"How did reason come into the world? As is fitting, in an irrational manner, by accident. One will have to guess at it as at a riddle."
- Nietzsche, "The Dawn" circa 1881
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Few philosophers have come to be as widely misunderstood. Fewer still have suffered the indignity of having their views and writings *******ized by those that were trusted to do otherwise. In Nietzsche, we have both... coupled with the truth... a man angry with his people, his nation, and with society as a whole. Taken to its extreme, Nietzschean thought borders on the nihilistic... though Nietzsche was by no means a nihilist. Taken at face value, it cries out against religion... though Nietzsche did not harbor disdain for all faiths. A man often taken so very seriously... and yet a man who could certainly laugh at himself.
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Biographical information
Nietzsche was born in 1844. His father, a Lutheran minister, died in 1849. He spent his childhood days surrounded by his mother, his sister, and two aunts. After attending a first rate boarding school (Schulpforta), he went on to study classical philology at the universities of Bonn and Leipzig. At 24 years of age, he earned a professorship at Basel, which is where he truly came to be noticed.
At Basel, Nietzsche was the younger colleague of Jacob Burckhardt and Franz Overbeck. His relationship with Overbeck solidified with the two becoming lifelong friends and associates. During the Franco-Prussian war, Nietzsche left Basel and volunteered as a medical orderly on active duty. His time in the military was short and he returned to Basel in a state of shattered health. Instead of waiting to heal, he pushed headlong into a more fervent schedule of study than ever before. In 1872, he published his first book: The Birth of Tragedy.
Over the following years, he published several more books as well authoring many opinion pieces. In 1879, he resigned from the university because of ill health. His most productive years were after he left Basel, with the culmination of his work (not to mention notoriety) coming with the writing of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In 1889, less than two weeks after the completion of Nietzsche contra Wagner, he broke down, insane. His madness is suspected to have been a condition brought on by an advancing case of syphilis.
Most of his final years were spent in his sister Elisabeth's care. During this time, Elisabeth grew more and more involved in the burgeoning anti-semitic movements in Germany. While he wasted away, she collected and edited many of his scattered notes and tailored them to suit her own political agenda. The fruition of this was Nietzsche's altered works and philosophy being a cornerstone in the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler's personal mantra. In 1900, he died... in 1901, Elisabeth published The Will to Power.
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Nietzsche Resources
The Friedrich Nietzsche Page at USC (wonderful place)
The Yahoo! Humanities/Philosophy index (more good reading)
Cerebral Babylon (Nietzsche-themed personal web site)
"The Philology of Christianity" -- excerpt from The Dawn
"The Madman" -- excerpt from The Gay Science
"Reason in the Schools" -- excerpt from Human, All-too-Human
"We too are still pious" -- excerpt from The Gay Science
"Christianity has cheated us" -- excerpt from The Antichrist
"Good and Evil" -- excerpt from Toward a Genealogy of Morals
"Real peace" -- excerpt from The Wanderer and his Shadow
"Epilogue" -- excerpt from Nietzsche contra Wagner
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Collection of favorite quotes
"If Goethe is a transposed painter and Schiller a transposed orator, then Wagner is a transposed actor."
"To educate educators! But the first ones must educate themselves! And for these I write."
"A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness."
"One often contradicts an opinion when it is really only the tone in which it has been presented that is unsympathetic."
"The mother of dissipation is not joy but joylessness."
"The better the state is established, the fainter is humanity. To make the individual uncomfortable, that is my task."
"The poet presents his thoughts festively, on the carriage of rhythm: usually because they could not walk."
"The bite of conscience, like the bite of a dog into a stone, is a stupidity."
"Can an ass be tragic? To perish under a burden one can neither bear nor throw off? The case of the philosopher."
"All truth is simple... is that not doubly a lie?"
"If we have our own why of life, we shall get along with almost any how. Man does not strive for pleasure; only the Englishman does."
"What? Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man's?"
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
"'Evil men have no songs.' How is it then, that the Russians have songs?"
"To live alone one must be a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both -- a philosopher."
"The formula for my happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal."
"Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt."
"To friend Overbeck and wife. Although you have so far demonstrated little faith in my ability to pay, I yet hope to demonstrate that I am somebody who pays his debts -- for example, to you. I am just having all anti-Semites shot. Signed, Dionysus" (this was Nietzsche's final known writing of any form or content)
