RSS Feed
October 19th, 2017 
Awake Goy Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900), German philosopher and poet, is one of the most original and influential figures in modern philosophy. His life has attracted more attention from interpreters of his thought, major novelists, psychiatrists, and others than the life of other major philosophers. Misrepresentations of almost every facet of his life have been crucial, for they bear on an understanding of his significance. It is also difficult to obtain reliable information on the authenticity and relative importance of his works and his posthumously published notes, on his madness, and on his relation to Wagner. These problems will therefore be stressed in the following discussion.
LIFE AND PATHOLOGY:
Nietzsche was born in Rocken, Prussia. His father, Ludwig, was 31, and his mother, the daughter of a Lutheran minister, was 18. His paternal grandfather had written several books, including Gamaliel, or the Everlasting Duration of Christianity: For Instruction and Sedation…(1796). Many of Nietzsche’s ancestors were butchers; none of them seem to have been, as he believed, Polish noblemen. His father christened him Friedrich Wilhelm after King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, on whose birthday he was born. The king became mad a few years later; so did Nietzsche’s father. Nietzsche later shed his middle name, along with his family’s patriotism and religion, but in January 1889 he, too, became insane.
In an early autobiographical sketch Nietzsche wrote, “In September 1848 my beloved father suddenly became mentally ill.” When Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche (born – 1846) published this sketch in her biography of her brother (1895), she changed the wording to read, “…suddenly became seriously ill in consequence of a fall.” (She also published, as addressed to her, letters actually addressed to her mother and drafts of letters to others, but there is no evidence of any forgery that affects Nietzsche’s philosophy.) In fact, the diagnosis of Ludwig Nietzsche’s doctor was softening of the brain (Gehirnerweichung), and after the elder Nietzsche’s death in 1849, his skull was opened, and the diagnosis was confirmed. Nevertheless, most experts agree that the philosopher’s later insanity was not inherited.
In January 1850, Nietzsche’s widowed mother lost her youngest son (who was born in 1848) and moved her family to Naumburg. The household there consisted of Friedrich, his mother (who died in 1897) and sister, his father’s mother, and two maiden aunts. This, as well as his sister’s character, helps to account for some of Nietzsche’s snide remarks about women.
In 1858 Nietzsche accepted free admission to Pforta, a famous boarding school a few miles from Naumburg. He was often at the head of his class and acquired an excellent classical education. In 1861 he wrote an enthusiastic essay on his “favorite poet,” Holderlin, “of whom the majority of his people scarcely even know the name.” Holderlin had spent the last decades of his life in hopeless insanity, but sixty years after Nietzsche wrote his essay, Holderlin was widely recognized as Germany’s greatest poet after Goethe. The teacher wrote on the paper, “I must offer the author the kind advice to stick to a healthier, clearer, more German poet.”
The medical records of the school contain an entry, recorded in 1862: “…shortsighted and often plagued by migraine headaches. His father died early of softening of the brain and was begotten in old age [actually, when his father was 57, his mother 35]; the son at a time when the father was already sick [most experts deny this]. As yet no grave signs are visible, but the antecedents require consideration.”
In 1864 Nietzsche graduated with a thesis on Theognis. He studied theology and classical philosophy at the University of Bonn, but in 1865 he gave up theology and went to Leipzig. There is no evidence that he contracted syphilis in Cologne while he was a student at Bonn, although this story has gained currency; there is, however, inconclusive evidence that two physicians in Liepzig treated Nietzsche for syphilis without telling him their diagnosis. Wilhelm Lange-Eichbaum, a psychiatrist, writes that a Berlin psychiatrist told this and added that the names of the two doctors were known. Another psychiatrist, P.J. Mobius, is said to have possessed letters which were written by these two men but which no longer exist. Be that as it may, Nietzsche evidently never thought he had syphilis, and most of his life he was sexually a complete ascetic. The most that has been claimed is that as a student he may have visited a brothel once or twice. The matter has been much debated because his madness was probably tertiary syphilis, and Thomas Mann’s novel Doktor Faustus, which draws on Nietzsche’s life, has given these questions additional prominence.
Throughout his life Nietzsche’s health was poor. His doctors kept warning him to preserve his very bad eyesight by reading and writing less. He disregarded this advice, fought severe migraine and gastric pains with long walks and much writing, and took pills and potions to purchase a little sleep. His books became his life. As they found no response, his style became shrill, and losing his inhibitions, he said in his later books what he had said earlier only in some of his letters. Out of context some phrases sound mad. Many of Nietzsche’s dicta are redeemed by his wit, which has escaped many translators and interpreters.
In January 1889, Nietzsche collapsed in a street in Turin while embracing a horse that had been flogged by a coachman. His last letters, mailed on the first days of 1889, are mad but meaningful and moving. After the first week of 1889 nothing of even this pathetic brilliance relieved the utter darkness of his mind. He vegetated until his death. But none of his books can be discounted as a product of madness; all repay close study.
The various accounts of Nietzsche’s pathology disagree on many points, but none of them illuminates Nietzsche’s philosophy. When the novelist Arnold Zweig wanted to write a book on Nietzsche, Freud wrote him that Nietzsche’s psychological development could not be reconstructed, and according to Ernest Jones, Freud’s biographer, Freud “several times said of Nietzsche that he had more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other man who ever lived or was ever likely to live.” Lesser psychologists and would-be psychologists have been more condescending.
As a student at Leipzig, Nietzsche discovered Schopenhaur and Richard Wagner, the two greatest influences on his early thought, as well as F.A. Lange’s History of Materialism. In a letter dated November 1886, Nietzsche wrote, “Kant, Schopenhauer, and this book of Lange’s—more I don’t need.” But he also worked on Aeschylus and published papers on Theognis (1867) and a prize-winning essay on Diogenes Laertius (1868-1869). Although the appearance of these articles in Professor Friedrich Ritschl’s journals was a triumph, Nietzsche wrote his friend Erwin Rohde (later a famous classical philologist) that he found his prize paper “repulsive” and utterly inadequate. “What is Diogenes Laertius? Nobody would lose a word over the philistine physiognomy of this scribbler if he were not by accident the clumsy watchman guarding treasures whose value he does not know. He is the night watchman of the history of Greek philosophy: one cannot enter it without obtaining the key from him.”
In October 1867, Nietzsche commenced his military service. In March 1868, while jumping on his horse, he hit the pommel of the saddle with his chest and was badly hurt, but he rode on as if nothing had happened. In August 1868, after prolonged suffering from the injury, he returned home and was formally discharged from the army in October.
Back in Leipzig, he complained, in a letter to Rohde of November 20, “I must again see the swarming philologists’ breed of our day from nearby, and daily have to observe the whole molish business, the full cheek pouches and blind eyes, the delight at having caught a worm, and indifference toward the true and urgent problems of life.” He published scholarly book reviews but at one point considered writing a doctoral thesis on Kant. Early in 1869 he even thought of taking up chemistry, “throwing philology where it belongs, with the household rubble of our ancient ancestors.”
During the following winter the chair of classical philology at the University of Basel fell vacant, and Ritschl recommended him for the post: he had never published contributions from another student nor seen a student like Nietzsche in 39 years of teaching. Nietzsche had not yet written a doctoral thesis, let alone the dissertation generally required before a doctor of philosophy becomes a Privatdozent, or the additional book required for an associate professorship, yet he was appointed an associate professor at Basel at the age of 24. Ritschl wrote that “in Germany that sort of thing happens absolutely never” but reassured the authorities at Basel that although Nietzsche had concentrated on Greek literature and philosophy, “with his great gifts he will work in other fields with the best of success. He will simply be able to do anything he wants to do.” Leipzig conferred the doctorate without thesis or examination, and in April 1869, Nietzsche went to Basel and became a Swiss subject. In 1870 he became a full professor.
In August 1870 he received leave to volunteer as a medical orderly in the Franco-Prussian War. Early in September he returned to Germany with dysentery and diphtheria; he may also have infected himself with syphilis while ministering to the sick soldiers. Without waiting to regain his strength, he returned to Basel in October to teach at both the Gymnasium and the university. During the following months he also audited the lectures of Jakob Burckhardt, the art historian, visited Richard Wagner in Tribschen near Lucerne whenever possible, and finished his first book.
In summing up this account of Nietzsche’s first 28 years, three points merit emphasis. First, although the historical-critical edition of Nietzsche’s Werke (discontinued after five volumes) only includes material published before 1869 and the literature on the young Nietzsche keeps growing, this period commands attention only as the background of his later work. However, legions of errors about Nietzsche’s early period have been used in support of false claims about his philosophy. Second, Nietzsche’s eventual insanity seems over-determined; no explanation of it has been proved, but so many explanations are available that what requires explanation is not so much why he became mad but how he could ever have written over ten books that stamp him as one of Germany’s greatest masters of prose as well as the most influential and inexhaustible German philosopher since Kant and Hagel. Third, he might never have subjected himself to all the requirements for a professorship had it not been offered to him practically gratis.
From the book, “The Encyclopedia of Philosophy” Collier-Macmillan Limited, London 1967, via Ron McVan
Source Article from http://www.renegadetribune.com/success-madness-friedrich-nietzsche/
Related posts:
Views: 6
Posted in 
Tags: 
