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Nietzsche Biography

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NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH (1844-1900). A German philosophic writer, one of the most daring thinkers and accomplished stylists of the nineteenth century. He was born at Röcken, near Leipzig, son of a Protestant pastor of the village, who died when the precocious boy was five years old. He was brought up by his mother at Naumburg on the Saale, studied at the noted state school at Pforta, and then devoted himself to the study of the classics in the universities of Bonn and Leipzig, meanwhile becoming acquainted with Schopenhauer's writings. At 25, on the recommendation of Ritschl, he became professor extraordinarius of classical philology at Basel, and shortly afterward was promoted to be professor ordainarius there-a post which he was forced to resign in 1879 because of an affection of his eyes. Meanwhile Nietzsche had made the acquaintance of Wagner and become an ardent advocate of Schopenhauer's theories of art. During this period, which was brief and immature, the only work of importance he wrote was Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik (1872) , in which he maintained that both Dionysiac (orgiastic) and Apollonic (temperate) motifs contributed to the origination of Attic tragedy. The book might be termed a defense of Wagner's programme. But shortly thereafter came a breach between Nietzsche and Wagner, said to be due to Wagner's compromises with success. With the loss of faith in Wagner he arrived at philosophical independence. The evolution of Nietzsche's thought, which culminated in his idealization of the immoral victor in the struggle for existence, can be traced in his Menshschliches, Allzumenschschliches: ein Buch für freie Geister (1876-80) ; Morgenröthe, Gedanken über moralische Vorurtheile (1581) ; Also sprach Zarathustra ( 13S3-84); Jenseits yon Gut and Büse (1886); Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887); Der Fall Wagner (1858); Götzendämmerung (1889). Among his other works should be mentioned Der Wille zur Macht: Versuch einer Umwertung aller Werte (1896). Of this book the first part is entitled Der Antichrist, where the author traces the history of the world, showing the part played by tawny brutes and tawny heroes in the great struggle for power. After Nietzsche left Basel he lived for several years in Turin; in 1889 it became evident that his brain was affected, partly due to hereditary causes and partly to the abuse of soporifics. He retired to his mother's home near Weimar, where he was cared for by his sister until his death.

Nietzsche was a great prose poet, and if we may judge from a volume of his early verse, Gedichte and Sprüche (1897) , he might have been a great lyrist. Richard Strauss (q.v.) has founded one of his most famous tone poems upon Also sprach Zarathustra. Nietzsche's philosophical writings are not systematic, and intentionally offend the Christian reader by their violent denunciation of Christianity, culminating in blasphemy.

Nietzsche's significance in philosophy consists in his resolute attempt to establish an end for life different from the traditionally recognized ends. According to him the task of philosophy is to create values. "The real philosophers are commanders and lawgivers; they say: ‘Thus shall it be!’ They determine first the Whither and the Why of mankind, and thereby set aside the previous labor of all philosophical workers and all subjugators of the past; they grasp at the future with a creative hand, and whatever is and was, becomes for them thereby a means, an instrument, and a hammer. Their `knowing' is creating, their creating is a lawgiving, their will to truth is Wall to Power." All life is Will to Power. Our present ideals have two sources: the masterful men of the past have contributed to these ideals in living their life in pursuance of ends that their dominating natures set for themselves; but what for them was the expression of their own personality has become for subsequent ages an imitation, a tradition. Against these men the weaker, the mediocre, the sickly, combine under the impulse of their gregariousness, and set up a standard of life which consists in the glorification of the traits which make for the safety of themselves. These traits are considered virtues, and such virtues are the virtues of a slave morality, which is thus the expression of the Will to Power of the inferior. "Those qualities which serve to alleviate the existence of sufferers are brought into prominence and flooded with light; it is here that sympathy, the kind, helping hand, the warm heart, patience, diligence, humility, and friendliness attain to honor; for here these are the most useful qualities, and almost the only means of supporting the burden of existence. Slave morality is essentially the morality of utility. Here is the seat of the origin of the famous antithesis of ‘good’ and ‘evil’:-power and dangerousness are assumed to reside in the evil, a certain dreadfulness, subtlety, and strength, which do not admit of being despised. According to master morality, it is precisely the ‘good’ man who arouses fear and seeks to arouse it, while the bad man is regarded as the despicable being." In the slave morality good and evil are reckoned from the point of view of those affected by the action; in master morality good and bad are reckoned by the dominant demands of the doer of the act. In the master morality the virtues are the excellences which give power to the master; his morality is the morality of the aristocrat, of the noble. But the noble man is not altogether ruthless; indeed he has a love which is the overflow of his own power; but this love is not controlled by law; it goes out freely to those of his kind among whom he recognizes his equals, and it may even reach the inferior where they do not stand in his way. But his love for his equals is always tempered with hardness and fear, his love for his inferiors with contempt. He recognizes no obligation imposed upon him by others: noblesse oblige, but its obligations are not the traditional ones of the current morality. The slave morality with its mediocre virtues is to be maintained and encouraged for the inferior, the ordinary man. It becomes disastrous only when those who are born to be masters allow themselves to be imposed upon by it and thus lose their birthright of independence. But while the mature master is thus free, his freedom is only attained by a stern discipline in childhood and youth, and this discipline is continued by himself in later years; he is hard, not only towards others, but towards himself. He allows himself no passionate outbreaks in small matters; he reserves his strength and the exercise of his strong positive impulses for the crises which come only seldom in his life. At other times he is self-contained, distant, courteous. Nietzsche's nobleman is historically prefigured in the Greek Alcibiades, but is rather an ideal than an historical reality. He is an end to be worked for, and all the arrangements of society should be ordered with a view to make his realization possible. Those who adopt this end will marry with a view to the eventual superman-this is what Nietzsche calls his ideal-and thus eugenics is a cardinal principle in Nietzsche's creed, but it seems to be an eugenics for the aristocracy alone. Democracy and Socialism with their insistence upon equality of rights and privileges Nietzsche violently opposes. Religion with its eye on another world is a deadly foe to the breeding of supermen; the true values are of this world. But the superman is after all a "sport," a freak, and does not propagate supermen. Hence the long labor of breeding and providing for supermen finds only a brief and intermittent realization-it is the labor of Sisyphus. If there is to be any permanent significance in the superman, this must come from the eternal recurrence of supermen, each with his own unique value in himself. To make this uniqueness something other than ephemeral, Nietzsche assumes a cyclical character in cosmical history; everything returns in identically the same order, in identically the same detail. The universe is "a circular movement which has already repeated itself an infinite number of times, and which plays its game for all eternity."

Nietzsche's philosophy with its revaluation of all values and its apotheosis of the self-contained man of mastery was taken up even in his own day by those who found in it a license to follow their passions and indulge their ease; he was bitter in his denunciation of these distorters of his philosophy. The superman is no sensualist, no loafer; he knows the isolation in which his greatness places him, and struggles against his hard fate, but in vain. Greatness is thrust upon him by his very nature. Nietzsche is held by many responsible for the war spirit of Germany and its masterful politics and diplomacy. A proper determination of his responsibility would require very subtle distinctions, and the popular verdict is without doubt based on a very superficial understanding of his philosophy.

A complete edition of Nietzsche's works in 19 volumes was published at Leipzig (1890-1913); an English version under the editorship of Oskar Levy has appeared in 18 volumes (Edinburgh, 1910-14). His collected letters were published in three volumes (Berlin, 1902-09).

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XVII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 145-146.