Nietzsche

by Roy Jackson

  This Complete Introduction from Teach Yourself ® includes a number of special boxed features, which have been developed to help you understand the subject more quickly and remember it more effectively. Throughout the book, you will find these indicated by the following icons.

  The book includes concise quotes from other key sources. These will be useful for helping you understand different viewpoints on the subject, and they are fully referenced so that you can include them in essays if you are unable to get your hands on the source.

  The case study is a more in-depth introduction to a particular example. There is at least one in most chapters, and they will provide good material for essays and class discussions.

  The key ideas are highlighted throughout the book. If you only have half an hour to go before your exam, scanning through these would be a very good way of spending your time.

  The spotlight boxes give you some light-hearted additional information that will liven up your learning.

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  The dig deeper boxes give you ways to explore topics in greater depth than we are able to go to in this introductory-level book.

  In addition, a list of things to remember will help you take away the key learning points from each chapter.

  1

  The young Nietzsche

  In this chapter you will learn:

  • about Nietzsche’s family and background

  • about his education at school and university

  • about his teaching career

  • about his friendship with Jakob Burckhardt.

  Friedrich Nietzsche was born on 15 October 1844 in Röcken, a municipality in the district of Burgenlandkreis in Saxony-Anhalt in what is now Germany (at the time, it was part of powerful Prussia). Even today, Röcken is a small village with a population of fewer than 200. You can still see the house, the Pastor’s House, where Nietzsche was born, and which has now become a museum. You can also visit the ancient church (one of the oldest in Saxony) where he was baptized, his village school, and the well-kept family grave where he is buried next to his sister Elisabeth and his parents. Röcken was surrounded by farms, and the nearest town, Lützen, was a half-hour walk away and was itself a very small market town.

  The importance of a person’s childhood on their views in maturity should never be underestimated. Nietzsche himself states clearly in his writings that our philosophies are moulded by our upbringing, which is why he is so critical of attempts by philosophers to be objective and to believe that they can ever step outside themselves. This chapter describes the background to Nietzsche’s development as a philosopher: his childhood, education and early teaching career.

  Nietzsche’s background

  ’My time has not yet come, some are born posthumously. One day or other institutions will be needed in which people live and teach as I understand living and teaching: perhaps even chairs for the interpretation of Zarathustra will be established.’

  Ecce Homo, ‘Why I Write Such Excellent Books’, Section 1, p. 69

  Nietzsche’s ancestry of some 200 German forebears has been traced back to the sixteenth century. None was an aristocrat and most were small tradesmen such as butchers and carpenters. However, he is also the heir of some 20 clergymen. Nietzsche’s grandfather was a superintendent (the equivalent of a bishop) in the Lutheran Church, and the philosopher’s father, Karl Ludwig, became pastor for the village. Friedrich’s mother, Franziska Oehler, was the daughter of the Lutheran pastor of a neighbouring village. The first five-and-a-half years of Nietzsche’s life were spent in a parsonage, and even after that he was brought up in a pious environment.

  It is curious to note that the philosopher who came to symbolize, more than any other, the rejection of religious dogma, was brought up within such an observant household. His philosophy has, as a result, been seen as a deliberate rebellion against a strict, oppressive and conformist upbringing. Yet the Lutheran Church resembles the Anglican Church more than a fundamentalist or puritan one. In fact, the Lutheran tradition has contributed greatly to German intellectual and cultural life and has encouraged cultural and social improvement. There is every indication that the young Friedrich had a happy and fulfilling childhood, and he never spoke in his writings of any kind of rebellion against his upbringing. If anything, the young Nietzsche was more strict and conformist than his peers.

  ‘If I wage war on Christianity I have a right to do so, because I have never experienced anything disagreeable or frustrating from that direction – the most serious Christians have always been well-disposed towards me.’

  Ecce Homo, ‘Why I Am So Wise’, Section 7, p. 48

  Nietzsche’s father, Karl Ludwig, was 30 years old when, in 1843, he married the 17-year-old Franziska Oehler. They named their first child Friedrich Wilhelm after the reigning King of Prussia, whose birthday he shared. After Friedrich, they had two more children: a daughter, Elisabeth, born in 1846, and a second son, Joseph, born in 1848. Nietzsche’s two rather dotty aunts and Franziska’s widowed mother also lived with the family.

  By all accounts, Nietzsche’s mother possessed a great deal of common sense and unquestioning piety, but had not been well educated. The first years of Nietzsche’s life were quiet ones as the family settled down to their existence together. The descriptions of the house and its surroundings conjure up an idyllic setting, with a small farmyard, an orchard, a flower garden and ponds surrounded by willow trees. Here Nietzsche could fish and play, exercising his imagination as all children do. According to his sister Elisabeth’s memoirs, Nietzsche took up talking rather late, to the extent that, at the age of two-and-a-half, his parents consulted a physician who suggested that the reason he hadn’t spoken was because the family were so excessive in their devotion towards him that he did not feel the need to ask for anything. His first word, apparently, was ‘Grandma’, an indication of the female influence in the household, and by the age of four he began to read and write.

  Tragedy strikes

  Although Friedrich’s childhood was, on the whole, a happy one, in 1849 tragedy struck with the death of his father. Karl Ludwig was only 36. A year later Nietzsche’s younger brother also died. The traditional family existence was shattered, and they were compelled to leave Röcken to go to the nearby walled town of Naumburg. The young Friedrich now lived with his mother, sister, two maiden aunts and a maternal grandmother. Women, therefore, surrounded Nietzsche, and his younger sister, especially, doted upon him. Nietzsche’s mother was still very young, but she was never to remarry.

  Nietzsche had been very close to his father, and there has been much speculation over the psychological impact that his father’s death, as well as the causes of his death, might have had upon the philosopher. There is little evidence to show why the pastor died so young, other than he was the victim of minor epileptic fits, and that he died from some kind of brain affliction. The speculation that he suffered from insanity is not substantiated, but it was a belief for Nietzsche that diseases are hereditary and that he was therefore destined for a short life himself. In his later writings, Nietzsche often paints an idealistic picture of his father. Perhaps the most famous account is in his work Ecce Homo, which Nietzsche wrote when he was 44 years of age:

  ‘… he was delicate, lovable and morbid, like a being destined to pay this world only a passing visit – a gracious reminder of life rather than life itself.’

  Ecce Homo, ‘Why I Am So Wise’, Section 1, p. 38

  In many respects, life at Naumburg must have differed little from life at Röcken, for it too was a small town that saw or cared little for the outside world. Nietzsche was to live there until he was 14. His mother, as a result of legacies left by her own mother on her death in 1856, had the financial means to set up a home of
her own.

  Nietzsche attended the local boys’ school, where he made his earliest friends, Wilhelm Pinder and Gustav Krug. Pinder, at the age of 14, wrote an autobiography in which he makes regular mention of Nietzsche, describing his initial encounter with the young Friedrich as one of the most important events in his life. The picture Wilhelm presents of the boy Nietzsche is of someone who loved solitude and had a pious, tender temperament while having a lively, inventive and independent mind. Significantly, his character is portrayed as someone who displayed the virtues of humility and gratitude and was preparing himself for a future vocation as a pastor. Pinder’s father was a town councillor and lover of literature, and he would read Goethe to the three boys. Krug’s father was an amateur musician, and we can detect Nietzsche’s lifelong love of music originating here, as he took it upon himself to learn to play the piano.

  Spotlight

  As a child, Nietzsche, or ‘Fritz’ as he was known, was regarded as extremely pious and morally conscientious. He was once praised for giving his best toys to missionaries so that they could be given to children in Africa but, even then, Nietzsche was wracked with guilt in the knowledge that he had not actually given his best toys at all, and wished that he had given his ‘box of cavalry’.

  Nietzsche’s education

  In 1851 the three boyhood friends were transferred from the town school to the private preparatory school, where they remained until 1854. Here, Nietzsche received his first taste of Latin and Greek. Then they all went on to the higher school, the Domgymnasium. In 1858, when he was 14 years old, Nietzsche – no doubt due to his intellectual talents – was awarded a free boarding place at the exclusive and strict Pforta school. Nietzsche was studious, certainly, but he enjoyed outdoor activities such as walking, swimming and skating, and grew to be physically well built. However, he suffered from illnesses throughout most of his life and it was during these years that he began to suffer from headaches, which may have been linked to his short-sightedness and the many hours he spent reading and writing.

  Pforta was disciplined and traditional. Pupils were awoken at 4 a.m., classes started at 6 a.m. and continued until 4 p.m. There were further classes in the evening. The school concentrated on classical subjects – especially Latin and Greek – rather than on mathematics and the sciences. As a pupil at Pforta, Nietzsche developed an enthusiasm for poetry, literature and music, and he formed a literary and musical society with some friends, called ‘Germania’. The friends would meet regularly to read aloud the works they had written or composed. Nietzsche also enjoyed exploring scholarly criticism, which first led him to doubt the tenets of the Bible.

  Spotlight

  Though the Pforta curriculum focused on Latin and Greek, and Nietzsche went on to read philology, he never quite mastered any foreign language. His Latin translations were too obviously translated from the German and, although he spent a good deal of time in his later life in Italy, he could speak little Italian. Though considering himself a ‘good European’, he had little mastery of French, and virtually no English.

  When he went to the University of Bonn in 1864 to read philology (the study of language and literature) and theology, he had already ceased to believe in the existence of God. At the university, Nietzsche soon abandoned the study of theology altogether, a subject which he had probably agreed to do only because of his mother’s eagerness for him to become a pastor. Nietzsche never really settled in Bonn and in 1865 he decided to go to Leipzig University, where he became much more studious.

  It was during the Leipzig years (1865–9) that Nietzsche experienced a series of life-changing encounters:

  • It is likely that it was during this period that Nietzsche contracted syphilis after visiting a brothel. Syphilis was incurable and could result in a life of periodic illness, leading to insanity and early death.

  • While wandering around a second-hand bookshop, Nietzsche came across The World as Will and Idea (1819) by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860). Thus Nietzsche became a ‘Schopenhauerian’: Schopenhauer’s pessimistic view that the world is supported by an all-pervasive will that pays no attention to the concerns of humanity fitted well with Nietzsche’s feelings at the time. He also read the History of Materialism (1867) by the philosopher and social scientist F.A. Lange (1828–75), which introduced Nietzsche to a form of Darwinism.

  • On 28 October 1868, Nietzsche announced his ‘conversion’ to the hugely influential composer and musical theorist Richard Wagner (1813–83) after hearing a performance of the Tristan and Meistersinger preludes. Only 11 days later, he met Wagner in person. During that brief meeting, in which Wagner turned on the charm and entertained on the piano, Nietzsche discovered that Wagner was also a Schopenhauerian. Wagner was born the same year as Nietzsche’s father and bore some resemblance to him, and so he became a father figure for Nietzsche.

  Nietzsche’s university professor considered him to be the finest student he had seen in 40 years. Consequently, Nietzsche was awarded his doctorate without examination and was recommended for a chair in classical philology at Basel University in 1869. At the age of 24, Nietzsche was already a university professor.

  The professor

  Between the ages of 6 and 34 – a total of 28 years – Nietzsche was never to leave the environs of the classroom for more than a few months during holiday periods. This was, therefore, a period of intense and cloistered learning and it is perhaps no wonder that Nietzsche was eventually to reject a career in academia. For the next ten years at Basel University, Nietzsche became less interested in philology and more enthusiastic about philosophy.

  For Nietzsche, however, philosophy was not to be found by being immersed in books – which, essentially, was all that philology was concerned with – and he longed to expand his horizons. However, the lure of a salary and being able to support his mother was an important inducement in keeping the post.

  Basel was a small, medieval town and, although it rested within Switzerland, was imbued with German culture. Basel was, however, in many ways quite different from the German cities Nietzsche was more used to, for this Swiss city-state was more cultured and less militaristic, with its university an important central focus.

  ‘I am quite well aware of what kind of place this is … a city which endeavours to promote the culture and education of its citizens in a manner so lavish as to be quite out of proportion to its size. It thus represents a comparison that is a shameful rebuke to much larger cities … so much more is done for these things here than elsewhere.’

  Friedrich Nietzsche, quoted in Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche, The Young Nietzsche (London: Heinemann, 1912), p. 208

  The university asked him, on taking the post, to become a Swiss national so that he would not be called up for Prussian military service at any time, which would have interfered with his work. Nietzsche ceased to be a citizen of Prussia, but never succeeded in satisfying the residential requirements for Swiss citizenship. From 1869 onwards, Nietzsche remained stateless. Nonetheless, this did not prevent him from applying to be a nursing orderly for the Prussian forces during the Franco-Prussian War. It is quite possible that Nietzsche saw this as his opportunity to escape from the world of books, at least for a while. However, he caught diphtheria and ended up being nursed rather than being the nurse, after which he returned to teaching.

  Despite his reservations, Nietzsche proved an able and popular teacher. Students spoke of his enthusiasm and their sense that this man had been transported through time from ancient Greece – such was his knowledge and explication of the subject. A famous incident in class was when he suggested that the students read the account of Achilles’ shield in Homer’s Iliad over the summer vacation. At the beginning of the next term, Nietzsche asked a student to describe Achilles’ shield to him. The embarrassed student had not read the passage, however, and there followed ten minutes of silence during which Nietzsche paced up and down and appeared to be listening attentively. After the time had elapsed, Nietzsche tha
nked the student for the description and moved on!

  Spotlight

  During his time in Basel, Nietzsche cultivated his physical appearance. By most accounts, he was a smart dresser, almost something of a dandy. He began to cultivate his celebrated moustache that, in a famous photo of 1882, covered the whole of his mouth. There is another photo of Nietzsche with his mother, taken in 1890, which shows the moustache reaching down to his chin!

  At Basel University, Nietzsche developed a strong affection for Jakob Burckhardt (1818–97), professor of the history of art and civilization. Burckhardt’s had already published his greatest work, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860), which continues to be important to this day. In it, Burckhardt outlined the historical transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance as a transformation from people’s perception of themselves as belonging to a community to the idea of self-conscious individualism. When Nietzsche met him, Burckhardt had already been teaching at Basel for 26 years (and was to continue teaching there for another 24) and, although Nietzsche was in awe of this man, Burckhardt preferred a polite distance. Nietzsche’s primary father figure, Wagner, however, now lived only 40 miles away in his villa called Tribschen on the shores of Lake Lucerne. In no time, Nietzsche became a regular weekend visitor there.