• Born October 15, 1844 in Röcken
• Died August 25, 1900 in Weimar
• Period: Romantic (1820-1869)
• Country: Germany

Biography

Friedrich Nietzsche is of course better known as a philosopher than as a musician. But he was a composer of some note and a musicologist who wrote a fair amount on the direction and purpose of music. He initially admired Wagner's art, but eventually grew to reject it as inept, as he did the entire Romantic movement. Nietzsche composed almost all of his works from 1854 to 1874, writing in a Romantic though seldomly original style. Nietzsche's father, Ludwig, was a Lutheran minister, as were both of his grandfathers. Ludwig died when Friedrich was only five, but the child thrived in a home environment where his mother and sister were joined by his grandmother and two aunts. Nietzsche showed musical talent from an early age, becoming quite proficient on the piano in his childhood and writing many compositions in his teens. He was strongly encouraged by his family in his musical and educational activities. In 1858, he enrolled at the Pforta School, the most prestigious Protestant boarding school in Germany. He did well there, but began suffering from migraine headaches, an affliction he would endure throughout his life. In the years between 1861 - 1864, Nietzsche was at his most productive as a composer, turning out most of his piano oeuvre. Among the works were Da geht ein Bach and the Polish Dances (2), both from 1862. In 1864, he enrolled at the University of Bonn, where he studied classical philology and theology. By this time, he was already becoming skeptical of religious ideas he had been taught as a youth. Owing to an acrimonious climate at the university brought on by disagreements between the professors Otto Jahn and Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl, Nietzsche transferred to the University of Leipzig the following year, where Ritschl took on a professorship. Nietzsche's studies were interrupted for a year by military service. An injury curtailed his length of duties, and he returned to Leipzig University in 1868. Nietzsche met Wagner that year and became a close friend and supporter for nearly 20 years. At that same time, Nietzsche was appointed a professor at the University of Basel in classical philology. He became a citizen of Switzerland the following year, and in 1870 he volunteered to serve in the Franco-Prussian War as a medical orderly. This military experience turned sour for him, as well: he contracted dysentery after one month and returned to Basel, but now with his health in steady decline. Nietzsche composed two piano duets in the years 1871 - 1874, Nachklang einer Sylversternacht and Manfred-Meditation, and he kept focused on music in other ways. As the decade wore on, he gradually turned against Wagner's art, not least because of the Christian references in Parsifal. His first book appeared in 1872, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music. In 1879, he retired from his Basel post, but continued to write philosophical works. The years 1883 - 1885 saw the publication of two more books, The Gay Science and Thus Spake Zarathustra. Perhaps his most productive year was 1888: he wrote or finished Ecce Homo (his autobiography), Twilight of the Idols, The Anti-Christ, and Nietzsche Against Wagner. In 1889, Nietzsche collapsed in Turin and suffered a devastating mental breakdown, one from which he would never recover. Deranged, he spent time in an asylum in Basel, then was looked after by his mother until her death in 1897. His sister cared for him until his death from syphilitic paralysis. ~ Robert Cummings, All Music Guide

(b Röcken, 15 Oct 1844; d Weimar, 25 Aug 1900). German philosopher. His significance for musical aesthetics is the distinction he drew between the ‘Romantic’ and the ‘Dionysian’, which led to the repudiation of Romanticism as a product of sickness. He applied it to Wagner's music, which he had originally championed; his volte-face anticipated the 20th-century reaction against all that is over-burdened, over-decorated and heavy in 19th-century art. Many musical works have been inspired by his writings, particularly Also sprach Zarathustra.

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The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) foresaw a European collapse into nihilism. In works of powerful and beautiful prose and poetry he struggled to head off the catastrophe.

Friedrich Nietzsche was born on Oct. 15, 1844, in Röcken, a village in Saxony where his father served as a Lutheran pastor. The father's death, when the child was 4 years old, was a shattering blow to which Nietzsche often referred in his later writings. This death left Nietzsche in a household of women: his mother, grandmother, several aunts, and a sister, Elizabeth.

After attending local schools in Naumburg, in 1858 Nietzsche won a scholarship to Pforta, one of the best boarding schools in Germany. Here he received a thorough training in the classics and acquired several lifetime friends. At the end of this period of schooling, Nietzsche, who had earlier fully shared the genuine piety of his family, found that he had ceased to accept Christianity - a view that soon hardened into outright atheism. With the highest recommendations of his Pforta teachers, Nietzsche enrolled in the University of Bonn in 1864.

There he pursued classical studies with Friedrich Ritschl, and when the latter, within the year, moved to Leipzig, Nietzsche followed him. Nietzsche attempted to enter into the social life of the students, even joining a dueling fraternity, but he soon discovered that his sense of his own mission in life had isolated him from the pursuits and interests most students shared. At this time, too, Nietzsche apparently contracted syphilis in a Leipzig brothel. The incurable disease gradually undermined his strong constitution. In middle life he suffered almost constantly from migraine and gastric upsets. Loneliness and physical pain were thus the constant background of his life - though Nietzsche later came to interpret them as the necessary conditions for his work.

Nietzsche's early publications in classical philology so impressed his teacher that when a chair of philology opened up at Basel, Ritschl was able to secure it for Nietzsche, then only 24 years old and still without his degree. This the University of Leipzig gave him on the strength of his writings without requiring an examination, and Nietzsche entered upon a teaching career. Important for Nietzsche's intellectual development was his discovery in these Leipzig years of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Lange and the music dramas of Richard Wagner.

When Nietzsche took up residence in Basel, Wagner was nearby at Tribschen, and Nietzsche was soon drawn into his circle. Wagner was then at work on the Ringcycle and on the great festival at Bayreuth that would be inaugurated for its premiere. The project needed publicity and financial support, and many German intellectuals were backing it. Nietzsche entered into the cause with enthusiasm and for several years was a frequent house-guest at Tribschen. Friendship with the charismatic but egocentric Wagner was, however, incompatible with independence of thought, the quality Nietzsche most valued. Before long he began to reassert his own ideas and plans. This led finally to a break, followed by some bitter polemics.

Prior to the break, Wagner had greatly influenced Nietzsche's first book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872), which gave an imaginative account of the forces that led to the rise of Athenian tragedy and to its subsequent decline. Nietzsche's book ends with a rousing advocacy of Wagner's music drama as a revival of Hellenic tragedy. But no sooner had it been published than Nietzsche began to perceive the difference between Wagner's musical genius and the shabby pseudophilosophy of the Wagnerian cult. From then on, though he still felt affection for Wagner's person, Nietzsche attacked ever more vigorously the "decadence" of Wagner's political and philosophical ideas. Two works of his last year of writing deal with the subject: The Wagner Case (1888) and Nietzsche contra Wagner (1888).

Nietzsche's teaching at Basel was interrupted frequently by prolonged bouts of sickness and by several months of service as a medical orderly during the Franco-Prussian War, which further aggravated his illness. In April 1879 his health had deteriorated so much that he was driven to resign. He was given a small pension, and he now began a 10-year period of wandering in search of a tolerable climate. Though racked by increasing pain from the relentless progress of his disease, Nietzsche managed to produce 10 substantial books before his final collapse. They belong to the first rank of German literature and contain a provocative set of philosophical ideas.

His Philosophy

Nietzsche believed that European man was standing at a critical turning point. The advance of scientific enlightenment, in particular the Darwinian theory, had destroyed the old religious and metaphysical underpinnings for the idea of human dignity. "God is dead," declares Nietzsche's spokesman Zarathustra, and man, no longer "the image of God," is a chance product of a nature indifferent to purpose or value. The great danger is that man will find his existence meaningless. Unless a new grounding for values is provided, Nietzsche predicted a rapid decline into nihilism and barbarity.

Nietzsche aimed in all his work to provide a new meaning for human existence in a meaningless world. In the absence of any transcendent sanction, men must create their own values. Nietzsche's writings are either analyses and criticisms of the old system of values or attempts to formulate a new system. For European man, the Judeo-Christian tradition was the source of the old values. Nietzsche attacked it head on in such works as A Genealogy of Morals (1887) and The Antichrist (1888).

In his constructive works Nietzsche sought to find in life itself a force that would serve to set human existence apart. He found it in the hypothesis of the will to power - the urge to dominate and master. All creatures desire this, but only man has achieved sufficient power to turn the force back upon himself. Self-mastery, self-overcoming: these are the qualities that give a unique value to human life. The ideal man, the "superman," will achieve a fierce joy in mastering his own existence, ordering his passions, and giving style to his character. The sublimation of passion and of life's circumstances that the ideal man achieves in his self-overcoming will release in him a flood of creative energy. The lives of such men will be the justification of reality; their preferences will constitute the standard of value.

All morality is thus the result of self-overcoming, but Nietzsche discerned a criterion by which to distinguish the morality of the superman from the "decadent" morality of Christianity. The latter undercuts earthly life in favor of an illusory afterlife, condemns self-assertion as pride, and perverts bodily functions with guilt and fear. Its tendency is toward nihilism and the denial of life. The new morality, on the other hand, will affirm life, encourage self-assertion, and eliminate guilt consciousness. In Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883) Nietzsche formulated the ultimate test of the superman's affirmations. Confronted with the hypothesis of eternal recurrence, the notion that the world process is cyclical and eternal, the superman still affirms life. Let it be - again and again - with all its joys and sorrows.

On Jan. 3, 1889, Nietzsche collapsed on a street in Turin, Italy. When he regained consciousness, his sanity was gone. He began to send off wild letters to friends and strangers signed "Dionysus - the Crucified." He was taken to his mother's home and lived on in a twilight condition, sinking ever further from the real world until his death on Aug. 25, 1900.

Further Reading

Nietzsche's last work, Ecce Homo (trans. 1911), is an autobiographical review of his published works; although fascinating and illuminating, it shows signs of megalomania and incipient madness. The best biography of Nietzsche is R. J. Hollingdale, Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy (1965). Of the numerous recent critical works on Nietzsche, the best is Walter Kaufmann's provocative Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist and Antichrist (1950; 3d rev. ed. 1968).

(1844-1900) German political writer who attacked Christianity and conventional ethical viewpoints. Altruism and egalitarianism, in Nietzsche's view, were debased forms of sentimentality derived from Christianity. In their place, he celebrated egotism, and the man who had transcended the slave morality of Christianity to achieve the status of übermensch (higher man). Nietzsche's thought influenced National Socialism.

For more information on Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, visit Britannica.com.

Nietzsche, Friedrich (Röcken nr. Lützen, 1844-1900, Weimar), a pastor's son, showed remarkable gifts at an early age. He was at Bonn and Leipzig universities and was elected at 25 (1869) to a chair of classical philosophy at Basel University. In the Franco-Prussian War (see Deutsch-FranzÖSischer Krieg) he was a volunteer in the medical service. In 1879 he resigned his chair on the ground of ill-health.

During his tenure of the professorship Nietzsche wrote Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik (1872), in which, in addition to underlining the Dionysiac element in Greek civilization and its expression in tragedy, he praised the work of R. Wagner, whose friend he had been since 1868 Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen (1873) extended his revolutionary view of classical philology by diminishing the emphasis on Plato and Socrates in favour of earlier Greek thought. His preoccupation with cultural values is most clearly seen at this time in the four long essays (termed Stücke) of Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen; the first of these to appear was David Strauß, der Bekenner und der Schriftsteller (1873); the second, Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie (1874), made the cleavage between Nietzsche's attitude and that of contemporary historians unmistakably clear; the third and fourth were devoted to two figures of whom Nietzsche then approved, Schopenhauer als Erzieher (1875) and Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (1876). But the adoration for Wagner waned from 1876 on. A complete breach came with the publication of volume 1 of Menschliches, Allzumenschliches in 1878-80. This had an epilogue ten years later in Nietzsche's Der Fall Wagner (1888).

Between his resignation in 1879 and 1888 Nietzsche was a sick man suffering from violent headaches and eye trouble. In this period he made frequent changes of residence from Sils Maria in Switzerland, to Sorrento, thence to Genoa, Turin, and Nice, but his symptoms continued unabated. He also suffered from personal crises. The breach with Wagner remained unhealed; difficulties arose with his sister Elisabeth (see Förster-Nietzsche, E.) and his mother; and in 1882 he fell in love with Lou Andreas-Salomé, proposed to her by proxy and was rejected. In the clear periods of his mind, however, he pursued the process of relentless disillusionment and demasking of false idealisms with Vermischte Meinungen und Sprüche and Der Wanderer und sein Schatten (1880) in a second volume of Menschliches, Allzumenschliches. The 1880s began with an attack on morality in Morgenröte. Gedanken über die moralischen Vorurteile (1881), a work of 575 numbered paragraphs divided into five books, the underlying idea of which is the condemnation of mere obedience to tradition—‘Sittlichkeit ist Gehorsam gegen die Sitten’. The assault on accepted morality, and especially Christian morality, is continued in Jenseits von Gut und Böse (1886) and Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887), which, written at speed in three weeks, savagely underlines some of the points of its predecessor. Nietzsche attempted something more positive in Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1882, revised version 1886), which sets out his idea of the true man, free of prejudice, a European in his thought, rather than a German. The book, though cast in the familiar form with 383 aphoristic paragraphs in five books, betrays the lyrical and subjective element, both in the groups of poems with which it begins and ends, and in the heading given to the fifth book, Wir Furchtlosen. The third book ends with a Nietzschean catechism (§§ 268-73). The subjective tone becomes much more marked in the rhapsodical utterances of Nietzsche's best-known work, Also sprach Zarathustra, of which Pts. I-III were published in 1883-4 and Pt. IV privately in 1885, though the complete work did not appear until 1892. It is in Also sprach Zarathustra that the ‘superman’ (Übermensch) appears. Related to this work are the rhapsodical poems in free verse, often impressive, but of uneven quality, published as Dionysos-Dithyramben (1888). In the same year appeared Der Antichrist, his bitterest attack on Christianity with its ‘Sklavenmoral’, to which he opposed his own ‘Herrenmoral’.

As early as 1883 Nietzsche conceived the idea of a systematic master-treatise on his philosophical views, which were otherwise scattered throughout diverse writings. To this conception he gave in 1885 the title Der Wille zur Macht. Versuch einer Welt-Auslegung. He never completed this work, for which he made abundant notes and aphoristic formulation, but it was published after his death, edited and arranged by his sister and P. Gast, under the title Der Wille zur Macht. Versuch einer Umwertung aller Werte in 1906. Its presentation has been the subject of much controversy, and a scholarly edition of what Nietzsche actually wrote did not appear until 1960 under the title Aus dem Nachlaß der Achtziger Jahre. In addition to Der Fall Wagner of 1888, Nietzsche worked in this year on Götzendämmerung, oder: Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert (1889, English title Twilight of the Idols), which is concerned with his admiration for the highly developed instinct of the Greeks to be strong, to have, in his own term, the ‘Will to Power’. Ecce homo, not published until 1908, is a work of self-justification, written in a tone of overconfident assertion. The last ten and a half years of Nietzsche's life were spent in increasing physical paralysis and mental illness, in which he was devotedly cared for by his mother and sister in Naumburg and, after 1897, in Weimar.

Nietzsche's searing and destructive criticism of the culture of his age is a remarkable individual achievement, and he may be said to have foreseen with accuracy many of the developments of the 20th c. Though some still see him as a systematic philosopher, he is more generally viewed as a cultural critic of outstanding vision, integrity, and ruthlessness. Nietzsche's personality was undoubtedly deeply split, and the consequent contradictions and inconsistencies have laid his work exceptionally open to misinterpretation and exploitation. The gentleness and pure love of truth which were in him were overcompensated by an insistence on brutality and an arrogant dogmaticism. In reality no one was less like the ‘blonde beast’ (‘blonde Bestie’) or the ‘superman’, two of the clichés most frequently cited from his work. The cleavage in the personality is probably one reason why the more poetic works seem less satisfactory as time gives more perspective. But as a clear-eyed critic Nietzsche deserves the highest reputation.

The phrases ‘Herrenmoral’ and ‘Sklavenmoral’, the idea of the ‘blonde beast’, and the conception of the ‘will to power’ were easily adapted and prostituted to nationalistic ends in Germany, and this occurred in the Wilhelmine era before 1918, and, more brazenly, in the National Socialist period.

Nietzsche's Werke, kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. G. Colli and M. Montinari, planned in 30 vols., began appearing in 1967 and correspondence (Briefwechsel) (20 vols.) in 1975 ff.

Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844-1900) Born in Prussia, the son of a Lutheran minister who died insane four years later, Nietzsche spent the years of childhood with his mother, sister, grandmother, and two maiden aunts. In 1858 he entered boarding school, and in spite of poor health went on to study theology and classical philology at the university of Bonn, and then removed to Leipzig, where he became influenced by Kant, Schopenhauer, and the composer Richard Wagner. A year in the army in 1868 was cut short by illness, but his intellectual distinction was such that in 1869 he was appointed to the chair in philology at Basel, although at the time he was only 24 years old, and had none of the formal qualifications usually required (Leipzig happily gave him his doctorate without requiring any examination or thesis). Nietzsche's first book, Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik (1872, trs. as The Birth of Tragedy) introduces the famous distinction between the Apollonian and the Dionysian spirit in Greek life and thought.

The work is, amongst other things, a challenge to the Buddhist resignation of Schopenhauer, since creating the Apollonian response to the terrors of Dionysius is something positive, active, and heroic rather than apathetic and passive. Nietzsche's next writings, from 1873 to 1876, are the four ‘Untimely Meditations’ (Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen); the last of these is especially significant as signalling Nietzsche's break with the composer Richard Wagner, partly because of the latter's nationalism and anti-Semitism, partly because of what Nietzsche saw as the soggy Christianity of the opera Parsifal, and partly because Wagner was not appreciative of Nietzsche's own flirtation with the French Enlightenment. In 1879, Nietzsche resigned from the university because of his chronic ill health, and on a modest pension devoted the rest of his time to writing. Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (1878-80, trs. as Human, All Too Human) was the first of the aphoristic books, followed by Vermischte Meinungen und Sprüche (1879, trs. as Mixed Opinions and Aphorisms), and Der Wanderer und sein Schatten (1880, trs. as The Wanderer and His Shadow). Morgenröte. Gedanken über die moralischen Vorurteile (1881, trs. as The Dawn: Reflections on Moral Prejudices) and Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1882, trs. as The Gay Science) begin the crucial exploration of self-mastery, the relations between reason and power, and the revelation of the unconscious strivings after power that provide the actual energy for the apparent self-denial of the ascetic and the martyr. It was during this period that Nietzsche's failed relationship with Lou Salomé precipitated the emotional crisis from which Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-5, trs. as Thus Spake Zarathustra) signals a recovery. This work is frequently regarded as Nietzsche's masterpiece. It was followed by Jenseits von Gut und Böse (1887, trs. as Beyond Good and Evil), Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887, trs. as The Genealogy of Morals), and other minor works. In 1889 Nietzsche collapsed on a street in Turin, unable to bear the sight of a horse being flogged, and for the remaining years of his life was clinically insane. It is generally accepted that during the years towards his death (and after it) his sister and guardian or nurse, Elisabeth Förster Nietzsche, played a role in muddying the channels of Nietzsche's influence on German life.

Nietzsche is unchallenged as the most insightful and powerful critic of the moral climate of the 19th century. His exploration of unconscious motivations anticipated Freud. He is notorious for stressing the ‘will to power’ that is the basis of human nature, the ‘resentment’ that comes when it is denied its basis in action, and the corruptions of human nature encouraged by religions, such as Christianity, that feed on such resentment. But the powerful human being who escapes all this, the ‘Übermensch’, is not the ‘blond beast’ of later fascism; it is a human being who has mastered passion, risen above the senseless flux, and given creative style to his or her character. Nietzsche's free spirits recognize themselves by their joyful attitude to eternal return. He frequently presents the creative artist rather than the warlord as his best exemplar of the type, but the disquieting fact remains that he seems to leave himself no words to condemn any uncaged beasts of prey who best find their style by exerting repulsive power over others. This problem is not helped by Nietzsche's frequently expressed misogyny, although in such matters the interpretation of his many-layered and ironic writings is not always straightforward. Similarly, such anti-Semitism as has been found in his work is balanced by an equally vehement denunciation of anti-Semitism, and an equal or greater dislike of the German character of his time.

Nietzsche's current influence derives not only from his celebration of the will, but more deeply from his scepticism about the notions of truth and fact. In particular, he anticipated many of the central tenets of postmodernism: an aesthetic attitude towards the world that sees it as a ‘text’; the denial of facts; the denial of essences; the celebration of the plurality of interpretations and of the fragmented self; as well as the downgrading of reason and the politicization of discourse. All awaited rediscovery in the late 20th century. Nietzsche also has the incomparable advantage over his followers of being a wonderful stylist, and his perspectivism is echoed in the shifting array of literary devices—humour, irony, exaggeration, aphorisms, verse, dialogue, parody—with which he explores human life and history.

(frē'drĭkh vĭl'hĕlm nē'chə) , 1844–1900, German philosopher, b. Röcken, Prussia. The son of a clergyman, Nietzsche studied Greek and Latin at Bonn and Leipzig and was appointed to the chair of classical philology at Basel in 1869. In his early years he was friendly with the composer Richard Wagner, although later he was to turn against him. Nervous disturbances and eye trouble forced Nietzsche to leave Basel in 1879; he moved from place to place in a vain effort to improve his health until 1889, when he became hopelessly insane. Nietzsche was not a systematic philosopher but rather a moralist who passionately rejected Western bourgeois civilization. He regarded Christian civilization as decadent, and in place of its “slave morality” he looked to the superman, the creator of a new heroic morality that would consciously affirm life and the life values. That superman would represent the highest passion and creativity and would live at a level of experience beyond the conventional standards of good and evil. His creative “will to power” would set him off from “the herd” of inferior humanity. Nietzsche's thought had widespread influence but was of particular importance in Germany. Apologists for Nazism seized on much of his writing as a philosophical justification for their doctrines, but most scholars regard this as a perversion of Nietzsche's thought. Among his most famous works are The Birth of Tragedy (1872, tr. 1910); Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883–91, tr. 1909, 1930), and Beyond Good and Evil (1886, tr. 1907).

Bibliography

See his selected letters ed. by C. Middleton (1969); biographies by C. K. Brinton (1941, repr. 1965), H. A. Reyburn (1948, repr. 1973), I. Frenzel (1967), R. Hayman (1980, repr. 1999), L. Chamberlain (1996), and C. Cate (2005); studies by H. L. Mencken (1913, repr. 1993), R. Pfefler (1972), R. C. Solomon, ed. (1973), W. A. Kaufmann (4th ed. 1974), J. T. Wilcox (1974), J. P. A. Stern (1979), R. Schacht (1983), G. Clive (1984), R. J. Hollingdale (1985), J. Köhler (tr. 1998), and R. C. Solomon and K. M. Higgins (2000).

IN BRIEF: n. - Influential German philosopher remembered for his concept of the superman and for his rejection of Christian values.

Quotes:

"How people keep correcting us when we are young! There is always some bad habit or other they tell us we ought to get over. Yet most bad habits are tools to help us through life."

"What doesn't kill us makes us stronger."

"The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it."

"In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him."

"Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil."

"The invalid is a parasite on society. In a certain state it is indecent to go on living. To vegetate on in cowardly dependence on physicians and medicaments after the meaning of life, the right to life, has been lost ought to entail the profound contempt of society."

See more famous quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche