Nietzsche's philosophy is regarded as an act of self-liberation — but even the superman remained powerless against his own family. This essay highlights the pathological tension between the lonely thinker and the “canaille” relatives, mother Franziska Nietzsche and sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. While the philosopher (de)constructs “woman in itself” as flat, independent and mindless in his writings, he also has stockings stuffed and sausage boxes sent from Naumburg. An essay about the deepest objection to eternal return: one's own kinship.

This is the second part of a small series for this year's Mother's Day. In first part Henry Holland wrote about Franziska Nietzsche's life with a particular focus on her time before Nietzsche and her last years.