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Friedrich Nietzsche

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Philosophers

   Western Philosophy
   19th-century philosophy
   Name: Friedrich Nietzsche
   Birth: October 15, 1844 ( Röcken bei Lützen, Prussian Saxony)
   Death: August 25, 1900 ( Weimar, Germany)
   School/tradition: Continental philosophy, Weimar Classicism; Precursor
   to Existentialism, Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, Psychoanalysis
   Main interests: Aesthetics, Epistemology, Ethics, Ontology, Philosophy
   of history, Psychology, Value theory
   Notable ideas: Apollonian and Dionysian, Death of God, Eternal
   Recurrence, Herd instinct, Master-Slave Morality, Übermensch,
   Perspectivism, Will to Power
   Influences: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Emerson, Goethe, Heine, Heraclitus,
   Kant, Plato, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Wagner

   Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche ( October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) (
   IPA: [ˈfʁiːtʁɪç ˈniːtʃə]) was a German-born philologist and
   philosopher.

Introduction

   Nietzsche produced critiques of religion, morality, contemporary
   culture, and philosophy, centering on what he viewed as fundamental
   questions regarding the life-affirming and life-denying qualities of
   different attitudes and beliefs. Nietzsche's works feature unique,
   free-form stylization – combined with a wide philosophical breadth –
   through the use of analyses, etymologies, punning, parables, paradoxes,
   aphorisms, and contradictions, employed to demonstrate the inadequacies
   of normative modes of thought. Nietzsche's contemporaries largely
   overlooked him during his short yet productive working life, which
   ended with a mental collapse in 1889. But he received recognition
   during the first half of the 20th century in German, French, and
   British intellectual circles, gaining notoriety when the Nazi Party
   appropriated him as a forerunner. By the second half of the 20th
   century he had become regarded as a highly significant and influential
   figure in modern philosophy.

Biography

Youth (1844 – 1869)

   Born on October 15, 1844, and christened as "Friedrich Wilhelm",
   Nietzsche lived in the small town of Röcken, near Leipzig, in the
   Prussian province of Saxony. His name comes from King Frederick William
   IV of Prussia, who turned 49 on the day of Nietzsche's birth.
   (Nietzsche later dropped his given middle name, "Wilhelm".) Nietzsche's
   parents, Carl Ludwig (1813–1849), a Lutheran pastor and former teacher,
   and Franziska Oehler (1826–1897), married in 1843. His sister,
   Elisabeth, was born in 1846, followed by a brother, Ludwig Joseph, in
   1848. After the deaths of their father—due to a brain ailment—in 1849
   and of the young brother in 1850, the family moved to Naumburg, where
   they lived with Nietzsche's paternal grandmother and his father's two
   unmarried sisters. After the death of Nietzsche's grandmother in 1856
   the family moved into their own house.
   Friedrich Nietzsche, 1861.
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   Friedrich Nietzsche, 1861.

   During this time the young Nietzsche attended a boys' school and later
   a private school, where he became friends with Gustav Krug and Wilhelm
   Pinder, both of whom came from respected families. In 1854 he began to
   attend the Domgymnasium in Naumburg, but after he showed particular
   talents in music and language, the internationally-recognized
   Schulpforta admitted him as a pupil, and there he continued his studies
   from 1858 to 1864. Here he became friends with Paul Deussen and Carl
   von Gersdorff. He also found time to work on poems and musical
   compositions. At Schulpforta, Nietzsche received an important
   introduction to literature, particularly that of the ancient Greeks and
   Romans, and for the first time experienced a distance from his family
   life in a small-town Christian environment.

   After graduation in 1864, Nietzsche commenced studies in theology and
   classical philology at the University of Bonn. For a short time he and
   Deussen became members of the Burschenschaft Frankonia. After one
   semester (and to the anger of his mother) he stopped his theological
   studies and lost his faith. This may have happened in part due to his
   reading about this time of David Strauss's Life of Jesus, which had a
   profound effect on the young Nietzsche. Nietzsche then concentrated on
   studying philology under Professor Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl, whom he
   followed to the University of Leipzig the next year. There, he became
   close friends with fellow-student Erwin Rohde. Nietzsche's first
   philological publications appeared soon after.
   Friedrich Nietzsche, 1868.
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   Friedrich Nietzsche, 1868.

   In 1865, Nietzsche became acquainted with the work of Arthur
   Schopenhauer, and he read Friedrich Albert Lange's Geschichte des
   Materialismus in 1866. He found both of these encounters stimulating:
   they encouraged him to expand his horizons beyond philology and to
   continue his schooling. In 1867, Nietzsche signed up for one year of
   voluntary service with the Prussian artillery division in Naumburg.
   However, a bad riding accident in March 1868 left him unfit for
   service. Consequently Nietzsche turned his attention to his studies
   again, completing them and first meeting with Richard Wagner later that
   year.

Professor at Basel (1869–1879)

   Mid October, 1871. Left to right: Erwin Rohde, Carl von Gersdorff and
   Friedrich Nietzsche.
   Enlarge
   Mid October, 1871. Left to right: Erwin Rohde, Carl von Gersdorff and
   Friedrich Nietzsche.

   Due in part to Ritschl's support, Nietzsche received an extraordinary
   offer to become professor of classical philology at the University of
   Basel before having completed his doctorate degree or certificate for
   teaching. During his philological work in Basel he discovered that the
   ancient poetic meter related only to the length of syllables, different
   from the modern, accentuating meter. After moving to Basel, Nietzsche
   renounced his Prussian citizenship: for the rest of his life he
   remained officially stateless. Nevertheless, he served on the Prussian
   side during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871 as a medical
   orderly. In his short time in the military he experienced much, and
   witnessed the traumatic effects of battle. He also contracted
   diphtheria and dysentery. On returning to Basel in 1870, Nietzsche
   observed the establishment of the German Empire and the following era
   of Otto von Bismarck as an outsider and with a degree of skepticism
   regarding its genuineness. At the University, he delivered his
   inaugural lecture, "Homer and Classical Philology". Nietzsche also met
   Franz Overbeck, a professor of theology, who remained his friend
   throughout his life. Two other colleagues, Afrikan Spir, a little-known
   Russian philosopher and author of Thought and Reality (1873), and the
   historian Jacob Burckhardt, whose lectures Nietzsche frequently
   attended, began to exercise significant influence on Nietzsche during
   this time.

   Nietzsche had already met Richard Wagner in Leipzig in 1868, and (some
   time later) Wagner's wife Cosima. Nietzsche admired both greatly, and
   during his time at Basel frequently visited Wagner's house in Tribschen
   in the Canton of Lucerne. The Wagners brought Nietzsche into their most
   intimate circle, and enjoyed the attention he gave to the beginning of
   the Bayreuth Festival Theatre. In 1870, he gave Cosima Wagner the
   manuscript of 'The Genesis of the Tragic Idea' as a birthday gift. In
   1872, Nietzsche published his first book, The Birth of Tragedy out of
   the Spirit of Music. However, his classical philological colleagues,
   including Ritschl, expressed little enthusiasm for the work, in which
   Nietzsche forewent a precise philological method to employ a style of
   philosophical speculation. In a polemic, Philology of the Future,
   Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff dampened the book's reception and
   increased its notoriety. In response, Rohde (by now a professor in
   Kiel) and Wagner came to Nietzsche's defense. Nietzsche remarked freely
   about the isolation he felt within the philological community and
   attempted to attain a position in philosophy at Basel, though
   unsuccessfully.
   Friedrich Nietzsche in Basel, ca. 1875.
   Enlarge
   Friedrich Nietzsche in Basel, ca. 1875.

   Between 1873 and 1876, Nietzsche published separately four long essays:
   David Strauss: the Confessor and the Writer, On the Use and Abuse of
   History for Life, Schopenhauer as Educator, and Richard Wagner in
   Bayreuth. (These four later appeared in a collected edition under the
   title, Untimely Meditations.) The four essays shared the orientation of
   a cultural critique, challenging the developing German culture along
   lines suggested by Schopenhauer and Wagner. Starting in 1873, Nietzsche
   also accumulated the notes later posthumously published as Philosophy
   in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. During this time, in the circle of the
   Wagners, Nietzsche met Malwida von Meysenbug and Hans von Bülow, and
   also began a friendship with Paul Rée, who after 1876 influenced him in
   dismissing the pessimism in his early writings. However, his
   disappointment with the Bayreuth Festival of 1876, where the banality
   of the shows and the baseness of the public repelled him, caused him in
   the end to distance himself from Wagner.

   With the publication of Human, All Too Human in 1878, a book of
   aphorisms on subjects ranging from metaphysics to morality and from
   religion to the sexes, Nietzsche's departure from the philosophy of
   Wagner and Schopenhauer became evident. Nietzsche's friendship with
   Deussen and Rohde cooled as well. Nietzsche in this time attempted to
   find a wife — to no avail. In 1879, after a significant decline in
   health, Nietzsche had to resign his position at Basel. (Since his
   childhood, various disruptive illnesses had plagued him — moments of
   shortsightedness practically to the degree of blindness, migraine
   headaches, and violent stomach attacks. The 1868 riding accident and
   diseases in 1870 may have aggravated these persistent conditions, which
   continued to affect him through his years at Basel, forcing him to take
   longer and longer holidays until regular work became no longer
   practical.)

Free philosopher (1879–1888)

   Because his illness drove him to find more compatible climates,
   Nietzsche traveled frequently, and lived until 1889 as an independent
   author in different cities. He spent many summers in Sils Maria, near
   St. Moritz in Switzerland, and many winters in the Italian cities of
   Genoa, Rapallo, and Turin, and in the French city of Nice. He
   occasionally returned to Naumburg to visit his family, and especially
   during this time, he and his sister had repeated periods of conflict
   and reconciliation. He lived on his pension from Basel, but also
   received aid from friends. A past student of his, Peter Gast (born
   Heinrich Köselitz), became a sort of private secretary to Nietzsche. To
   the end of his life, Gast and Overbeck remained consistently faithful
   friends. Malwida von Meysenbug remained like a motherly patron even
   outside the Wagner circle. Soon Nietzsche made contact with the music
   critic Carl Fuchs. Nietzsche stood at the beginning of his most
   productive period. Beginning with Human, All Too Human in 1878,
   Nietzsche would publish one book (or major section of a book) each year
   until 1888, his last year of writing, during which he completed five.
   In 1879, Nietzsche published Mixed Opinions and Maxims, which followed
   the aphoristic form of Human, All Too Human. The following year, he
   published The Wanderer and His Shadow. Both appeared as the second part
   of the second edition of Human, All-Too-Human.
   Lou Salomé, Paul Rée and Nietzsche, 1882.
   Enlarge
   Lou Salomé, Paul Rée and Nietzsche, 1882.

   In 1881 Nietzsche published Daybreak: Reflections on Moral Prejudices,
   and in 1882 the first part of The Gay Science. That year he also met
   Lou Salomé through Malwida von Meysenbug and Paul Rée. Nietzsche and
   Salomé spent the summer together in Tautenburg in Thuringia, often with
   Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth as chaperon. However, Nietzsche regarded
   Salomé less as an equal partner than as a gifted student. He fell in
   love with her and pursued her despite their mutual friend Rée. When he
   asked to marry her, Salomé refused. Nietzsche's relationship with Rée
   and Salomé broke up in the winter of 1882/1883, partially due to
   intrigues conducted by his sister Elisabeth. In the face of renewed
   fits of illness, in near isolation after a falling-out with his mother
   and sister regarding Salomé, and plagued by suicidal thoughts,
   Nietzsche fled to Rapallo, where in only ten days he wrote the first
   part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

   After severing philosophical ties to Schopenhauer and social ties to
   Wagner, Nietzsche had few remaining friends. Now, with the new style of
   Zarathustra, his work became even more alienating and his readers
   received it only to the degree prescribed by politeness. Nietzsche
   recognized this and maintained his solitude, even though he often
   complained about it. He gave up his short-lived plan to become a poet
   in public, and was troubled by concerns about his publications. His
   books were as good as unsold. In 1885, he printed only 40 copies of the
   fourth part of Zarathustra, and only a fraction of these were
   distributed among close friends.

   In 1886 Nietzsche printed Beyond Good and Evil at his own expense. With
   this book and with the appearance in 1886–1887 of second editions of
   his earlier works ( The Birth of Tragedy, Human, All Too Human,
   Daybreak, and The Gay Science), he saw his work completed for the time
   and hoped that soon a readership would develop. In fact, interest in
   Nietzsche's thought did increase at this time, even if rather slowly
   and hardly perceived by him. During these years Nietzsche met Meta von
   Salis, Carl Spitteler, and also Gottfried Keller. In 1886, his sister
   Elisabeth married the anti-Semite Bernhard Förster and traveled to
   Paraguay to found a "Germanic" colony, a plan to which Nietzsche
   responded with laughter. Through correspondence, Nietzsche's
   relationship with Elisabeth continued on the path of conflict and
   reconciliation, but she would not see him again in person until after
   his collapse. He continued to have frequent and painful attacks of
   illness, which made prolonged work impossible. In 1887, Nietzsche
   quickly wrote the polemic On the Genealogy of Morals.

   During this year Nietzsche encountered Fyodor Dostoevsky's work, which
   he quickly appropriated. He also exchanged letters with Hippolyte
   Taine, and then also with Georg Brandes, whom both Kierkegaard and
   Nietzsche inspired. Brandes, who had started to teach the philosophy of
   Søren Kierkegaard in the 1870s, wrote to Nietzsche asking him to read
   Kierkegaard, to which Nietzsche replied that he would. In the beginning
   of 1888, in Copenhagen, Brandes delivered one of the first lectures on
   Nietzsche's philosophy.

   In the same year, Nietzsche wrote five books, based on his voluminous
   notes for the long-planned work, The Will to Power. His health seemed
   to improve, and he spent the summer in high spirits. In the fall of
   1888 his writings and letters began to reveal a higher estimation of
   his own status and 'fate'. He overestimated the increasing response to
   his writings, above all, for the recent polemic, The Case of Wagner. On
   his 44th birthday, after completing The Twilight of the Idols and The
   Antichrist, he decided to write the autobiography Ecce Homo, which
   presents itself to his readers in order that they "[h]ear me! For I am
   such and such a person. Above all, do not mistake me for someone else."
   (Preface, sec. 1, tr. Walter Kaufmann) In December, Nietzsche began a
   correspondence with August Strindberg, and thought that, short of an
   international breakthrough, he would attempt to buy back his older
   writings from the publisher and have them translated into other
   European languages. Moreover, he planned the publication of the
   compilation Nietzsche Contra Wagner and of the poems Dionysian
   Dithyrambs.

Mental breakdown and death (1889–1900)

   On January 3, 1889, Nietzsche had a mental collapse. That day two
   Turinese policemen approached him after he caused a public disturbance
   in the streets of Turin. What actually happened remains unknown. The
   often-repeated tale states that Nietzsche witnessed the whipping of a
   horse at the other end of the Piazza Carlo Alberto, ran to the horse,
   threw his arms up around the horse’s neck to protect it, and collapsed
   to the ground. (The first dream-sequence from Dostoyevsky's Crime and
   Punishment has just such a scene in which Raskolnikov encounters a
   horse that is being whipped around the eyes(Part 1, Chapter 5).
   Incidentally, Nietzsche said of Dostoyevsky that he was 'The only
   psycho-analyst from whom I have anything to learn.'(Twilight of the
   Idols, Friedrich Nietzsche, 1889, §45))

   In the following few days, he sent short writings to a number of
   friends (including Cosima Wagner and Jacob Burckhardt), which may
   indicate potential signs of a breakdown. To his former colleague
   Burckhardt he wrote: "I have had Caiphas put in fetters. Also, last
   year I was crucified by the German doctors in a very drawn-out manner.
   Wilhelm, Bismarck, and all anti-Semites abolished."

   On January 6, 1889, Burckhardt showed the letter he had received from
   Nietzsche to Overbeck. The following day Overbeck received a similarly
   revealing letter, and decided that Nietzsche's friends had to bring him
   back to Basel. Overbeck travelled to Turin and brought Nietzsche to a
   psychiatric clinic in Basel. By that time, Nietzsche appeared fully in
   the grip of insanity, and his mother Franziska decided to transfer him
   to a clinic in Jena under the direction of Otto Binswanger. From
   November 1889 to February 1890, Julius Langbehn attempted to cure
   Nietzsche, claiming that the doctors' methods were ineffective to cure
   Nietzsche's condition. Langbehn assumed progressively greater control
   of Nietzsche until his secrecy discredited him. In March 1890 Franziska
   removed Nietzsche from the clinic, and in May 1890 brought him to her
   home in Naumburg. During this process, Overbeck and Gast contemplated
   what to do with Nietzsche's unpublished works. In January 1889 they
   proceeded with the planned release of The Twilight of the Idols, by
   that time already printed and bound. In February, they ordered a
   50-copy private edition of Nietzsche contra Wagner, but the publisher
   C. G. Naumann secretly printed 100. Overbeck and Gast decided to
   withhold publishing Der Antichrist and Ecce Homo due to their more
   radical content. Nietzsche's reception and recognition enjoyed their
   first surge.
   A photo by Hans Olde from the photographic series "The Ill Nietzsche",
   May of 1899
   Enlarge
   A photo by Hans Olde from the photographic series "The Ill Nietzsche",
   May of 1899

   In 1893, Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth returned from Paraguay after the
   suicide of her husband. She read and studied Nietzsche's works, and
   piece by piece took control of them and of their publication. Overbeck
   eventually suffered dismissal, and Gast finally co-operated. After the
   death of Franziska in 1897 Nietzsche lived in Weimar, where Elisabeth
   cared for him and allowed people, including Rudolf Steiner, to visit
   her uncommunicative brother.

   Early commentators frequently diagnosed a syphilitic infection as the
   cause of the breakdown; however, some of Nietzsche's symptoms seem
   inconsistent with typical cases of syphilis. Some have diagnosed a form
   of brain cancer, possibly inherited from his father. While most
   commentators regard Nietzsche's breakdown as unrelated to his
   philosophy, some, including Georges Bataille and René Girard, argue for
   considering his breakdown as a symptom of a psychological maladjustment
   brought on by his philosophy.

   On August 25, 1900 Nietzsche died after contracting pneumonia. At the
   wish of Elisabeth, he was buried beside his father at the church in
   Röcken. His friend, Gast, gave his funeral oration, proclaiming: "Holy
   be your name to all future generations!" (Note that Nietzsche had
   pointed out in Ecce Homo how he did not wish to be called "holy".)

   Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche compiled The Will to
   Power from notes he had written; and published it posthumously. Since
   his sister arranged the book, the general consensus holds that it does
   not reflect Nietzsche's intent, especially because Nietzsche opposed
   Elisabeth's marriage to an anti-Semite. Indeed, Mazzino Montinari, the
   editor of Nietzsche's Nachlass, called it a forgery. The content of The
   Will to Power has given rise to accusations that Nietzsche shared views
   similar to those of the Nazis.

Key concepts

   Friedrich Nietzsche, 1882
   Enlarge
   Friedrich Nietzsche, 1882

   In his preface to The Portable Nietzsche, the prominent translator of
   Nietzsche, Walter Kaufmann, expressed the view that, although
   Nietzsche's ideas may often seem contradictory, a thorough
   understanding of Nietzsche's free-thinking nature may also yield an
   explanation of his paradoxes. In addition to this, perspectivism
   intimates a thesis regarding the seeming contradictions in Nietzsche's
   writings, suggesting that Nietzsche used multiple viewpoints in his
   work as a means of challenging his reader to consider various
   approaches toward an issue. The thesis, however, does not claim that
   Nietzsche himself regarded all ideas as equally valid. Nietzsche's
   disagreements with many other philosophers, such as Kant, Plato,
   Schopenhauer, and Spinoza, populate his texts. Whether one views the
   conflicting elements in his writings as intentional or not, his various
   ideas continue to have influence.

Works

The Birth of Tragedy

   Nietzsche published his first book in 1872 as The Birth of Tragedy, Out
   of the Spirit of Music (Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der
   Musik) and reissued it in 1886 as The Birth of Tragedy, Or: Hellenism
   and Pessimism (Die Geburt der Tragödie, Oder: Griechentum und
   Pessimismus). The later edition contained a prefatory essay, An Attempt
   at Self-Criticism, wherein Nietzsche commented on this very early work.

   In contrast to the typically Enlightenment view of ancient Greek
   culture as noble, simple, elegant and grandiose, Nietzsche
   characterizes it as a conflict between two distinct tendencies - the
   Apollonian and Dionysian. The Apollonian in culture he sees as the
   principium individuationis (principle of individuation) with its
   refinement, sobriety and emphasis on superficial appearance, whereby
   man separates himself from the undifferentiated immediacy of nature.
   Immersion into that same wholeness characterizes the Dionysian,
   recognizable by intoxication, irrationality and inhumanity; this shows
   the influence of Schopenhauer's view that non-rational forces underlie
   human creativity. Nietzsche describes how from Socrates onward the
   Apollonian had dominated Western thought, and raises German Romanticism
   (especially Richard Wagner) as a possible re-introduction of the
   Dionysian to the salvation of European culture.

Untimely Meditations

   Started in 1873 and completed in 1876, this work comprises a collection
   of four (out of a projected 13) essays concerning the contemporary
   condition of European, especially German, culture.

         1. David Strauss: der Bekenner und der Schriftsteller, 1873
            (David Strauss: the Confessor and the Writer) attacks David
            Strauss's The Old and the New Faith: A Confession (1871) which
            Nietzsche holds up as an example of the German thought of the
            time. He paints Strauss's "New Faith" -
            scientifically-determined universal mechanism based on the
            progression of history - as a vulgar reading of history in the
            service of a degenerate culture, polemically attacking not
            only the book but also Strauss as a Philistine of
            pseudo-culture.
         2. Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben, 1874 (On
            the Use and Abuse of History for Life) offers instead of the
            prevailing view of "knowledge as an end in itself" an
            alternative way of reading history, one where living life
            becomes the primary concern; along with a description of how
            this might improve the health of a society.
         3. Schopenhauer als Erzieher, 1874 (Schopenhauer as Educator)
            describes how the philosophic genius of Schopenhauer might
            bring on a resurgence of German culture. Nietzsche gives
            special attention to Schopenhauer's individualism, honesty and
            steadfastness as well as his cheerfulness, despite
            Schopenhauer's noted pessimism.
         4. Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, 1876 investigates Richard Wagner's
            psychology — less flatteringly than Nietzsche's friendship
            with his subject might suggest. Nietzsche considered not
            publishing it because of this, and eventually settled on
            drafts that criticized the musician less than they might have
            done. Nonetheless this essay foreshadows the imminent split
            between the two.

Human, All Too Human

   Nietzsche supplemented the original edition of this work, first
   published in 1878, with a second part in 1879: Mixed Opinions and
   Maxims (Vermischte Meinungen und Sprüche), and a third part in 1880:
   The Wanderer and his Shadow (Der Wanderer und sein Schatten). The three
   parts appeared together in 1886 as Human, All Too Human, A Book for
   Free Spirits (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, Ein Buch für freie
   Geister). This book represents the beginning of Nietzsche's "middle
   period", with a break from German Romanticism and from Wagner and with
   a definite positivist slant. Note the style: reluctant to construct a
   systemic philosophy, Nietzsche composed these works as a series of
   several hundred aphorisms, either single lines or one or two pages.
   This book comprises more a collection of debunkings of unwarranted
   assumptions than an interpretation, though it offers some elements of
   Nietzsche's thought in his arguments: he uses his perspectivism and the
   idea of the will to power as explanatory devices, though the latter
   remains less developed than in his later thought.

Daybreak

   In Daybreak: Reflections on Moral Prejudices (Morgenröte. Gedanken über
   die moralischen Vorurteile, 1881), Nietzsche de-emphasizes the role of
   hedonism as a motivator and accentuates the role of a "feeling of
   power". His relativism, both moral and cultural, and his critique of
   Christianity also reaches greater maturity. With this aphoristic book
   in its clear, calm and intimate style Nietzsche seems to invite a
   particular experience, rather than showing concern with persuading his
   readers to accept any point of view. He would develop many of the ideas
   advanced here more fully in later books.

The Gay Science

   The Gay Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882), the largest and
   most comprehensive of Nietzsche's middle-period books, continues the
   aphoristic style and contains more poetry than any other of his works.
   It has central themes of a joyful affirmation of life and of an
   immersion in a light-hearted scholarship that takes aesthetic pleasure
   out of life (the title refers to the Provençal phrase for the craft of
   poetry). As an example, Nietzsche offers the doctrine of eternal
   recurrence, which ranks one's life as the sole consideration when
   evaluating how one should act. This contrasts with the Christian view
   of an afterlife which emphasizes later reward at the cost of one's
   immediate happiness. The Gay Science has however perhaps become best
   known for the statement " God is dead", which forms part of Nietzsche's
   naturalistic and aesthetic alternative to traditional religion.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

   A break with his middle-period works, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, A Book
   for All and None (Also Sprach Zarathustra, Ein Buch für Alle und
   Keinen, 1883 - 1885) became Nietzsche's best-known book and the one he
   considered the most important. Noteworthy for its format, it comprises
   a philosophical work of fiction whose style often lightheartedly
   imitates that of the New Testament and of the Platonic dialogues, at
   times resembling Pre-Socratic works in tone and in its use of natural
   phenomena as rhetorical and explanatory devices. It is also abundant
   with references to the Western literary and philosophical traditions,
   implicitly offering an interpretation of these traditions and of their
   problems. Nietzsche achieves all of this through the character of
   Zarathustra (referring to the historic figure behind Zoroastrianism)
   who makes speeches on philosophic topics as he moves along a loose
   plotline marking his development and the reception of his ideas. One
   can view this characteristic (following the genre of the bildungsroman)
   as an inline commentary on Zarathustra (and Nietzsche's) philosophy.
   All this, along with the book's ambiguity and paradoxical nature, has
   helped its eventual enthusiastic reception by the reading public, but
   has frustrated academic attempts at analysis (as Nietzsche may have
   intended); and Thus Spoke Zarathustra remained for long unpopular as a
   topic for scholars (especially those in the Anglo-American analytic
   tradition), until the second half of the twentieth century brought
   widespread interest in Nietzsche and his unconventional style that does
   not distinguish between philosophy and literature. It offers complete
   formulations of eternal recurrence and of the will to power; and
   Nietzsche for the first time speaks of the Übermensch: themes that
   would dominate his books from this point onwards.

Beyond Good and Evil

   Of the four "late-period" writings of Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil,
   Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (Jenseits von Gut und Böse.
   Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft, 1886) most closely resembles
   the aphoristic style of his middle period. Therein he identifies the
   qualities of genuine philosophers: imagination, self-assertion, danger,
   originality and the "creation of values" - all else he considers
   incidental. Continuing from this he contests some key pre-suppositions
   such as "self-consciousness", "Knowledge", "Truth" and "Free-Will" as
   used by some of the great members of the philosophic tradition. Instead
   of these traditional analyses, which Nietzsche paints as insufficient,
   he offers the will to power as an explanatory device, being part of his
   "perspective of life" which he regards as "beyond good and evil",
   denying a universal morality for all human beings. The master and slave
   moralities feature prominently as Nietzsche re-evaluates deeply-held
   humanistic beliefs, portraying even domination, appropriation and
   injury to the weak as not universally objectionable. A tone of moral
   relativism and perspectivism dominates throughout.

On the Genealogy of Morals

   The three essays that make up On the Genealogy of Morals, A Polemic
   (Zur Genealogie der Moral, Eine Streitschrift, 1887) represent the last
   of Nietzsche's works before his flurry of activity in 1888. Each essay
   comprises a series of paragraphs (like the longer aphorisms of some of
   his books) that discusses the details of his moral relativism,
   especially of how the will to power influences perspectives, and
   appears more unproblematically philosophical in style and tone than
   many of his books and all of those written afterwards. For these
   reasons this book has become a popular topic for scholarly analysis.
     * 'Good and Evil', 'Good and Bad'" continues Nietzsche's discussion
       of the Master-Slave Morality, maintaining that the slave morality
       (which labels "good" and "evil" compared to the less judgmental and
       more masterful "good" and "bad") arises from a denial of life — as
       opposed to the vitalism of the master morality. Nietzsche
       identifies ressentiment as the driving force of the slave morality.
     * 'Guilt', 'Bad Conscience', and Related Matters investigates the
       sources of conscience, especially "bad conscience", and names
       cruelty as the base of punishment and self-punishment. Cruelty as
       punishment of others provides gratification because thereby one
       imposes one's will over another; cruelty to oneself happens through
       "bad conscience", whereby one punishes oneself because of not
       holding to a self-imposed standard of dependability. In this way
       Nietzsche characterizes altruistic, "selfless", behaviour as
       immense cruelty to oneself by imposing another's will over oneself,
       an explanation he offers for Christianity and monotheism in
       general.
     * What Do Ascetic Ideals Mean? continues the theme. Nietzsche
       describes how such a paradoxical action as asceticism might serve
       the interests of life: through asceticism one can attain mastery
       over oneself. In this way one can express both ressentiment and the
       will to power. Nietzsche describes the morality of the ascetic
       priest as characterized by Christianity as one where, finding
       oneself in pain, one places the blame for the pain on oneself and
       thereby attempts and attains mastery over the world, a tactic that
       Nietzsche places behind secular science as well as behind religion.

The Case of Wagner

   In his first book of a highly productive year, The Case of Wagner, A
   Musician's Problem (Der Fall Wagner, Ein Musikanten-Problem, May -
   August 1888), Nietzsche launches into a devastating and unbridled
   attack upon the figure of Richard Wagner. While he recognizes Wagner's
   music as an immense cultural achievement, he also characterizes it as
   the product of decadence and nihilism and thereby of sickness. The book
   shows Nietzsche as a capable music-critic, and provides the setting for
   some of his further reflections on the nature of art and on its
   relationship to the future health of humanity.

The Twilight of the Idols

   The title of this highly polemic book, Twilight of the Idols, or How
   One Philosophizes with a Hammer (Götzen-Dämmerung, oder Wie man mit dem
   Hammer philosophiert, August-September 1888), word-plays upon Wagner's
   opera, The Twilight of the Gods (Die Götterdämmerung). In this short
   work, written in the flurry of his last productive year, Nietzsche
   re-iterates and elaborates some of the criticisms of major philosophic
   figures (Socrates, Plato, Kant and the Christian tradition). He
   establishes early on in the section The Problem of Socrates, that the
   value of life cannot be estimated and any judgment concerning it only
   reveals the person's life-denying or life-affirming tendencies. He
   tries to show how philosophers from Socrates onwards were in his own
   words "decadents," employing dialectics as a tool for self-preservation
   as the authority of tradition breaks down. He also criticizes the
   German culture of his day as unsophisticated, and shoots some
   disapproving arrows at key French, British, and Italian cultural
   figures. In contrast to all these alleged representatives of cultural
   decadence, Nietzsche applauds Caesar, Napoleon, Goethe, Dostoevsky,
   Thucydides and the Sophists as healthier and stronger types. The book
   states the transvaluation of all values as Nietzsche's final and most
   important project, and gives a view of antiquity wherein the Romans for
   once take precedence over the ancient Greeks.

The Antichrist

   In one of his best-known and most contentious works, The Antichrist,
   Curse on Christianity (Der Antichrist. Fluch auf das Christentum,
   September 1888), Nietzsche launches into a polemic, hyperbolic attack
   on the morals of Christianity — the view of Nietzsche as an
   enthusiastic attacker of Christianity largely arises from this book.
   Therein he elaborates on his criticisms of Christianity which had
   occurred in his earlier works, but now using a sarcastic tone,
   expressing a disgust over the way the slave-morality corrupted noble
   values in ancient Rome. He frames certain elements of the religion —
   the Gospels, Paul, the martyrs, priests and the crusades — as creations
   of ressentiment for the upholding of the unhealthy at the cost of
   stronger sentiments. Even in this extreme denunciation Nietzsche does
   not begrudge some respect to the figure of Jesus and some Christian
   elements, but this book abandons the relatively even-handed (if
   inflammatory) analysis of his earlier criticisms for outright polemic —
   Nietzsche proposes an "Anti-Christian" morality for the future: the
   transvaluation of all values.

Ecce Homo

   Though Ecce Homo, How One Becomes What One Is (Ecce Homo, Wie man wird,
   was man ist, October-November 1888) appears as a curiously-styled
   autobiography (with sections entitled "Why I Am So Clever", "Why I Am
   So Wise", "Why I Write Such Good Books") it offers much more of a
   history of Nietzsche's ideas than of the man himself, highlighting
   Nietzsche's project of genealogical analysis as well as de-emphasizing
   the splits between philosophy and literature, personality and
   philosophy, and body and mind. The author does this by tying certain
   qualities of his thought with idiosyncrasies of his physical person, as
   well as extremely candid remarks occasionally made throughout his
   half-joking self-adulation (a mockery of Socratic humility). After this
   self-description, wherein Nietzsche proclaims the goodness of
   everything that has happened to him (including his father's early death
   and his near-blindness — an example of amor fati) — he offers brief
   insights into all of his works, concluding with the section "Why I Am A
   Destiny", calmly laying out the principles he places at the centre of
   his project: eternal recurrence and the transvaluation of all values.

Nietzsche Contra Wagner

   A selection of passages concerning Wagner and art in general which
   Nietzsche extracted from his works from the period 1878 to 1887 appears
   in Nietzsche Contra Wagner, Out of the Files of a Psychologist
   (Nietzsche contra Wagner, Aktenstücke eines Psychologen, December
   1888). The passages serve as a background for the comparison Nietzsche
   would make between his own aesthetics and those of Wagner and his
   description of how Wagner became corrupted through Christianity,
   Aryanism, and anti-semitism.

The Unpublished Notebooks

   Nietzsche's nachlass contains an immense amount of material and
   discusses at great length the issues around which Nietzsche's
   philosophy revolves . Nietzsche's sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche,
   who acted as executrix of his literary estate, arranged these pieces
   for publication as The Will to Power.

   Later investigation would reveal that Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche had
   included material extremely selectively and that she gave these
   excerpts an order different to that of the author, leading to the
   current opinion of her manuscript as a revisionist corruption bringing
   her brother's text in line with her own beliefs, which he vehemently
   opposed. On the strength of this manuscript, Elisabeth later fostered
   sympathy for her brother's works among the Nazis, and her revisionism
   forms the cornerstone of the defense of Nietzsche against the charges
   of fascism and anti-semitism.

   Even when disregarding the controversy around Elisabeth, the
   unpublished notebooks occasion contention in Nietzsche scholarship
   because of the question of their relative importance when evaluating
   the philosophy expounded in the published works. While scholars
   normally privilege the published works as the mature statements of
   Nietzsche's beliefs, the view championed by Martin Heidegger sees the
   notebooks as a place where Nietzsche undertook a more complete
   investigation into the central elements of his philosophy.
   Psychoanalytic approaches also place a high value on the notebooks,
   regarding them as potentially representing "real" views without the
   self-censorship which publishing requires. Many scholars advocate a
   case-by-case investigation of the contents of the notebooks compared to
   what Nietzsche published, whereas others (including deconstructionists
   — especially Jacques Derrida), place the notebooks with the published
   works in a literary continuum.

Nietzsche's influence and reception

   Nietzsche's reception has proved a rather confused and complex affair.
   Many Germans eventually discovered his appeals for greater
   individualism and personality development in Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
   but responded to those appeals in diverging ways. He had some following
   among left-wing Germans in the 1890s; in 1894–95, German conservatives
   wanted to ban his work as subversive. By the First World War, however,
   he had acquired a reputation as a source of right-wing German
   militarism. The Dreyfus Affair provides another example of his
   reception: the French anti-semitic Right labelled the Jewish and
   Leftist intellectuals who defended Alfred Dreyfus as "Nietzscheans".

   During the interbellum, certain Nazis employed a highly selective
   reading of Nietzsche's work to advance their ideology, notably Alfred
   Baeumler in his reading of The Will to Power. The era of Nazi rule
   (1933 – 1945) saw Nietzsche's writings widely studied in German (and,
   after 1938, Austrian) schools and universities. The Nazis viewed
   Nietzsche as one of their "founding fathers". Although there exist few
   — if any — similarities between Nietzsche's political views and Nazism,
   phrases like "the will to power" became common in Nazi circles. The
   wide popularity of Nietzsche among Nazis stemmed in part from the
   endeavors of his sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, the editor of
   Nietzsche's work after his 1889 breakdown, and an eventual Nazi
   sympathizer. Nietzsche himself thoroughly disapproved of his sister's
   anti-Semitic views; in a letter to her he wrote:

     You have committed one of the greatest stupidities—for yourself and
     for me! Your association with an anti-Semitic chief expresses a
     foreignness to my whole way of life which fills me again and again
     with ire or melancholy. … It is a matter of honour with me to be
     absolutely clean and unequivocal in relation to anti-Semitism,
     namely, opposed to it, as I am in my writings. I have recently been
     persecuted with letters and Anti-Semitic Correspondence Sheets. My
     disgust with this party (which would like the benefit of my name
     only too well) is as pronounced as possible.

     —Friedrich Nietzsche, Letter to His Sister, Christmas 1887

   Moreover, Mazzino Montinari, while editing Nietzsche's posthumous works
   in the 1960s, found that Förster-Nietzsche, while editing the
   posthumous fragments making up The Will to Power, had cut extracts,
   changed their order, and added titles of her own invention .

   The psychologist Carl Jung recognized Nietzsche's importance early on:
   he held a seminar on Nietzsche's Zarathustra in 1934. According to
   Ernest Jones, biographer and personal acquaintance of Sigmund Freud,
   Freud frequently referred to Nietzsche as having "more penetrating
   knowledge of himself than any man who ever lived or was likely to
   live". Yet Jones also reports that Freud emphatically denied that
   Nietzsche's writings influenced his own psychological discoveries.
   Moreover, Freud took no interest in philosophy while a medical student,
   forming his opinion about Nietzsche later in life.

   Early twentieth-century thinkers influenced by Nietzsche include:
   philosophers Theodor Adorno, Georg Brandes, Henri Bergson, Martin
   Buber, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Emil Cioran, Michel Foucault,
   and Muhammad Iqbal; sociologists Ferdinand Tönnies, Max Weber;
   theologian Paul Tillich; novelists Hermann Hesse, André Malraux, André
   Gide and D. H. Lawrence; psychologists Alfred Adler, Abraham Maslow,
   Carl Rogers, and Rollo May; poets Rainer Maria Rilke, and William
   Butler Yeats; playwrights George Bernard Shaw, and Eugene O'Neill; and
   authors Menno ter Braak, Richard Wright and Jack London. American
   writer H.L. Mencken avidly read and translated Nietzsche's works and
   has gained the soubriquet "the American Nietzsche". Emma Goldman also
   declared Nietzsche an anarchist.

   In 1936 Martin Heidegger lectured on the "Will to Power as a Work of
   Art"; he later published four large volumes of lectures on Nietzsche.
   Thomas Mann's essays mention Nietzsche with respect. One of the
   characters in Mann's 1947 novel Doktor Faustus represents Nietzsche
   fictionally. In 1938 the German existentialist Karl Jaspers wrote the
   following about the influence of Nietzsche and the Danish philosopher
   Søren Kierkegaard:

     The contemporary philosophical situation is determined by the fact
     that two philosophers, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, who did not count
     in their times and, for a long time, remained without influence in
     the history of philosophy, have continually grown in significance.
     Philosophers after Hegel have increasingly returned to face them,
     and they stand today unquestioned as the authentically great
     thinkers of their age. ... The effect of both is immeasurably great,
     even greater in general thinking than in technical philosophy ...

     —Jaspers, Reason and Existenz

   The appropriation of Nietzsche's work by the Nazis, combined with the
   rise of analytic philosophy, ensured that British and American academic
   philosophers would almost completely ignore him until at least 1950.
   Even George Santayana, an American philosopher whose life and work
   betray some similarity to Nietzsche's, dismissed Nietzsche in his 1916
   Egotism in German Philosophy as a "prophet of Romanticism". Analytic
   philosophers, if they mentioned Nietzsche at all, characterized him as
   a literary figure rather than as a philosopher. Nietzsche's present
   stature in the English-speaking world owes much to the exegetical
   writings and improved Nietzsche translations by the German-American
   philosopher Walter Kaufmann, beginning with the 1950 publication of the
   first edition of his Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist.

     It is evident at once that Nietzsche is far superior to Kant and
     Hegel as a stylist; but it also seems that as a philosopher he
     represents a sharp decline—and men have not been lacking who have
     not considered him a philosopher at all—because he had no “system.”
     Yet this argument is hardly cogent. Schelling and Hegel, Spinoza and
     Aquinas had their systems; in Kant's and Plato's case the word is
     far less applicable; and of the many important philosophers who very
     definitely did not have systems one need only mention Socrates and
     many of the pre-Socratics. Not only can one defend Nietzsche on this
     score—how many philosophers today have systems?—but one must add
     that he had strong philosophic reasons for not having a system.

     —Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist,
     p. 79

   Nietzsche's influence on continental philosophy increased dramatically
   after the second World War, especially among the French intellectual
   Left and post-structuralists. Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, and
   Michel Foucault all owe a heavy debt to Nietzsche. Gilles Deleuze and
   Pierre Klossowski wrote monographs drawing new attention to Nietzsche's
   work, and a 1972 conference at Cérisy-la-Salle ranks as the most
   important event in France for a generation's reception of Nietzsche.

   Harold Bloom has described Nietzsche as " Emerson's belated rival".
   Bloom's theory of the "anxiety of influence" betrays a Nietzschean
   influence. Other people, organisations and works influenced by
   Nietzsche include "Death of God" theologian Thomas J. J. Altizer;
   novelists Nikos Kazantzakis, Mikhail Artsybashev, Jack Kerouac, Donna
   Tartt, Philippe Sollers and Lu Xun; musicians Jim Morrison, Marilyn
   Manson, David Bowie, Kevin Barnes, Dan Bejar, and Trent Reznor; the
   Church of Satan and its founder Anton LaVey; and Stanley Kubrick's film
   2001: A Space Odyssey. In the film Little Miss Sunshine, one character
   reads Nietzsche's works almost constantly, and has taken a vow of
   silence which he explains as due to Nietzsche's influence.

Trivia

   Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault were both born on October 15.
   Both Nietzsche and Foucault died in their late fifties on the 25th day
   of the month and close to Foucault's own death he stated: "I am a
   Nietzschean."
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche"
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   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
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