An Introduction to Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche

An Introduction

John Knoblock

I have often asked myself whether I am not more heavily obligated to the hardest years of my life than to any others. As my inmost nature teaches me, whatever is necessary as seen from the heights and in the sense of a great economy is also the useful par excellence: one should not only bear it, one should love it. Amor fati: that is my inmost nature. And as for my long sickness, do I not owe it indescribably more than I owe to my health? I owe it a higher health one which is made stronger by whatever does not kill it. I also owe my philosophy to it. Only great pain is the ultimate liberator of the spirit…. Only great pain, that long, slow pain in which we are burned with green wood, as it were - pain which takes its time -- only this forces us philosophers to descend into our ultimate depths and to put away all trust, all good-naturedness, all that would veil, all mildness, all that is medium -- things in which formerly we may have found our humanity. I doubt that such a pain makes us "better," but I know that it makes us more profound.

From Nietzsche Contra Wagner, "Epilogue"

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born October 15,1844 in Röcken, Germany. After his father died in 1849, Nietzsche was raised his mother and aunts and grew up in a strongly religious environment. At the university he proved himself a brilliant student, studied classical philology, and, on the strength of glowing recommendations, was appointed professor at Basel (1869-79) before graduating. In May of 1869, he first met Richard Wagner at Tribschen and spent weekends and Christmas with him. Strongly influenced by Schopenhauer's views on art and his notion of a will to power, he dedicated his first book, Die Geburt der Tragödie (1872, The Birth of Tragedy) to Wagner, whose operas he regarded as the true successors to Greek tragedy. In 1874, he wrote Schopenhauer as Educator (now included in Untimely Meditations as Part III). In 1875, plagued by failing eyesight and chronic illness, Nietzsche collapsed Christmas day and temporarily had to stop teaching at University. In 1876, he finished his essay on Wagner (now included in Untimely Meditation as Part IV). These two works mark his "declaration of independence" from the two figures who had provided the basis of his first philosophical writings. In 1879 Nietzsche's illness worsened and he resigned from the university, settling in St. Moritz. He now began his truly independent work, including Human, All Too Human, and Daybreak. In 1881, Nietzsche first conceived the ideas which would become the themes of his literary masterpiece, Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-5, Thus Spoke Zarathustra): the distinctively Nietzschean concepts of the Übermensch or "overman," and eternal return. In 1887, Nietzsche began the works which contain his final philosophy: Genealogy of Morals, Twilight of the Idols, Antichrist, and Ecce Homo. In 1889, Nietzsche collapsed in the street in Turin. His friend Overbeck took Nietzsche back to Basel, where he underwent treatment, but he never recovered. His sister, Elizabeth, who had been his close to him in his middle period, had married, against Nietzsche's strong opposition, the anti-Semite Bernhard Foerster and had moved with him to Paraguay where they would found a utopian society. After Foerster committed suicide, Elisabeth returned from Paraguay and began work on the Nietzsche Archive through which she gained complete control over Nietzsche's works. A convinced anti-Semite and racist she presented Hitler with Nietzsche's walking stick and allowed the Nazis to tarnish Nietzsche's reputation, by equating their racial theories with Nietzsche's ideas, particularly of the Übermensch. On August 25, 1900, Nietzsche died, never having had more than a few moments of lucidity after his complete mental breakdown.