Learning Intention:
To understand the historical and cultural influences on the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche.
Reading:
His Life:
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born in the small village of Röcken bei Lützen, located in a rural farmland area southwest of Leipzig (Modern-day Germany), on 15th October 1844. During his life he was a philosopher, a poet, a composer of music and studied Classical Philology (a combination of linguistic and historical studies of Ancient Greek and Roman texts). Undoubtedly, through his Philosophy and his Philology, he knew the works of the Ancient Greek philosophers well. He published an essay on Aristotle during his studies at the University of Leipzig.
He was the son of a Lutheran minister (though his father died when he was very young) and received an education from highly regarded boarding schools before studying at the Universities of Bonn and then Leipzig. He served briefly in the military before injury saw him return to his education. He began teaching Classical Philology at the University of Basel in Switzerland in 1869 (aged 24). His first publication ‘Birth of Tragedy’ in 1872 was savaged by a leading critic of the time and though he remained well regarded professionally and continued to publish until, in 1879 and aged 34, Nietzsche resigned due to continuing and worsening ill-health.
Nietzsche had given up his German citizenship when he took up the teaching position in Basel but did not have Swiss citizenship. From 1880 he lived a wandering, stateless, existence throughout Switzerland, Germany, Italy and France. These nomadic years were the occasion of Nietzsche’s main works, among which are Daybreak (1881), The Gay Science (1882/1887), Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–85), Beyond Good and Evil (1886), and On the Genealogy of Morals (1887). Nietzsche’s final active year, 1888, saw the completion of The Case of Wagner (May-August 1888), Twilight of the Idols (August-September 1888), The Antichrist (September 1888), Ecce Homo (October-November 1888) and Nietzsche Contra Wagner (December 1888).
On the morning of January 3, 1889, while in Turin, Nietzsche experienced a mental breakdown which left him an invalid for the rest of his life. Nietzsche, upon witnessing a horse being whipped by a coachman at the Piazza Carlo Alberto — although this episode with the horse could be anecdotal — threw his arms around the horse’s neck and collapsed in the plaza, never to return to full sanity. He was hospitalised, then cared for by his mother until her death in 1897 and later his sister. He died, aged 55, on the 25th August 1900.
Influences and events:
The date of Nietzsche’s birth coincided with the 49th birthday of the Prussian King, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, after whom Nietzsche was named. During the early stages of his life the land we know as ‘Germany’ was divided into smaller nation-states, of which the Kingdom of Prussia was a growing power. Nietzsche was in his mid-twenties to witness the victory of the 1870 ‘Franco-Prussian War’ (he served as a hospital attendant and participated in the siege of Metz, he witnessed the traumatic effects of battle, took close care of wounded soldiers, and contracted diphtheria and dysentery), and the subsequent unification of Germany in which King Wilhelm of Prussia became Emperor Wilhelm of the German Empire.
As a philosopher he is known as one of the earliest ‘existential’ philosophers (with Kierkegaard), and considered to have greatly influenced ‘nihilism’ and ‘post-modernism’. He was critical of the culture he saw in the world, often writing with frank and unflattering assessments of dominant social practices. He was particularly critical of religion (esp. Christian religion) claiming that “God is dead”, and his critiques became highly influential to the growing Enlightenment secularism. He was also very critical of nationalism, anti-semitism and the abuse of political power, though his sister was herself anti-Semitic and had tried to establish an Aryan colony in South America called New Germany. As a result of her influence and her efforts in the final year of his life and after his death his ideas were later taken by the leaders of the Nazi party and used to advance all the things to which he objected.
His work:
Nietzsche’s writings fall into three defined periods. His early works, while teaching in Basel, have a Romantic perspective. He was heavily influenced here by contemporary thinkers Schopenhauer and Wagner, with whom he would later have a falling out over Wagner’s anti-Semitism.
The middle period of his writing, from ‘Human, all too human’ published near the end of his tenure at Basel until ‘The Gay Science’ has more French influence and extols reason and science. In this period he experiments with the genre of his writing and distances himself from his earlier influences.
Nietzsche’s ‘mature philosophy’ is preoccupied by the origin and function of values in human life. He had come to believe that life neither possesses nor lacks intrinsic value, and yet it is always being evaluated. He described himself as an ‘immoralist’ and criticised Christian, Kantian and utilitarian ethics. He was especially interested in a probing analysis and evaluation of the fundamental cultural values of Western philosophy, religion, and morality, which he characterized as expressions of the ascetic ideal.
The ascetic ideal holds that suffering is given ultimate significance. Nietzsche saw in Christianity a means of giving meaning to suffering. That it is God’s plan, and a means for us to atone for sin. He also saw that Christianity gave people the reassurance that their life (and their death) had a universal, cosmic, significance. He saw in philosophy an ascetic ideal in valuing the soul over the body, duty over desire, virtue over desire, etc… Religion offered salvation to the sinner through repentance and tolerating suffering. Philosopher offered redemption to thinkers through denying their physical desires and rejecting their physical experiences for some greater reality of the mind. In both instances Nietzsche saw a powerful assumption that existence requires explanation and purpose. He disagreed with both.
Instead Nietzsche’s latter works explore his understanding of a ‘slave morality’, and examine society through the roles of ‘master’ and ‘slave’. He drew an etymological distinction between ‘good / bad’ and ‘good / evil’. The slaves had inverted the understanding of good and bad by associating the qualities of their masters with vice or evil. So pride became a sin, competition and individualism were evil, co-operation and obedience were praise-worthy. Jesus promised that the meek would inherit the Earth. And crucially this ‘slave morality’ posited itself, and was largely accepted as, the only morality. Both philosophical and religious ethics claimed to be absolute.
‘On the Genealogy of Morals’ was published in 1887. In these three essays he expands on and clarifies ideas he raised in ‘Beyond Good and Evil’. His first treatise (essay 1) explores the distinct linguistic origins of ‘good’ and how the ‘good/evil’ sense is different from the ‘good/bad’ sense of the word. He suggests that what was originally considered ‘good’ (as opposed to ‘bad’) came to be considered ‘evil’ in a slave morality. Things which had been praise-worthy to Homeric Greeks (strength and power) came to be considered evil by the moralities of Christians and Judaism. Instead weakness, and qualities found in slaves, were elevated to the good. We are not required to read from Essay 2 (which deals with concepts of guilt and conscience), but have one section from the third. Essay 3 focuses on the meaning of ‘the Ascetic Ideal’.
Independently:
Research:
- The Franco-Prussian War.
- The unification of Germany.
- The links between Nietzsche and Nazism.
- Secularism and the Age of Enlightenment.
Responses:
What influence do you think Classical Greek and Roman sources had on Nietzsche’s philosophy?
How did the earlier period of the Enlightenment contribute to Nietzsche’s philosophy?
Is Nietzsche right to draw parallels between Philosophical and Religious ethics as both having been affected by ‘the ascetic ideal’?
Do you accept that societies should be seen in terms of ‘masters’ and ‘slaves’? Why/why not?
Does Nietzsche’s premise of Masters and Slaves inevitably lead to fascism?
Is it the role of morality to protect the weak from the powerful?
Mr. Melican's VCE Philosophy 