Friedrich Nietzsche (Prussian Philosopher 1844-1900)

A portrait of Nietzsche

• Encouraging Words from an Influential Philosopher:

  • Michel Foucault said of Nietzsche: “The only valid tribute to thought such as Nietzsche’s is precisely to use it, to deform it, to make it groan and protest.”

  Highlights of Nietzsche

  • Greek and Roman philologist
  • Department Chair at age of 24 of Classical Philology at the University of Basel
  • Anti-feminist
  • Mental Collapse at age 48
  • Died at age 56, probably of brain cancer
  • Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche re-works his writings and unpublished notes to make them appear as anti-semitic and nationalist

  Early Life

  • Born in Prussia in 1844. Friedrich’s father is a Lutheran Pastor and former teacher, while his mother is a homemaker. His father dies when he is 5 years old.
  • Attended prestigious schools, was interested in religious and classical studies
  • Studied theology and philosophy at the University of Bonn. Denounces his faith and abandons
    theological studies after one semester
  • He focuses on his study of philosophy after abandoning theology

  Theoretical Influences

  • Greek philosophers
  • Immanuel Kant
  • John Stuart Mill
  • Arthur Schopenhauer
  • Baruch Spinoza
  • Richard Wagner (later distances himself due to Wagner’s Christianity, “German Culture,” and anti-semitism)

  

  Faravahar by Furfur

  Later Life

  • With failing health, he continues to work independently, funded by his pension and friends
  • Some claim syphilis was cause of ill health but modern scholarship suggests brain cancer and other illnesses
  • This so called “Nazi” requested his citizenship (Prussian) be removed. He remained stateless until his death and claimed he was of Polish noble birth (“Slav”)

  The Tightrope Walker

  

  A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: http://openbooks.library.umass.edu/radicalsocialtheory/?p=146

  Critique of Modernity

  • Inexorable spread of decadence
  • Flaccid reign of the last man (opposite of the Overman)
  • Twilight of the idols
  • Modernity has made man unmotivated and uncreative. The will to nothing looms in the horizon (as opposed to the will to power)

  Overman (Uberman)

  • Willing to risk it all to enhance humanity
  • The “last man” desires comfort, incapable of creating anything
  • Overman creates their own set of values with happiness and pleasure now, with a purpose for humanity

  Against Herd Values of Christianity

  • Will to power to creatively influence the thought of others over generations
  • Their existence and power live on after their death

  Main Concepts

  • God is Dead
  • Perspectivism
  • Will to Power
  • Slave-Master
  • Body

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