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Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher of

the late 19th century who challenged the foundations of traditional religion and traditional morality. He believed in life, creativity, health, and the realities of the world we live in, rather than those situated in a world beyond.

Central to his philosophy is the idea of “life-affirmation,” which involves an honest questioning of all doctrines that drain life's energies, however socially prevalent those views might be.

Often referred to as one of the first existentialist philosophers, Nietzsche's revitalizing philosophy has inspired leading figures in all walks of cultural life, including dancers, poets, novelists, painters, psychologists, philosophers, sociologists and social revolutionaries.

In the small German village of Röcken bei Lützen, located in a rural farmland area southwest of Leipzig, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born at approximately 10:00 a.m. on October 15, 1844.

Early Life

When Nietzsche was 4 years old, his father, Karl Ludwig Nietzsche died from a brain ailment, and the death of Nietzsche's two-year-old brother, Joseph, followed six months later. Nietzsche entered the University of Bonn in 1864 as a theology and philology student, and his interests soon gravitated more exclusively towards philology — a discipline which then centered upon the interpretation of classical and biblical texts.

Nietzsche quickly established his own academic reputation through his published essays on Aristotle, Theognis and Simonides. In Leipzig, he developed a close friendship with Erwin Rohde, a fellow philology student and future philologist, with whom he would correspond extensively in later years.

Later Life In 1867, at almost 23, Nietzsche entered

his required military service and was assigned to an equestrian field artillery regiment close to Naumburg, during which time he lived at home with his mother. While attempting to leap-mount into the saddle, he suffered a serious chest injury and was put on sick leave after his chest wound refused to heal.

He returned shortly thereafter to the University of Leipzig, and a year later, met the composer Richard Wagner at the home of Hermann Brockhaus, an Orientalist who was married to Wagner's sister, Ottilie.

Nietzsche became a professor of classical philology at the University of Basel in Switzerland. He began teaching there in May, 1869, at the extraordinary age of 24.

Nietzsche also cultivated his

friendship with Richard Wagner and visited him often at his Swiss home in Tribschen, a small town near Lucerne. Never in outstanding health, further complications arose from Nietzsche's August-October 1870 service as a 25-year-old hospital attendant during the Franco-Prussian War. He witnessed the traumatic effects of battle, took close care of wounded soldiers, and contracted diphtheria and dysentery.

Nietzsche's enthusiasm for Schopenhauer, his studies in classical philology, his inspiration from Wagner, his reading of Lange, and his frustration with the contemporary German culture, coalesced in his first book — The Birth of Tragedy — which was published in January 1872 when Nietzsche was 27.

Despite the unflattering review of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche remained respected in his professorial position in Basel, but his deteriorating health, which led to migraine headaches, eyesight problems and vomiting, necessitated his resignation from the university in June, 1879, at age 34.

From 1880 until his collapse in January 1889, Nietzsche led a wandering, gypsy-like existence as a stateless person (having given up his German citizenship, and not having acquired Swiss citizenship), circling almost annually between his mother's house in Naumburg and various French, Swiss, German and Italian cities.

His travels took him through Nice, the Swiss Alps, Leipzig (where he had attended university), Turin, Genoa, Recoaro, Messina, Rapallo, Florence, Venice, and Rome, never residing in any place longer than several months at a time.

Mental Breakdown

On the morning of January 3, 1889, while in Turin, Nietzsche experienced a mental breakdown which left him an invalid for the rest of his life. Upon witnessing a horse being whipped by a coachman at the Piazza Carlo Alberto — although this episode with the horse could be anecdotal — he threw his arms around the horse's neck and collapsed in the plaza, never to return to full sanity.

Some argue that Nietzsche was afflicted with a syphilitic infection (this was the original diagnosis of the doctors in Basel and Jena) contracted either while he was a student or while he was serving as a hospital attendant during the Franco-Prussian War;

Some claim that his use of chloral hydrate, a drug which he had been using as a sedative, undermined his already-weakened nervous system;

Some speculate that Nietzsche's collapse was due to a brain disease he inherited from his father;

some maintain that a mental illness gradually drove him insane.

The exact cause of Nietzsche's incapacitation remains unclear. That he had an extraordinarily sensitive nervous constitution and took an assortment of medications is well-documented as a more general fact. To complicate matters of interpretation, Nietzsche states in a letter from April 1888 that he never had any symptoms of a mental disorder.

The philosophy of NIHILISM

(From Wikipedia): Nihilism (from the Latin nihil, nothing) is a philosophical position that argues that existence is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.

Nihilists generally assert that objective morality does not exist, so subsequently there is no objective moral value with which to logically prefer one action over another.

Nihilists who argue that there is no objective morality may claim that existence has no intrinsic higher meaning or goal.

They may also claim that there is no reasonable proof or argument for the existence of a higher ruler or creator, or posit that even if higher rulers or creators exist, humanity has no moral obligation to worship them.

The term nihilism is sometimes used synonymously with anomie to denote a general mood of despair at the pointlessness of existence.

Nihilism is also a characteristic that has been ascribed to time periods: for example, Jean Baudrillard and others have called postmodernity a nihilistic epoch, and some Christian theologians and figures of religious authority have asserted that postmodernity and many aspects of modernity represent the rejection of God, and therefore are nihilistic.

Nietzche on Nihilism

“A nihilist is a man who judges of the world as it is that it ought NOT to be, and of the world as it ought to be that it does not exist. According to this view, our existence (action, suffering, willing, feeling) has no meaning: the pathos of 'in vain' is the nihilists' pathos — at the same time, as pathos, an inconsistency on the part of the nihilists.” - Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 585, translated by Walter Kaufmann

As the first philosopher to study nihilism extensively, however, Nietzsche was also quite influenced by its ideas. Nietzsche's complex relationship with nihilism can be seen in his statement that "I praise, I do not reproach, [nihilism's] arrival. I believe it is one of the greatest crises, a moment of the deepest self-reflection of humanity. Whether man recovers from it, whether he becomes master of this crisis, is a question of his strength!".

According to Nietzsche, it is only once nihilism is overcome that a culture can have a true foundation upon which to thrive. He wished to hasten its coming only so that he could also hasten its ultimate departure.

Nietzsche's philosophy also shares with nihilism a rejection of any perfect source of absolute, universal and transcendent values. Still, he did not consider all values of equal worth.

Recognizing the chaos of nihilism, he advocated a philosophy that willfully transcends it. Furthermore, his positive attitude towards truth as a vehicle of faith and belief distinguishes him from the extreme pessimism that nihilism is often associated with.

The will to power A major cause of Nietzsche's continued association with

nihilism is his famous proclamation that "God is dead." This is Nietzsche's way of saying that the idea of God is no longer capable of acting as a source of any moral code or teleology. God is dead, then, in the sense that his existence is now irrelevant to the bulk of humanity. "And we," writes Nietzsche, "have killed him.“

Nietzsche's "will to power" (Wille zur Macht) is the name

of a concept created by Nietzsche; the title of a projected book which he finally decided not to write; and the title of a book compiled from his notebooks and published posthumously and under suspicious circumstances by his sister and Peter Gast.

"Of what is great one must either be silent or speak with greatness. With greatness--that means cynically and with innocence."

Übermensch In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche posits the Übermensch (often translated as "overman" or "superman") as a goal that humanity can set for itself.

While humanity must perish, it can either be overcome in the direction of something higher (the Übermensch) or it can sink to the level of the last man.

While there is no suggestion that humanity is meant to become a race of Übermenschen, it can dedicate itself to the creation of such an individual.

The Übermensch solves the problem of nihilism, giving new, aristocratic values to the world, just as the prophets, philosophers, and poets of old had done.

These values are to be life-affirming, in contradistinction to the nascently life-negating values of Christianity. The flow of Thus Spoke Zarathustra makes it clear that the Übermensch is somehow related to the eternal recurrence, but the precise nature of that relation is the subject of considerable dispute.

"But it's after you take over the world that things get difficult. What kind of world would you build?" —Johan Liebert, Monster

Nietzsche’s Übermensch (roughly,

"transhuman" or "superman“ was supposed to be a person who rejected the norms of the society and lived by his own moral code, having personal strength not to give in to the majority's pressure and even gradually convert it to his ideals.

An Übermensch is commonly identified by three traits: an antisocial mindset, an inhuman charisma, and a plan to Make A Better World.

It doesn't have to be a Utopia, of course: any grand goal will do, as long as its weight is too much for most people.

He, too, is just more than anyone around him in terms of presence and personal strength and the others feel it and follow him, even when realizing the amorality of their actions.

A common misconception is that an Übermensch doesn't have any moral restraints. In fact, he does, and very firm ones at that.

It's just that they are so vastly different from the common morals that some call them a "villain morality".

And he is, indeed, almost always the villain. For Nietzsche, the Übermensch is defined largely in

contrast to the "Last Man", his polar opposite: a man so dependent on the system that he flinches at risk, grows fat and lazy, and lives only to be comfortable.

The notion of the Übermensch is less about rejecting traditional values, and more about creating a new set of values taking it as a given that the old values are already collapsing.

THE END FIN EL FINAL DIE EINDE HET EIND Acknowledgements: Google images http://plato.stanford.e

du/entries/nietzsche/

DAS ENDE L’ESTREMITA A EXTREMIDADE KOHEU