had their being was not adequately represented by the pallid language of academia. Hence Nietzsche's aphoristic brilliance, which served as a model for Freud's self-aggrandizement and for Foucault's glittering style. Breathing passion and poetry, they can afford to ignore exact, humdrum sense.
Cri tiq u e

First Nietzsche's equation of truth with power. Many are tempted to agree: the disadvantaged, social minorities, those who read Foucault rather than political theory. {4}. But how can societies progress if they cannot distinguish ends from means? Both Stalin and Hitler wielded extraordinary power, but few now accept their entitlement, or the justifications offered. Then the anti-rationalism generally. If the language of civilized discourse one that aims at clear exposition, respect for opponent's arguments, scrupulous attention to the evidence is simply wishful thinking, then languages that overcome these shortcomings and carve psychic matter at the joints, will be irredeemably subject to the subterfuges, the deceits and misrepresentations of ill-thought-out desires: a Pyrrhic victory. For if language makes itself true to such working then it conveys no reliable information. Ultimately, as Nietzsche himself realized, the view saws off the branch on which it sits. Perhaps that's to misunderstand Nietzsche. {5} He opposed traditional metaphysics, a belief that philosophy or any other intellectual enterprise could encompass truth. We can only interpret, from acertain position at a certain

time, and therefore never finally or for sure. So Nietzsche's approach, which often appears unsystematic, drawing at random on the models and terminology of literature, social and natural sciences, economics and psychology. The search is not for truth, but for life in strength, abundance and variety. We all of us achieve some measure of understanding and knowledge, and are obliged to do so, following and expanding whatever line of enquiry seems appropriate.
Ref erences C it ed

1. Richard Schacht's Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm entry in Ted Honderich's The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (1995), and Walter Kaufman's Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (1974). 2. pp. 241 and 258 of J. Merquoir's From Prague to Paris (1986), and A. Megill's Prophets of Extremism: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida (1985). 3. Chapter 7 in J. Teichman and G. White's An Introduction to Modern European Philosophy (1995). 4. R.S. Downie's entry Authority in Honderich 1995. 5. Richard Schacht's Nietzsche (1983).
In ternet R esou rces

1. Nietzsche Chronicle. Sep. 2003. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~fnchron/. Outline biography of Nietzsche. 2. Journal of Nietzsche Studies. Aug. 2003. http://www.swan.ac.uk/german/fns/jns.htm. Journal contents on site but text only accessible through ProjectMuse. 3. Selected Papers. John S. Moore. 19932001. http://www.mith.demon.co.uk/index.htm. Several papers on Nietzsche's relevance to contemporary thought. 4. Friedrich Nietzsche. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Oct. 2003.http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/. Straightforward introduction to Nietzsche's life, work and influence. 5. Influence of Nietzsche. Paul Brians. Apr. 1998. http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/ hum_303/nietzsche.html. Useful background information. 6. The Prophet and the Dandy: Philosophy as a Way of Life in Nietzsche and Foucault. James Miller. Winter 1998. http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m2267/4_65/54098122/print.jhtml. Focusing more on Foucault.

7. One hundred years since the death of Friedrich Nietzsche: a review of his ideas and influence. Oct. 2000. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/oct2000/niet-o20.shtml. Entry in A world socialism perspective. 9. The Notebook for Contemporary Continental Philosophy. Nov. 2002.http://www3.baylor.edu/~Scott_Moore/ Continental.html#Nietzsche. Very extensive listings of Internet philosophy resources: some 25 on Nietzsche. 10. On the Use and Abuse of History for Life: 1873. Ian Johnson (trans). Apr. 2000.http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/Nietzsche/history.htm. A flavour of Nietzsche's writing. See also hisThe Birth of Tragedy translation. http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/Nietzsche/tragedy_all. htm 11. The Birth of Tragedy. Tad Beckman.1998. http://www4.hmc.edu:8001/humanities/ beckman/Nietzsche/Birth.htm. Short essay. 12. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. Guillermo J. Grenier. Jan. 2002.http://www.fiu.edu/~grenierg/nietzsche_bio.html A very readable account of Nietzsche's life and work. 13. Nietzsche Bibliography. http://www.cola.wright.edu/ Dept/PHL/Class/Nietzsche/BIB.HTML. Select bibliography maintained by students at Wright State University. 14. Nietzsche. http://www.sirreadalot.org/philosophy/ philosophy/nietzscheR.htm. Book reviews. 15. After God. Claudia Roth Pierpont. 8th Apr. 2002. http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/?020408crbo_books. New Yorker Book Review. 16. Friedrich Nietzsche. http://www.mavicanet.ru/directory/eng/7436.html. Mavicanet's multilingual listings. 17. Nietzsche. http://vos.ucsb.edu Voice of the Shuttle listings for Nietzsche.

C. John Holcombe 2007. Material can be freely used for non-commercial purposes if cited in the usual way.

NIETZSCHE
THE NIHILIST
Search for Truth

AT WAR WITH OTHERS? A man of passion, Nietzsche enthusiastically embraced people and ideas. His enthusiasm could readily turn to an equally passionate rejection. Son of a minister, he became a vocal and vitriolic critic of Christianity. A one time medical orderly in the Prussian army, he came to reject all forms of nationalism and abandoned his home land and lived mostly in Switzerland and Italy. Initially a devotee of Wagner, he dedicated an entire work to stinging criticism of the composer. Inspired by readingSchopenhauer to write philosophy, he rejected his own first publication as "smelling of the cadaverous perfume of Schopenhauer". Ultimately he rejected all others. AT WAR WITH HIMSELF? In his first book, "The Birth of Tragedy", Nietzsche argued that the creative impulse of Greek culture owed as much to the unreasoning passion of Dionysus as to the calm rationality of Apollo. The Dionysian, the wilder side which gave birth to tragedy is as valid an expression of Greek culture as the Apollonian, the rational aspect which gave birth to classical philosophy and art. It is clear from the start that Nietzsche identified with the Dionysian side, with the irrational- man unconstrained by custom and law. His writings became an almost manic attack on all things that he sees as inhibiting the Church, morality, traditional philosophy. He pronounces in prophetic tones; he does not deign to analyse or justify. Unfortunately for Nietzsche, Dionysian madness turned to insanity proper. After years of battling ill health, of near blindness and constant pain, he collapsed in a street in Turin, apparently moved to intense emotion by witnessing a horse being cruelly beaten. He spent his last years in silent insanity.

NIETZSCHE
THE NIHILIST
All is Revealed

SUPERMAN Nietzsche's attraction to the Dionysian led him to promote instinct over reason, the natural over contrived values systems. Through following his instinct for freedom or will to power, man could transcend concepts of good and evil, become creator not creature, become an ubermensch or "superman". To the age old question: "What is good?", Nietzsche answers: "All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man. What is bad? - All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? - The feeling that power increases - that a resistance is overcome..." ("The Anti-Christ" 2)

REJECTION OF CHRISTIANITY Nietzsche sees the practice of the Church is hostile to life in its demand for complete extirpation of passions, in its opposition to individual will. It controls through slave morality. It combats passion with excision in every sense of the word : its practice, its "cure" is castration. Nietzsche's cure is a reaffirmation of individual passion. Nietzsche rails against Christianity with the vehemence of an evangelist. "The Christian conception of God is one of the most corrupt conceptions of God arrived at on earth.... God degenerated to the contradiction of life, instead of its transfiguration and eternal Yes ! In God a declaration of hostility towards life, nature, the will to life!

God the formula for every calumny of "this world", for every lie about "the next world!". In God nothingness deified, the will to nothingness sanctified!" "It was Christianity which first painted the Devil on the world's wall; it was Christianity which first brought sin into the world." ("Twilight of the Idols", Morality as Anti-Nature 1 "The Anti-Christ", 18 "Twilight of the Idols" "The Four Great Errors" 8 "The Wanderer and His Shadow", 78)

NIETZSCHE
THE NIHILIST
Influences REJECTION OF OTHERS Nietzsche's first work "The Birth of Tragedy" appears to have been written as a sort of defence of Wagner's concept of music and drama. However, he turned from friend to enemy and ended with bitter recriminations: "Everything he touches makes me sick he has made music sick." This pattern is repeated with Nietzsche coming to reject any influences with equal vehemence. He condemns his early work as "smelling of Hegel" (with its emphasis on the dialectical opposition between Dionysus and Apollo) and "affected by the cadaverous perfume ofSchopenhauer" (with Dionysus closely reflecting Schopenhauer's concept of "Will"). NAZISM Nietzsche became almost compulsory reading for members of the German National Socialist Party (NAZI). In her old age, Nietzsche's sister, Elizabeth, who had nursed him in his final years, regarded Hitler as the embodiment of the Ubermensch or Superman. Perhaps Hitler saw himself in a similar vein. He was no doubt impressed and influenced by the ideal of "will to power". Nietzsche's style of writing was inspirational. It encouraged charismatic leadership. Nietzsche had adopted the stance of the prophet. But he would not have been pleased with those who saw themselves as fulfilling the prophesy. Nietzsche was openly opposed to the sort of herd mentality used by the Nazis. His superman was supposed to liberate himself not enslave others. Nietzsche did not envisage replacing the slave morality of Christianity with a new slavish nationalism.

He accused Wagner of excessive nationalism and anti-Semitism. His immoralism rejected all values systems. To associate him with a values system like Nazism is as much a gross distortion of his thought as that used by the Nazi leadership. MODERN THINKING A man before his time, Nietzsche preached an individualism familiar to the modern mind, but unusual in a nineteenth century setting. Many see affinities with the later existentialists in his insistence that we create values and meanings through action rather than discover them through traditional systems of accepted truths. He was greatly admired by Freud, who said that Nietzsche's "premonitions and insights often agree in the most amazing manner with the laborious results of psychoanalysis". His influence on literature is evidenced in writers like Rilke, Buber, Malraux and Gide. Richard Strauss wrote a tone poem entitled "Thus Spake Zarathustra".

NIETZSCHE
THE NIHILIST
Method PROPHET Thus Spoke Zarathustra :
"Behold I teach you the superman: he is this lightning, he is this madness... I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus his head is only in the bowels of his heart, but his heart drives him to his downfall. I love all who are like heavy drops falling singly from the dark cloud that hangs over mankind: they prophesy the coming of the lightning as prophets they perish. Behold, I am a prophet of the lightning and a heavy drop from the cloud: but this lightning is called superman ."

("Thus Spoke Zarathustra" I Prologue 3 - 4) Neither in what he said nor in how he said it was Nietzsche the typical academic philosopher. Critics from the world of traditional philosophy identify logical inconsistencies in much of his theorising. "How are we to understand a theory when the structure of our understanding itself is called into question by that theory? And when we have succeeded in understanding it, in our own terms, it would automatically follow that we had misunderstood it, for our own terms are the wrong ones." Nevertheless, he fired the imagination of a generation of readers, writers and artists. For many he did indeed become the prophet of a new world to be carved by those whose "will to power" would allow them to transcend the masses enslaved by traditional morality.

(A.C. Danto "Nietzsche" in D.J. OConnor ed. "A Critical History of Western Philosophy" London 1985)

NIETZSCHE
THE NIHILIST
Mind over Matter "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him." With these words, Nietzsche feels he has liberated mankind. Thereby philosophers and "free spirits" feel "as if illumined by a new dawn". The concept "God" has hitherto been the greatest objection to existence... "We deny God; in denying God, we deny accountability: only by doing that do we redeem the world." Each thinking individual can now have the courage to develop his own good and evil, become his own law-giver. ("The Gay Science" 125, 343)

WILL TO POWER A major characteristic of Nietzsche's "superman" is that he is above morality, motivated by self interest or in Nietzsche's terms, the will to power . He is a man of passion with the courage to follow his instinct towards personal freedom and power. He will eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and be not afraid. TWO MORALITIES

Nietzsche identifies two basic types of morality - master morality and slave morality. Christianity is seen as the worst example of the latter. A study of history reveals that the concept of what is good (and hence evil) is contrived by one group to control another group. All values systems should therefore be rejected. Master morality, which dominated the "heroic" ages in history is at least self affirming - What is good is what I am. But in slave morality, values derive fromressentiment (resentment). Slave morality condemns what it can not aspire to. It promotes collective weakness and herd mentality. The virtues it admires, such as pity and patience, are weaknesses. IMMORALISM "When man no longer regards himself as evil he ceases to be so." There are no eternal facts, no absolute truths. All systems of morality, are based on an error - the concept of free will. Man can not be held accountable for his nature or his actions. Man naturally and rightly acts to ensure his own self preservation or to procure pleasure (shades of Socrates andEpicurus). So motivated, his actions can not be condemned as evil; they are instinctive, not a matter of choice. ("Daybreak" 148) Man

"Active, successful natures act, not according to the dictum "know thyself", but as if there hovered before them the commandment: will a self and thou shalt become a self..." ("Assorted Opinions and Maxims" 366) MAN AND SUPERMAN Nietzsche's superman is a man of passion, unafraid to follow his instincts. Like the existentialists, Nietzsche maintains that we create rather than discover values and meanings. We do so through action not exploration. It is our will to power that is the very essence of our human existence, the source of all our strivings. It allows us to overcome all adversity and continually create a new and higher level of being for ourselves - to become masters of ourselves, masters of our individual universe. Only a

limited number can hope to ultimately achieve this higher plane of existence. Like Plato's "philosopher kings" Nietzsche's "ubermenschen" will be an elite group of superior beings. Philosophers, Nietzsche complains, have the common failing of taking man as he is now as their starting point and thinking they can reach their goal through analysis of him. They inevitably think of man as a sure measure of things, a sort of aeterna veritas (eternal truth). But those seeking true manhood (or supermanhood?) must recognise that there are no eternal truths and have the courage, the will, to create themselves in their own image - not the image of society. They must be willing to face all the possible terrors of life unassisted by the props of existing conventions or accepted truths, following the yearnings of the heart rather than the dictates of reason. "You dismal philosophical blindworms speak of the terrible nature of human passion... let us rather work honestly together on the task of transforming the passions of mankind one and all into joys."

NIETZSCHE
THE NIHILIST
What Can we Know? NIHILISM "Life is no argument. Amongst the conditions of life, error might be one." Much of Nietzsche's writing is a sustained attack on the concept that there exists an objective world structure beyond that which is perceived by man. "The apparent world is the only one: the "real world" is a lie." Were we able to subtract our "interpretations", there would be no underlying reality revealed. There is no underlying and objective reality. Nietzsche urges us to abandon faith in a deeper reality in favour of a common sense acceptance of the world as our senses perceive it to be. "We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we can live - with the acceptance of bodies, lines, surfaces, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content. Without these articles of faith no one now would be able to live." Mind you, this common sense view of the world simply provides us with a perspective whereby we can interact with the world. It "by no means constitutes a proof". There is no such thing as a correct view. This goes beyond relativism to an extreme of nihilism, but in the lack of certain truth, Nietzsche sees freedom and the opportunity to create truths.

("Twighlight of the Idols" Ch.3 Aphorism 2) ("The Gay Science Aphorism" 121) THE NEW PHILOSOPHER Philosophers will no longer seek to be the "unriddlers" of the world, seeking solutions for all mankind. Philosophic systems are "mirages" promising but never delivering the draught of the water of life. The new philosophers will not be dogmatists, their truth will not be the truth of everyman. They will be "creators of values", but for themselves alone. "Actual philosophers ... are commanders and law givers : they say "thus it shall be!", it is they who determine the Wherefore and Whither of mankind, and they possess for this task the preliminary work of all the philosophical labourers, of all those who have subdued the past - they reach for the future with creative hand, and everything that is or has been becomes for them a means, an instrument, a hammer. Their "knowing" is creating their creating is lawgiving, their will to truth is - will to power . - Are there such philosophers? Must there not be such philosophers?" ("Beyond Good and Evil" , 211)