Nietzsche
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b The philosophical position that reason, the intellect, forms the basis for much of our knowledge
c The philosophical position that there are two worlds: the physical and the non-physical
d The philosophical position that there is only the mind, no external world
7 What is idealism?
a The philosophical position that we can acquire knowledge of the world through direct experience of the senses
b The philosophical position that reason, the intellect, forms the basis for much of our knowledge
c The philosophical position that there are two worlds: the physical and the non-physical
d The philosophical position that there is only the mind, no external world
8 What is dualism?
a The philosophical position that we can acquire knowledge of the world through direct experience of the senses
b The philosophical position that reason, the intellect, forms the basis for much of our knowledge
c The philosophical position that there are two worlds: the physical and the non-physical
d The philosophical position that there is only the mind, no external world
9 What, for Kant, is meant by ‘noumena’?
a The world of everyday things that we can detect with our sense
b Metaphysical beliefs about the soul, the cosmos and God, which are matters of faith rather than scientific, empirical knowledge
c There is only the mind, no external world
d There is only the external world, no mind
10 What, for Kant, is meant by ‘phenomena’?
a The world of everyday things that we can detect with our senses
b Metaphysical beliefs about the soul, the cosmos and God, which are matters of faith rather than scientific, empirical knowledge
c That there is only the mind, no external world
d That there is only the external world, no mind
Dig deeper
Christopher Janaway, Schopenhauer: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: OUP, 2002)
Bryan Magee, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997)
Bryan Magee, Wagner and Philosophy (London: Penguin, 2001)
Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms (London: Penguin, 2004)
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, 2 vols (New York: Dover Publications, 1966)Twenty Minutes (30/08/13), BBC Radio 3: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/
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Nietzsche’s later life and death
In this chapter you will learn:
• about Nietzsche’s friends
• about his retirement from teaching and his subsequent ‘wanderings’ and writing
• about his relationships with Lou Salomé and Paul Rée
• about his final years
• about his sister Elisabeth.
Throughout much of his mature life Nietzsche was godless, stateless, homeless and wifeless. Ill health drove him to leave Basel in 1872 and go south to Italy, and he spent the next ten years wandering in Europe. Despite his illness, Nietzsche now started to produce his greatest, most mature works. These included Dawn (1881), which attacks the idea that morality has any objective basis, The Gay Science (1882), which first declares the death of God, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885), which talks of the ‘Superman’. Perhaps above all, in his Beyond Good and Evil (1886) Nietzsche brings together all of his philosophy in the most systematic way. Nevertheless, he remained largely unknown and unread.
This chapter outlines the events of this period, his friendships with Malwida von Meysenbug, Paul Rée and Lou von Salomé, among others, and the development of his ideas before his decline into madness and death at the age of 54. It also examines the negative effect of his sister Elisabeth on his reputation.
Malwida von Meysenbug and Paul Rée
When Nietzsche was at Bayreuth in 1872, Cosima Wagner introduced him to a good friend of the Wagners and a Schopenhauer advocate, Malwida von Meysenbug (1816–1903). Meysenbug was a fascinating character in her own right and her Memoirs of an Idealist are worth reading. She was a campaigner for democracy and womens’ rights and had fought for political reform in Germany in 1848, resulting in a decade of exile in England. When Meysenbug heard about Nietzsche’s ill health, she recommended that he spend some time in Italy, and so he took a year’s leave of absence from Basel starting in the autumn of 1876. No doubt Nietzsche had been considering for some time resigning his post as professor of philology and becoming a ‘free philosopher’ – a stateless and wandering exile. As someone who knew his Latin and Greek from stuffy libraries, the desire to ‘go south’ must have been great. He didn’t go alone, however, but was accompanied by his friend the philosopher Paul Rée (1849–1901) and a 21-year-old Basel law student named Albert Brenner (1856–78).
Meysenbug considered herself something of a mentor for young German writers and artists. Nietzsche, Rée and Brenner joined her in the Villa Rubinacci, which had views over the sea to Naples and Vesuvius. Today, Villa Rubinacci is the name of the restaurant on Via Correale; the actual villa Nietzsche stayed in is next door and is now known as the Hotel Eden. Back then, the villa was located in a vineyard and catered for German visitors, and the three men had rooms on the first floor. At first, Nietzsche was uncomfortable, as Wagner had also decided to visit Italy and was staying at a hotel nearby. Nietzsche met up with Wagner a few times and such visits were cordial enough, but hardly inspiring. By this time, Wagner was a much older man (he was now 63) in Nietzsche’s eyes and Nietzsche had outgrown him. Once Wagner left Italy, Nietzsche seemed to settle much better.
Nietzsche first met Rée in 1873 when the latter, though not a student, attended a series of lectures given by Nietzsche on the pre-Platonic philosophers. Rée was five years younger than Nietzsche and, by all accounts, much more precocious. The son of a Jewish landowner, Rée was also an atheist, but his view of existence as having no ultimate meaning led him into pessimism, whereas it tended to liberate Nietzsche. Originally, Rée had been a law student but became attracted to philosophy, and he was also interested in the importance of psychology as a way of understanding the beliefs of human beings. More specifically, Rée was interested in religious and moral beliefs, explaining religious experience as an attempt to interpret the world rather than as witness to an objective reality. Nietzsche was particularly influenced, however, by what Rée had to say about morality.
Nietzsche saw the villa as a ‘monastery for free spirits’ and later wrote, ‘In Sorrento I shook off nine years of moss.’ The three ‘free sprits’ worked on their books and they read (usually Rée would read aloud to Nietzsche) the works of the French moralists such as Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld and Vauvenargues. Inspired by Rée and these French thinkers, Nietzsche wrote aphorisms that were brought together and published as Human, All Too Human (1878) and Dawn (1881), also known as Daybreak. Rée, for his part, wrote The Origin of the Moral Sensations, a theme that has resonance in much of Nietzsche’s own writing from this time on.
The visit to Sorrento was undoubtedly a turning point for Nietzsche, as it reinforced his decision to give up his professorial post and become a ‘free spirit’. He was also set on finding himself a wife at this time and discussed this with Meysenbug. A letter he wrote to his sister Elisabeth on the topic while still in Sorrento is worth quoting:
‘We [Nietzsche and Meysenbug] are convinced that in the long run I shall have to give up my Basel university life, that if I continued there it would be at the cost of all my more important designs and would involve a complete breakdown of my health. Naturally I shall have to remain there during next winter, but I shall finish with it at Easter 1878, provided we bring off the other arrangement, i.e. marriage with a suitable and necessarily well-to-do-woman. “Good but rich” as Frl. von M. [Meysenbug] says… This project will be pushed ahead this summer, in Switzerland, so that I should come back to Basel already married. Various persons have been invited to come to Switzerland, among them several names that will
be quite unfamiliar to you…’
Friedrich Nietzsche, Conversations with Nietzsche, trans. by David J. Parent (Oxford: OUP, 1991), p. 109
Case study: Nietzsche’s ‘monastery’
Nietzsche, in line with how he perceived the ancient Greeks and the original purpose of philosophy, believed that his writings were not intended to be mere expositions of a philosophical point of view, but transforming, consciousness-raising exercises. He believed that those who read his books could be seduced into a new way of life, forming a counterculture to what was currently on offer. In practical terms, it was Nietzsche’s ambition to set up a commune of free (though like-minded) thinkers, or what he called a ‘monastery for free spirits’. His life with Malwida, Rée and Brenner was, he believed, the start of this monastery, and it is view that Malwida, at least, shared, for she saw this ‘ideal family’ as ‘a kind of mission house for adults of both sexes to have a free development of the noblest spiritual life so that they could go forth into the world to sow the seeds of a new spiritualized culture’ (C.P. Janz, Friedrich Nietzsche: Biographie (Munich-Vienna: Hanser, 1978), p. 750).
Nietzsche’s ‘monastery’ was to be a ‘new Greek academy’ (G. Coli and M. Montinari (eds), Nietzsche Briefwechsel: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1975–2004), 11.5, 113), an educational institution of people who effectively ‘dropped out’ of society and, much like a religious monastery, would retreat from the day-to-day concerns of the world. Similarly, they would lead a simple, ascetic existence, rejecting materialism, instead engaging in studying, debating, and creating works of art, literature, philosophy and science. While retreating from the concerns of humankind, the ultimate aim – like Nietzsche’s Zarathustra – was to return to humankind, to ‘give back’ what had been learned to redeem civilization by presenting to the world a role model for another way of life.
Nietzsche never actually carried out his ‘project’, but he became more convinced of one thing – to end his academic career, especially as his health continued to deteriorate. In April 1879 he suffered from a bout of disabling headaches, which exhausted him completely. Consequently, he asked to be relieved of his teaching and, in June, he was retired on a small but manageable (given his meager requirements) pension.
Nietzsche’s wanderings
‘I am a wanderer and a mountain-climber (he said to his heart), I do not like the plains and it seems I cannot sit still for long. And whatever may yet come to me as fate and experience – a wandering and a mountain climbing will be in it: in the final analysis one only experiences oneself.’
Thus Spake Zarathustra, Part Three, ‘The Wanderer’
In Beyond Good and Evil, perhaps his greatest book, Nietzsche calls for the coming of a ‘new philosopher’, or ‘free spirits’ as he calls them. In looking at Nietzsche’s life, his ‘wanderings’, we can understand better what Nietzsche meant by these new philosophers. For the next ten years (1879–89), Nietzsche, with only the clothes on his back and a trunkful of possessions, wandered through Italy, southern France and Switzerland. He had been advised by the doctor to seek more clement environments for his health, and this he attempted to do.
Nietzsche’s ‘wanderings’ should not be seen as periods of isolation and solitude. He was not leading a hermit existence like Zarathustra in his ten-year retreat to the mountains. Nietzsche continued to have close friends and even, perhaps, a lover for a brief time, during his ten-year spell. He could probably have ended a life of relative solitude had he so wished, but he did not wish it; periods of solitude probably suited his nature. There were times of melancholy and regret and, while he continued to have friends, undoubtedly these friends began to feel that Nietzsche was testing their friendship to the limit. As his friends got older, their responsibilities to family and other things took over, and they had less time for the wandering idealist, however charismatic that figure may have been.
One such friend was Peter Gast. Gast’s real name was Heinrich Köselitz, but he adopted the name of Gast when he began to work seriously as a composer. In 1875 Gast, seven years younger than Nietzsche, went to Basel to study and became something of Nietzsche’s ‘disciple’. He first became Nietzsche’s secretary, writing down his work as Nietzsche dictated, but later it seems that Gast was actually in love with Nietzsche, if Gast’s letters to a friend from 1879 to 1881 are anything to go by: ‘I have never loved a man as I do him, not even my father…’
In 1880, for the sake of his health, Nietzsche travelled to Riva at Lake Garda. Gast was nearby in Venice, struggling to gain recognition as a composer, but when Nietzsche told him he was at Riva, Gast packed his bags and joined him. Gast’s letters tell us that this proved to be a trying and miserable time. The weather in Riva was bad, which prompted Gast to write to a friend:
‘Here it rains almost without ceasing. How Nietzsche – who is sensitive to every cloud that appears in the sky – is faring, you may imagine.’
Peter Gast, quoted in R.J. Hollingdale, Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy (Cambridge: CUP, 2001). p. 127
Spotlight
Nietzsche took advantage of Gast’s love for him, which pushed even his greatest disciple to his limits:
‘You have no idea what I endured… how many a night I lay down and tried to sleep and when I thought about what had happened during the day, and saw that I had done nothing for myself and everything for other people, I was often seized with such rage that I threw myself into contortions and called down death and damnation on Nietzsche. I have hardly ever felt so bad as I did during this time… Then, when I had at last managed to go to sleep at four or five in the morning, Nietzsche would often come along at nine or ten and ask if I would play Chopin for him.’
Peter Gast, quoted in R.J. Hollingdale, Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy (Cambridge: CUP, 2001), p. 127
The writing of Dawn
Nietzsche spent the winter of 1880–81 in Genoa, finishing his work on Dawn. He then approached his old friend Carl van Gersdorff with a proposal to travel together to Tunis. Gersdorff had first met Nietzsche in 1863 when the former – then a student himself – had read an essay Nietzsche had written and was so impressed that he made a point of meeting him. Gersdorff, probably under the influence of Nietzsche, became a ‘Schopenhauerian’, as well as part of the Wagner entourage. Gersdorff and Nietzsche would spend holidays together, and Gersdorff also attended some of Nietzsche’s lectures along with Paul Rée. However, when Nietzsche suggested that he and Gersdorff spend a couple of years in Tunis together, the latter was reluctant, and Nietzsche himself changed his mind when war broke out there. Nietzsche then considered travelling to Mexico, but this idea never came to fruition.
During this time Nietzsche was particularly excited over his new work Dawn, declaring that, ‘This is the book with which people are likely to associate my name’ and ‘…I have produced one of the boldest and most sublime and most thought-provoking books ever born out of the human brain and heart.’ But curiously, only two months after giving Dawn such praise, he wrote to Rée describing the book as ‘poor piecemeal philosophy’. What had taken place to make Nietzsche change his mind? An interesting experience occurred while Nietzsche was staying in Sils-Maria in the Upper Engadine mountains of Switzerland, which Nietzsche himself described:
‘I shall now tell the story of Zarathustra. The basic conception of the work, the idea of eternal recurrence, the highest formula of affirmation that can possibly be attained – belong to the August of the year 1881: it was jotted down on a piece of paper with the inscription: “6,000 feet beyond man and time”. I was that day walking through the woods beside the lake of Silvaplana; I stopped beside a mighty pyramidal block of stone which reared itself up not far from Surlei. Then this idea came to me.’
Ecce Homo, Thus Spoke Zarathustra I
This ‘idea’ of the eternal recurrence (see Chapter 7) is described in a way that suggests an almost religious experience that Nietzsche had. In fact, in Ecce Homo he elaborates more on this ‘vision’ which
he calls an ‘inspiration’:
‘If one had the slightest residue of superstition left in one, one would hardly be able to set aside the idea that one is merely incarnation, merely mouthpiece, merely medium of overwhelming forces. The concept of revelation, in the sense that something suddenly, with unspeakable certainty and subtlety, becomes visible, audible, simply describes the fact. One hears, one does not seek; one takes, one does not ask who gives; a thought flashes up like lightning, with necessity, unfalteringly formed – I have never had any choice. An ecstasy whose tremendous tension sometimes discharges itself in a flood of tears, while one’s steps now involuntarily rush along, now involuntarily lag; a complete being outside oneself with the distinct consciousness of a multitude of subtle shudders and trickling down to one’s toes… Everything is in the highest degree involuntary but takes place as in a tempest of a feeling of freedom, of absoluteness, of power, of divinity.’
Ecce Homo, Thus Spoke Zarathustra III
This ‘inspiration’ is not conceived of in terms of ideas that Nietzsche himself invented, but rather it comes across as a mystical feeling ‘of power, of divinity’. In the same book, when Nietzsche talks of his ‘conception’ of Zarathustra, he says, ‘It was on these two walks that the whole of the first Zarathustra came to me, above all Zarathustra himself, as a type: more accurately, he stole up on me…’
Nietzsche described this experience in a letter to his friend Peter Gast, written in August 1881. He described his elation, and his tears: ‘Not sentimental tears, mind you, but tears of joy, to the accompaniment of which I sang and talked nonsense, filled with a new vision far superior to that of other men.’