Introduction: “I am not a person, I am dynamite”¹

Who was this exceptional figure in intellectual history that described itself as “dynamite” and was also perceived as such? What did she teach? In which context did these ideas arise? How did its effect unfold? And what can we learn from her today?

The Buser World Music Forum association has set itself the statutory task of bringing the works of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche closer to a broad public. This is to be done, among other things, via this website, but various projects and events are planned. The following article is intended to provide a rough overview of Nietzsche's life, work, impact and topicality and thus an initial orientation for an in-depth study.

Contents

I. Nietzsche's basic ideas

I.1 The fragment as a principle

I.2 Creation vs. nihilism

I.3 Slave vs. Master Morale

I.4 The art of living and individual liberation

II. Nietzsche's life up to his first publication

III. Nietzsche's productive period

III. 1 From Wagnerian to Free Spirit

III.2 The light years

III.3 The mature work

III.4 Breaking bad

IV. Nietzsche's last years

V. Nietzsche's aftermath

VI. Conclusion: Nietzsche's Legacy

Sources and selected bibliography

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I. Nietzsche's Basic Ideas

I.1 The Fragment As A Principle

Most of Nietzsche's texts are fragmentary. He never wrote an actual system, but is rather regarded as a master of aphoristics. Many of his writings contradict each other; some of his texts are even paradoxical in themselves and refuse a clear attribution of meaning. This makes it difficult to even name what Nietzsche's basic ideas are.

This form says it all. Nietzsche himself writes: “The will for the system is a lack of righteousness. ”² For him, truth is “[e] in a moving army of metaphors.”³. This is largely due to his philosophical radicalism: He vehemently criticizes the view that there is an absolute truth that philosophy could reflect, instead at best particular, relative and ephemeral “perspectives” of the world through which we may better Can record when we are able to put on more than just a pair of 'glasses' but never entirely They will be able to understand.⁴

I.2 Creation vs. Nihilism

Nietzsche presents this idea not simply as his own opinion, but as a symptom of his age. What is meant by this is his famous dictum “God is dead”⁵. While in earlier times, particularly in the Christian Middle Ages, there would have been a general orientation of all thought, feeling and action, this was lost with the advent of modernity. Nietzsche often describes this loss of orientation as “nihilism.” There is a risk of a complete devaluation of all values, a dystopia of hedonistic complacency, for which Nietzsche the image of the “last person”⁶ Calls.

Nietzsche's big question: Have we really come to an end? Or is there still an alternative to modern nihilism, which manifests itself as exhaustion, skepticism, helplessness and discouragement? His alternative proposal can be So Zarathustra spoke , which reads like a kind of 'Bible for Modernity, 'both satirically ironic destruction of the old faith and unironic proclamation of a new beginning, a utopia of a new cultural beginning, which Nietzsche tries to conjure with parables such as the “superman,” the “eternal return,” the playing child and the “will to power.” The interpretation of these “doctrines” and their exact relationship to one another is probably the most difficult “nut” that Nietzsche left behind for posterity. On an emotional level, the Zarathustra Probably his most compelling book. It appeals to the reader as an individual and helps them deal with traumatic experiences. However, it is difficult to translate its content into a conceptual language. Following on from Arthur Schopenhauer (1788—1860), Nietzsche's most important philosophical teacher, the “eternal return” seems to describe a world in which there are no objective values and no progress, in which one and the same fundamental conflicts are repeated forever, without any possibility of redemption being conceivable. But in contrast to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche does not conclude from this point of view that the world should be denied, because such a denial of the world is itself still an expression of the “will to power” underlying all world events. Instead, you should absolutely affirm it and gain from this affirmation the strength to create a new creation — a creation whose content Nietzsche tells the reader to spell out.

We are dealing with two contradictory basic aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy: One is the “negative”, sometimes extremely “nihilistic” aspect of the radical critique of all metaphysics, on the other hand the “affirmative” attempt to overcome nihilism in an almost exhilarating doctrine that encourages people to become creative without regard to religious, scientific aesthetics, and moral conventions. When the “eternal truths” of metaphysics turn out to be mortal “idols,” then this results consistently in the end no contrition and fatigue, but then there are no limits to human energy; but at the same time this also means that one's own creations cannot claim “eternity” but must be created in the awareness that they are nothing but “idols.” Nietzsche sees such an ironic worldview as the origin of the antiquity he admires; Nietzsche wants to revive such an attitude of heroic realism in the modern age.

I.3 Slave vs. Master Morale

Nietzsche is constantly using new terms and metaphors to express this basic doctrine. In his early work, he confronts the creative interplay of “Dionysian” and “Apollinian” with “Socratic” rationalism and the creativity of “intuitive man” with the scientist's rigid approach to the world. In the middle period, the “free spirit” in particular is his guiding principle of a non-conformist, individualistic existence beyond existing prejudices, which he tries to devalue by showing their psychological and historical origins. His basic thesis: On closer inspection, the “high”, altruistic ideals have a very “low”, instinctive, physical, selfish origin. He critically confronts the ascetic ideals of Christianity and modernity with the life and body affirmations of antiquity. These considerations culminate in the The genealogy of morality, in which he compares the pagan “men's morality” with the Christian-modern ideas of guilt, equality, charity, etc. These correspond to a fundamentally negative worldview, which Nietzsche describes as “resentment.” As “slave morality,” they are an expression of the hatred and envy of the weak “army men” of the strong “great individuals,” not the manifestation of a genuine creation. The highest level of “slave morality” is modern science, with its unconditional striving for objective knowledge — in it, of course, Christian ascetism increases to the point of its own self-abolition: Science disenchants the world, devalues all values, and must ultimately call into question its own ideal of knowledge with them. A vacuum of nihilism is created, which Nietzsche sees as an opportunity for a new era.

With this aspect of his work in particular, Nietzsche became a source of inspiration for sociology and psychology — especially psychoanalysis. For Nietzsche, too, the suppression of our physical, especially sexual, needs is the basic evil of our civilization and the main cause of individual and cultural pathologies. Nietzsche's cultural-psychological insights are often compared with Karl Marx's economic philosophy of history and seen as an alternative, but also a possible complementary addition. Would modern fascism be allowed — even for Nietzsche, the effect of “resentment” can be best seen on “anarchists and anti-Semites.”⁷ Observe — not understand it better as a modern “slave uprising” than as an expression of economic interests and tendencies? Of course, the fascists, in their own self-image, were precisely those”barbarians of the 20th century”⁸, whose birth Nietzsche prophesied and hoped for; and ironically enough, the anarchists were also among his most avid readers.

I.4 The Art of Living And Individual Liberation

However, Nietzsche's philosophy is usually understood in a radically individualistic way. The “free spirit” is regarded as the guiding principle of a new way of life away from modern mass society. Little by little, he frees himself from their prejudices and enters into a sincere relationship with his inner instincts. The goal is sovereignty: to master one's own thoughts and passions in order to be able to aesthetically shape one's life in accordance with one's own ideals, to make oneself a work of art. Free from all rigid ties, the “free spirit” should primarily strive for its own self-fulfillment, with ethical considerations taking a back seat. Nietzsche repeatedly states that this way of life is associated with deep existential loneliness — but pleads for an ethic of “harshness” in order to be able to endure this isolation. The aim, however, is not a hedonistic self-expression, but a creative existence often compared by Nietzsche with the life of a “warrior,” which aims to realize the “superman,” which Nietzsche propagates as an overall cultural, albeit underdetermined, mission statement. In light of this vision, one should strive for permanent individual “self-overcoming” in order to promote cultural development as well, knowing that this utopia is a subjective construction, not an absolute point of reference such as the Christian God or Marxian “Communism.” This aspect of Nietzsche's thinking was particularly well received.

While more morally oriented thinkers such as Schopenhauer or Jean-Jacques Rousseau have repeatedly behaved completely differently than they taught as philosophers, Nietzsche can hardly be accused of such self-contradiction: He undoubtedly lived in accordance with this ethic of heroic individualism. Everyone has to decide for themselves whether that speaks for or against them. Nietzsche himself did not regard it as an absolute doctrine for everyone, but criticizes Christianity and modern morality precisely for the fact that they presume to proclaim ethics that apply to everyone. His ethics should be for the strong and exquisite, who are able to endure the accompanying isolation from the “army”; an aristocracy of spirit that should design a new ranking of values in accordance with the requirements of “life,” as opposed to the life-hostile “idols” of modernity, such as the idea of the equality of all humanity. Here, too, there is a figure of self-abolition in Nietzsche: because the masses, exhausted and disoriented by “slave morality,” almost longed for new cultural leadership by those who had gone through the nihilism of modernity and had thus become strong and tough. This could also be read as a contribution to the theory of fascism — in two senses — but is meant apologetically by Nietzsche: He raves about new slavery and the ancient Indian caste system that the “weak, sick, abuses, self-sufferers.”⁹ As “Chandala” excluded from society instead of keeping it alive artificially, he hopes for new leaders like Napoleon who will finally put an end to the “democratic softening” and usher in a new period in which “masculine” values apply again. That Nietzsche in feminism is exclusively one of the “worst advances [] of the general Ugliness Europe's”¹⁰ Seen, is not surprised in view of this — what did not prevent emancipated women and feminists from nevertheless receiving his writings as merciless analyses of patriarchy and as critiques of liberal mainstream feminism. In this regard in particular, it is irritating that Nietzsche, who pleaded for the careless criticism of all prejudices, was obviously not free-spirited enough to question his own, especially since he was friends with numerous 'new women. '

Of course, it follows from Nietzsche's doctrine of “eternal return” that resentment will arise again at some point and that the “slave revolt” will take place again. For Nietzsche, periods of cultural prosperity can only be of short duration. However, it is doubtful whether “cultural blossoms” cannot exactly succeed in an egalitarian social climate, whether culture and oppression are really as necessarily interwoven as Nietzsche repeatedly claims.

It should be obvious that Nietzsche, with this message, a kind of, admittedly very public and determined to achieve mass effectiveness, to proclaim the “doctrine of secrecy” for a new aristocracy, grips the reader with his vanity; this is probably not the slightest reason for the pull of his writings on many: Who does not want to belong to that small elite to whom Nietzsche speaks?

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II. Nietzsche's Life Up To His First Publication

An essential aspect of the relativizing side of Nietzsche's thinking is his interest in psychology and history: For him, the major philosophical systems are nothing more than “self-confession [s] their [r] originators []”¹¹, masks of a “will to power” expressed in them. It is therefore no wonder that Nietzsche, more than any other philosopher, has in turn become an object of biographical research, or even dissection.¹²

Friedrich Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844 in the provincial nest of Röcken near Leipzig, which was then part of Prussia. His father was the village priest Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, who, however, died as early as 1849. The widow Franziska (1826—1897) then moved to Naumburg with her only son and daughter Elisabeth (1846—1935). Nietzsche attended the local cathedral grammar school from 1854 and, as he appeared early as a gifted student, from 1858 the traditional Pforta state school, a boarding school that was founded in 1543 with the function of being an elite cadre for state, science and, above all, the church. He was an avid student and learned French, Latin, Ancient Greek and Hebrew there, read a lot and began to write and compose his first poems and prose texts. Even during this time, he was enthusiastic about the music of Richard Wagner (1813—1883).

Educated in such an exquisite environment, Nietzsche moved to Bonn in 1864 to study classical philology and evangelical theology. In 1865, he followed his mentor Friedrich Ritschl (1806—1876) to Leipzig and concentrated entirely on philology. His particular focus was on the ancient Greeks. During this time, however, he also discovered Schopenhauer's philosophy, which he would wrestle with throughout his life: He largely accepted Schopenhauer's premises — the world as “will” and “idea,” the rejection of Enlightenment ideas of progress and truth — but in the course of his intellectual development he subjected them to a historicizing reformulation and came to completely opposite ethical conclusions.

Because of his great talent, Nietzsche was appointed as an associate professor at the University of Basel in 1869, i.e. at a very young age, without having received a regular doctorate at Ritschl's instigation. He carried out his new tasks with great enthusiasm, but in reality his heart was beating long ago for something completely different from the very dry philology committed to strict positivism, as championed by his academic teacher: He had already met the admired Wagner personally in Leipzig in 1868 and from then on maintained close contact with the couple Richard and Cosima (1837—1930), who were very close to Triebschen resided near Lucerne.

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III. Nietzsche's Productive Period

III.1 From Wagnerian to Free Spirit

Nietzsche's first important publication, The birth of tragedy from the spirit of music (1872) was an attempt to synthesize his three great passions — Wagnerian music, Schopenhauer philosophy and Greek, especially pre-Socratic, antiquity. Nietzsche's bold vision: In the Greek tragedies, a unique fusion of “Apollinian” and “Dionysian,” the two basic drives of artistic creation, could be observed. A marriage of order and chaos, light and intoxication, transgression and measure, which was constitutive of the entire Greek culture. However, the Socratic Enlightenment destroyed this harmony with its one-sided preference for order and light; to this day, Western culture has not recovered from this mistake. Only in Wagner's compositions could such an experience of unity be regained; building on this vibe, the spell of Enlightenment could be broken and the entire European culture revived. — It takes little imagination to sense that Nietzsche was putting an early end to his philological career with this work.

Nietzsche appeals here not for a blind release of noise. Light, order and measure should also be justified. But it is clear: In contrast to the degeneration of Apollinian into Socratic, Nietzsche pleads for Dionysian and even in his last writings, he repeatedly referred to himself as a “disciple of the philosopher Dionysus.”¹³ designate. Even in this first important work, Nietzsche succeeded in being more than a mere Wagner and Schopenhauer adept, but in formulating something completely independent, the program of a cultural revolution in the spirit of Dionysian, active pessimism, which is intended to end the previous process of progress in its life-hostile one-sidedness. Nietzsche's reflections on ancient Greece and opera thus have a barely identifiable political sense: Nietzsche hopes that the founding of an empire will result in the creation of a state modelled on ancient Greece, which aggressively suppress the emancipatory movements of his time, based on the ideals of the Enlightenment, and offers the dissatisfied masses the alternative offer of a heroic culture. In aesthetic spectacles, social contrasts should be abolished instantly and people should be cleansed of their displeasure without affecting the real social hierarchy.

As a result, Nietzsche published the four from 1873 to 1876 Untimely Considerations. In them, he's already hitting a slightly different tone. In Schopenhauer as an educator (1874), the third, is — contrary to what the title suggests — hardly about Schopenhauer, but about the program of heroic individualism, which Nietzsche draws in particular from the writings of the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882). The most significant, however, is the second The benefits and disadvantages of history for life (1874). Short treatise published there and in the posthumous About truth and lies in an extra-moral sense (1873) Nietzsche formulated his radical metaphysical critique for the first time as a critique of the traditional concept of truth and, in broad terms, the program of his perspectivism. This marked a clear break with Schopenhauer — the basis for Nietzsche's actual work was laid.

III.2 The Light Years

In 1876, Nietzsche attended the first Bayreuth Festival and was somewhat appalled: It was not the hoped-for new beginning of a heroic culture, but a mere production that repelled him in every respect. As a result, he also broke up with Wagner personally and saw his work, in particular in the opera, which was conceived as a Christian “stage celebration” Parsifal (1882), more and more a symptom of modern decadence, no way out. Inspired by the moral-critical psychological reflections of his new friend and colleague Paul Rée (1849—1901), he wrote Human, all-too-human (1878). This work marks the beginning of a whole new period in Nietzsche's work. He no longer writes essays but, with a few exceptions, dedicates himself entirely to the form of aphorism. But there is also a significant readjustment in terms of content, which is already reflected in the fact that the book was published on the 100th anniversary of Voltaire's death and is dedicated to him: Nietzsche now sees himself no longer as an anti-enlightener in the tradition of the great Frenchman, whose skeptical belief in gradual progress through education he critically with the impetuous hope of a political revolution, as promoted by Rousseau I faced, confronted.¹⁴ As a psychologist, he wants to explore the abysses of mental life and shake traditional prejudices.

This intellectual reorientation was accompanied by a personal one: Nietzsche had not been in excellent health from his youth. He was plagued by frequent migraines, digestive and visual disorders, sometimes lasting for days. The exact nature and cause of this disease is still speculated today.¹⁵ In any case, these problems reached such an extent during this period that Nietzsche felt compelled to ask for his retirement in 1879.

This did not necessarily mean a worsening of his life situation: single from all professional obligations and with a solid income, he was able to dedicate himself entirely to freelance writing from then on, as far as his physical constitution allowed him to do so. He, who was now stateless, led a nomadic wandering life between Germany, southern France, Switzerland — particularly the mountains of the Oberengandin — and Italy, which was entirely in line with his new philosophy. He wanted to be a “free spirit” without any shackles. He was supported in particular by the young composer Heinrich Köselitz (1854—1918) alias Peter Gast, who hired Nietzsche as a kind of 'voluntary private secretary. ' With Morgenröthe (1881) and The happy science (1882) Nietzsche wrote two more volumes of aphorisms in the style of Human, all-too-human, which were also based on the “Free Spirits” program and included some of Nietzsche's most famous texts.

But even this relatively happy period in Nietzsche's life did not last long. One of Nietzsche's biggest problems had always been his bachelor life. You shouldn't think of him as a misogynous nerd. Like Carol Diethe in particular in her monograph Forget the whip. Nietzsche and the women shows, Nietzsche had a large number of girlfriends and admirers and could certainly have found a partner among them. He was often described by them as polite and charming and they appreciated him as a respectful interlocutor. Nietzsche, of course, dreamed of a real companion, with whom he was also able to communicate intellectually on equal footing — knowing full well that this was no easy task given his health problems.

In 1882, in Rome, he met the young Russian noblewoman Lou von Salomé (1861—1937), later known as Lou Andreas-Salomé, a highly gifted woman who later served Rainer Maria Rilke as a muse, surrounded Sigmund Freud and wrote several of her own writings, including a treatise on Nietzsche that is still worth reading today.¹⁶ The two got along very well and an intensive intellectual exchange developed. Nietzsche thought that he had found such a companion in her. He asked for her hand, but Paul Rée, of all people, turned out to be his more successful rival. This resulted in a barely avoidable break, which Nietzsche processed with a renewed change in content and style. In a certain way, he now returned, albeit in a fundamentally changed form, to his earlier period of critical Enlightenment and his dream of a radical cultural revolution in the spirit of heroic pessimism. However, he recognized that the articulation of this worldview was only possible in a completely new form.

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III.3 The Mature Work

The three works from the years following the traumatic break with Rée and Salomé So Zarathustra spoke (1883 — 1885), Beyond good and evil (1886) and On the genealogy of morality (1887), form the zenith of Nietzsche's work in many ways. The Zarathustra is often avoided by his philosophical interpreters — but it is hard to imagine that he would have become so famous if he had only written his early essays and later volumes of aphorisms. Only here does he enter truly new stylistic territory, creating a truly original and unique work: a modern Bible, a modern myth.

Beyond good and evil represents, in a certain way, the conceptual counterpart to Zarathustra. Formally a collection of aphorisms like the earlier ones, there is a noticeable “obscuration” in terms of content and style: Nietzsche enters anti-Enlightenment tracks again, writes more enigmatically but also more polemically. This new trend culminates in the genealogy.

This plays a special role in Nietzsche's oeuvre. It is no longer divided into aphorisms, but three, albeit divided into aphorism-like sections, essays, each dedicated to different aspects of Christian-Western morality. It is therefore Nietzsche's most systematic work, perhaps even his “main work”, from which the basic principles of his thinking can be derived most clearly in a reasonably ordered form. There, with rough brushstrokes, he creates a peculiar presentation of European history, which almost diametrically reverses the Enlightenment narrative of progress: The pre-Christian world was one of “master morality.” A small minority of “masters” ruled over a large majority of “slaves” and brutally repressed them. They could freely express their arbitrariness and would have glorified themselves in their morality that it was a morality of self-affirmation, the glorification of their own strength, beauty and goodness. The gentlemen knew that their actions were finite — but saw no reason to despair, but rather an incentive to achieve immortality, albeit relative, through outstanding works.

But what about slaves in this world? Nietzsche in no way glosses over her fate, but sees her misery as justified by the aesthetic grandeur of the gentlemen. In slaves, however, dissatisfaction, “resentment,” would inevitably grow. They develop a hatred of the gentlemen, which becomes all the more bitter the less they are able to release it to the outside world. Over their bad fate, they console themselves with a new worldview that radically turns the values of the gentlemen upside down: Those who are successful in this world are now regarded as bad and evil, the unsuccessful as the “actual” good ones, which awaits eternal happiness and, last but not least, revenge in another world, the “true” world.

But for Nietzsche, this new worldview, whose historical origins he locates in particular in Judaism, is not, as with Marx, a pure “opium of the people.” For him, it is more of a kind of “cocaine” of the same: In their “slave morality,” the slaves empower themselves and become perpetrators of history from victims. In Christianity, slave morality prevails over the world of masters and creates a new one in which completely different values apply: A culture in which this world's success is condemned and failure is glorified, a society of losers and failure, asceticism and mediocrity. Modern culture sees Nietzsche as a mere continuation and even radicalization of Christian culture.

His, suggestive, rhetorical strategy consists in the design of a daring “either/or”: Do you want the Christian world in all its physical contempt, hostility, boredom, leveling, which will ultimately perish from its rejection of all genuine creativity — or do you want a world of heroes, adventures, great art, brilliant thinkers? There is no middle ground: If you want the latter — and you certainly want that — then you must also want the means, then you must break with Christianity and its moralism, then you must also say goodbye to the ideals of the French Revolution, to the idea that a world without slaves is possible...

It is important to remember the contrast between this narrative and that of the Enlightenment: Nietzsche believes that the big problem of the present is not too little, but too much morality and, above all, false morality. For 2,000 years, apart from a few bright spots such as the Renaissance, Goethe and Napoleon, Europe has therefore been on a descending branch. The strong people would be enslaved and subjugated by the crowd, the “army,” which tolerates no exception. Nietzsche calls out to them: Free yourself, shake off your chains, discover your true predator nature! Recognize the true essence of the story — the “will to power”!

That very famous catchphrase should temporarily be the title of Nietzsche's true major work: The will to power. It is not a mere forgery of the sister, who was later called Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, as is occasionally suggested. Between 1885 and 1888, Nietzsche planned a further collection of aphorisms with the same title, and the editions of the Nietzsche Archive directed by her are based on these Nietzsche designs, even though they modify them in not inconsiderable parts.¹⁷ This work should finally give Nietzsche's thinking a systematic form — of course, he rejected this project and entered a very different realm in his last creative phase. However, this supposedly most important work by Nietzsche is of great importance for the history of his impact. In particular, it is easy to construct a fascist Nietzsche interpretation from him: A perspective on the world, according to which the democratic ideas of modernity are only a figment of Christian decadence, which must be corrected through a “realistic” view of the world, a morality of strength and a corresponding political order in which the “strong” regain power. It was only after the Second World War that Mazzino Montinari and Giorgio Colli obtained a philologically reliable edition of the estate and destroyed this further myth surrounding Nietzsche. However, it should not be forgotten that these ideas are also largely reflected in Nietzsche authorized works, even though they are often ignored by today's Nietzsche interpretation and other aspects of his philosophy are focused on.

III.4 Breaking Bad

In his writings, Nietzsche stylizes himself as an “outdated” who has a polemical relationship with his present tense, if at all, and writes not for his time but for a distant future. In fact, his writings were written after Birth of Tragedy No longer just rejected, they were largely ignored. This disregard really grieved Nietzsche more than he admits in his texts, and there is reason to believe that in his last writings, written in 1888, he is therefore choosing yet another new sound: He now wants to force the lack of response from his contemporaries by reaching for ever more shrill sounds that are obviously aimed at provoking the reader. He rages against his former companion Wagner, proclaims the “Twilight of the Idol,” and finally even stylizes himself as an “Antichrist.” His last work, which he is working on, Ecce homo, which was only published in 1908, is a kind of 'autobiography, 'but its megalomaniac pathos continues to irritate today: Does the work represent a skillful satire of the genre? A successful revaluation of Christian self-reduction? Or is it here, as in the other texts of this period, that Nietzsche's growing indiscriminate capacity appears?

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IV. Nietzsche's Last Years

On January 3, 1889, Nietzsche, who was in Turin at that time, suffered a mental collapse. He is obviously no longer able to think clearly and is only uttering nonsense; the bold proclaimer of “master morality” and contempt of compassion and charity becomes a care case that would not be able to survive without the help of others. In Naumburg, he was cared for until 1897 by his mother, from 1893 also by Elisabeth; from 1897 on, he lived in the “Villa Silberblick”, which Swiss women's rights activist and Nietzsche admirer Meta von Salis (1855—1929) had left to the Nietzsche Archive. After several strokes, he died on August 25, 1900. Not a single line from Nietzsche's last ten years of life was considered philosophically relevant; he was no longer clearly conscious.

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V. Nietzsche's Aftermath

This is particularly tragic because, from around 1890, Nietzsche's hoped-for reception finally began. He had consciously experienced the first beginnings of the same. The Danish essayist Georg Brandes gave a well-attended introductory lecture on Nietzsche's philosophy in Copenhagen in 1888 and published the first monograph dedicated to him the following year: Aristocratic radicalism. An Afhandling of Friedrich Nietzsche¹⁸. A label that Nietzsche expressly approved.¹⁹ Countless other articles and books followed in a short time: The name Nietzsche was suddenly on everyone's lips, the sales figures for his almost unsold works to date skyrocketed. No one who wanted to be intellectually up to date could avoid dealing with Nietzsche.

Four main factors are likely to have driven this rapid change. His mental collapse was firstly Certainly tragic for Nietzsche — but he made a decisive contribution to the sudden recognition of him. Nietzsche had now become a myth himself, a martyr of a new era, misunderstood by the world, driven delusional by the depth of his insight. In his sister, he found secondly an ambitious estate administrator. Although she did not understand much about philosophy and published many of his writings, in particular his fragments of his estate, in falsified form, she was able to further promote the 'Nietzsche myth, 'and to further increase his fame.²⁰

In addition to these two factors, however, the spirit of the time had also changed. The German Empire, all of Europe, experienced thirdly a tsunami wave of modernization. In particular, this meant an accelerated questioning of cultural traditions, increased individualization, and a search for answers to completely new life problems. Nietzsche was seen as an advocate of radical individualism, which stood up for a fundamental cultural revolution based on body-affirming values; he became the philosopher of the life reform movement in all its facets. It was read in Munich, Berlin, Zurich and Vienna Bohème, in the context of the later Bauhaus, in Sigmund Freud's discussion group, among the first German sociologists, in the artists' community of Monte Verità in Tessin...

And last but not least was Nietzsche fourthly, again contrary to his elitist claim, a popular author. It was precisely the brevity and conciseness of his texts that made him accessible to fleeting readers, as he actually despised them. You don't have to be a specialist philosopher to be able to do something with them, and you don't have to have the patience required to read classical philosophical works. Before going to bed, you can be inspired by two or three ingenious aphorisms. It is ironic that Nietzsche spoke precisely with this way of writing to exactly those for whom his worldview only intended a subaltern place — women who were largely excluded from higher education at the time, workers and employees, precarious intellectuals and artists on the margins of society; that this audience took a very different meaning from his writings than intended by him, is not surprising, and through their ambiguity they have become a Such selective reading is almost predestined. They saw this philosophy of “master morality” as an ethics of their own self-empowerment beyond traditional values.

The First World War marked an abrupt end to this impressive period of cultural experimentation in search of the new — and caused a momentous split in the Nietzschean camp. Nietzsche's relationship to the war had been extremely ambiguous: He despised militarism and nationalism — particularly that of the “Reich” — but at the same time corroded pacifism and repeatedly used military metaphors to describe authentic individuality. This enabled one to call on Nietzsche as a key witness against the war — for example Emma Goldman, Hermann Hesse or the illustrious “Red Count” Harry Kessler — and another, such as Thomas Mann or his sister, to read him as an apostle of war. The way forward for Nietzsche reception was thus mapped out.

From there on, one can distinguish between three main streams of Nietzsche appropriation: a liberal, a left and a right. All three can legitimately relate to elements of Nietzsche's heterogeneous and paradoxical work. While the liberal view primarily emphasizes Nietzsche's individualism and free-spiritedness, left-wing interpreters try to reconcile them with a universalist understanding of emancipation — partly in the sense of decidedly anti-Marxist anarchism, partly in the sense of a synthesis of Nietzsche and Marx — while right-wing interpreters accentuate Nietzsche's modern criticism and polemic against “slave morality” in order to create a new hierarchical to legitimize order. In the Second World War, these views probably clashed most clearly: In Germany and Italy, Nietzsche was “ennobled” as a pioneer of fascism and National Socialism, but at the same time he inspired the anti-fascist resistance, whether in the form of the Confessing Church, Jewish militant resistance, existentialist and surrealist rebellion — from the latter, post-structuralism developed — or Western Marxism. After the war, Nietzsche became an important thought leader of the New Left and New Right alike.

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VI. Conclusion: Nietzsche's Legacy

All three interpretations of Nietzsche's philosophy are still with us today. You are in a “ghost war”²¹, as Nietzsche predicted shortly before his mental collapse, and are equally in opposition to a one-sided rationalistic understanding of Enlightenment. Just as if Nietzsche had never lived, this understanding is still omnipresent. We believe in gradually overcoming pre-modern “barbarism” through science and political reform, search everywhere for the last remnants of “discrimination” to be overcome and dream of being able to solve the major human problems with technology. But against this vision in all its variants, Nietzsche — sometimes shrill, sometimes mocking, sometimes prophetic — continues to sound big “no”: He considered this modern obsession for progress to be a great mistake that would only further alienate us from our instincts, deprive us of our individual freedom and entangle us in indefensible illusions.

It can hardly be denied that this vehement objection to the ideology of modernity is not without reason. In the ecological crisis, subjugated nature is taking revenge and there is currently little evidence that it will be possible to solve it itself with the means of rational civilization. The ubiquitous fight against 'discrimination' often expresses itself as aggressive moralism, which in turn provokes a backlash of disinhibition. And despite all efforts and all the material resources expended, the major questions of humanity remain unresolved, there are still masters and slaves, and we are constantly observing the eruptions of resentment and the resistance of “masters” who believe they are. Nietzsche does not have a master plan to solve these problems. But his precise descriptions of them and his attempts at a solution still call for further thought in the spirit of Nietzsche's slogan: “Only follow yourself faithfully: —/That's how you follow me — do it! Do it! ”²²

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Sources and Selected Bibliography

The following bibliography is by no means exhaustive: Nietzsche is one of the philosophers about whom the most has been written by far. In addition to listing my sources, it also serves to provide some information for further reading.

Almost all of Nietzsche's works, letters and estate fragments, completely searchable, as well as many other materials about him and his philosophy can be found on the very useful Internet portal nietzschesource.org. If you prefer a hardback edition, we recommend the 15-volume study edition of the above-mentioned complete edition by Colli and Montinari, which was published by dtv. With the works published during his lifetime, it makes almost no difference which edition you are referring to, but the Colli-Montinari edition is considered the 'gold standard” and is usually cited in research literature. There are significant differences in the published fonts, so that a certain amount of caution is required, in particular as regards the compilation The will to power tackles.

Another important tool is provided by the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences Historical and critical commentary on Friedrich Nietzsche's works , which is now almost completely available (link).

We can also recommend the English-language portal The Nietzsche Channel, which includes, among other things, an extensive list of links and an annotated overview of his correspondence, as well as the German-language site f-nietzsche.de.

^{1. Overviews And Reference Works}

Andreas-Salome, Lou: Friedrich Nietzsche in his works. Vienna 1894. (Early, still worth reading today, complete presentation of Nietzsche's life and works written by Nietzsche's great love.)

Brandes, Georg: Nietzsche. A treatise on aristocratic radicalism. Berlin 2004. (First Nietzsche monograph.)

Müller, Enrico: Nietzsche lexicon. Stuttgart 2018.

Niemeyer, Christian (ed.): Nietzsche lexicon. Darmstadt 2011.

Safranski, Rüdiger: Nietzsche. Biography of his thinking. Munich & Vienna 2000.

Summer, Andreas Urs: Nietzsche and the consequences. Stuttgart & Weimar 2017.

^{2. On Nietzsche's Biography}

Diethe, Carol: Forget the whip. Nietzsche and the women. Transmitted by Michael Haupt. Hamburg & Vienna 2000. (girlfriends, relatives, Nietzschean women of the 'first wave. ')

Janz, Curt Paul: Frederick Nietzsche. biography. Munich 1978/79. (3-volume standard biography.)

Koehler, Joachim: Zarathustra's secret. Friedrich Nietzsche and his encrypted message. Reinbek b. Hamburg 1992. (presentation of Nietzsche's sexuality.)

Niemeyer, Christian: Nietzsche's syphilis — and that of others. A search for clues. Freiburg & Munich 2020. (Nietzsche's disease including its history of reception and syphilis as a general cultural phenomenon.)

Stephen, Paul: Significant beards. A philosophy of facial hair. Berlin 2020. (Includes an extensive study of what is arguably Nietzsche's most famous attribute.)

^{3. On Nietzsche's Impact History}

Aschheim, Steven E.: Nietzsche and the Germans. Cult career. Transmitted by Klaus Laermann. Stuttgart & Weimar 2000. (Comprehensive presentation of Nietzsche's reception in Germany up to 1945.)

Decker, Kerstin: The sister. The life of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Berlin 2016.

Fuchs, Dieter: The will to power. The birth of the main work from the spirit of the Nietzsche Archive. In: Christian Niemeyer e. a. (ed.): Friedrich Nietzsche. Darmstadt 2014, pp. 108—131. (Excellent overview of the forgeries of the Nietzsche Archive when publishing the Willens zur Macht; the anthology is generally recommended.)

Stephen, Paul: Left-Nietzscheanism. An introduction. 2nd vol.E. Stuttgart 2020. (Introductory presentation of Nietzsche's history of political reception. See also the internet portal for the book.)

^{4. Miscellaneous}

Yalom, Irvin D.: And Nietzsche cried. Transacted by Uda Strätling. Munich 2001. (Perhaps the best novel about Nietzsche's philosophy, its influence on psychoanalysis and Nietzsche's relationship with Lou von Salomé.)

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^{Image Sources}

Figure 1: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6tzen-D%C3%A4mmerung_oder_Wie_man_mit_dem_Hammer_philosophirt#/media/Datei:Nietzsche1882.jpg

Figure 2: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche#/media/Datei:Nietzsche1861.jpg

Figure 3: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Nietzsche_1872.jpg

Figure 4: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Nietzsche_paul-ree_lou-von-salome188.jpg

Figure 5: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Friederich_Nietzsche.jpg#/media/Datei:Friederich_Nietzsche.jpg

Figure 6: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/Friedrich_Nietzsche_drawn_by_Hans_Olde.jpg

Figure 7: http://www.kunstmarkt.com/pages/mag/ausstellungen_grossbildansicht.html?berichtid=37766&bildid=37725&bk=013_02

Figure 8: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Nietzsche-Denkmal_Naumburg_2013.jpg

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Footnotes

1 Ecce homo, Why I am a fate, 1.

2 GÖTZEN twilight, Sayings and arrows, 26.

3 About truth and lies in an extra-moral sense, 1.

4 See esp. On the genealogy of morality, III, 12.

5 The happy science, 125.

6 So Zarathustra spoke, Preface, 5.

7 On the genealogy of morality, II, 1.

8 Subsequent fragments 1887, No. 11 [31].

9 Ecce homo, Why I am a fate, 8.

10 Beyond good and evil, 232.

11 Beyond good and evil, 6.

12 Among the countless biographies, the three-volume by Curt Paul Janz, published in 1978/79, is still regarded as the standard scientific work. Joachim Köhler extensively analyzed Nietzsche's sex life in the study The Secret of Zarathustra. I myself went in my book Significant beards based on an extensive chapter of the story of Nietzsche's iconic moustache. Many other such investigations could be mentioned.

13 and others Ecce homo, preface, 2.

14 Cf. Human, all-too-human I, 463.

15 In particular, syphilis — either inherited from the father or acquired during, possibly the only, visit to a brothel — is suspected; a diagnosis which, however, is disputed. Only an exhumation that was actually planned could provide (possible) information. Christian Niemeyer recently pleaded for the syphilis theory in Nietzsche's syphilis — and that of others.

16 In this context, the novel, which is unfortunately disappointing, is recommended And Nietzsche cried by Irvin D. Yalom, who not only depicts Nietzsche and Salomé's relationship, but also the philosopher's influence on psychoanalysis (including a — fictional — encounter between Nietzsche and Freud's teacher Josef Breuer), as well as the film Lou Andreas-Salome by Cordula Kablitz-Post from 2016, which particularly impresses with the convincing presentation of Nietzsche by Alexander Scheer.

17 The essay The Will to Power provides an excellent overview of the exact extent of the forgeries. The birth of the main work from the spirit of the Nietzsche Archive by Dieter Fuchs.

18 Reissued in German as Nietzsche. A treatise on aristocratic radicalism.

19 Cf. Letter from Nietzsche to Brandes dated December 2, 1887.

20 Kerstin Decker published a new biography of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche in 2016, The sister. The life of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, which somewhat straightens out the prevailing purely negative assessment of their work.

21 Ecce homo, Why I am a fate, 1.

22 The happy science, prelude, 7.

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