Nietzsche:

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900), a German philologist and philosopher, produced critiques of religion, morality, contemporary culture, and philosophy, centered around what he viewed as a fundamental question regarding the life-affirming and life-denying qualities of different attitudes and beliefs. Nietzsche's works feature unique, free-form stylization – combined with a wide philosophical breadth – through the use of (for example) analyses, etymologies, punning, parables, paradoxes, aphorisms, and contradictions, employed to demonstrate the inadequacies of normative modes of thought. Although largely overlooked during his short yet productive working life, which ended with a mental collapse in 1889, Nietzsche received recognition during the first half of the 20th century in German, French, and English intellectual circles, and by the second half of the 20th century he became regarded as a highly significant and influential figure in modern philosophy.

The Birth of Tragedy

Nietzsche published his first book in 1872 as The Birth of Tragedy, Out of the Spirit of Music (Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik) and reissued it in 1886 as The Birth of Tragedy, Or: Hellenism and Pessimism (Die Geburt der Tragödie, Oder: Griechentum und Pessimismus. The later edition contained a prefatory essay, An Attempt at Self-Criticism, wherein Nietzsche commented on this very early work.

In contrast to the typically Enlightenment view of ancient Greek culture as noble, simple, elegant and grandiose, Nietzsche characterises it as a conflict between two distinct tendencies - the Apollonian and Dionysian. The Appollonian in culture he sees as the principium individuationis (principle of individuation) with its refinement, sobriety and emphasis on superficial appearance, whereby man separates himself from the undifferentiated immediacy of nature. Immersion into that same wholeness characterises the Dionysian, recognisable by intoxication, irrationality and inhumanity; this shows the influence of Schopenhauer's view that non-rational forces underlie human creativity. Nietzsche describes how from Socrates onward the Apollonian had dominated Western thought, and raises German Romanticism (especially Richard Wagner) as a possible re-introduction of the Dionysian to the salvation of European culture

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

A break with his middle-period works, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, A Book for All and None (Also Sprach Zarathustra, Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen, 1883 - 1885) became Nietzsche's best-known book and the one he considered the most important. Noteworthy for its format, it comprises a philosophical work of fiction whose style often lightheartedly imitates that of the New Testament and of the Platonic dialogues, at times resembling Pre-Socratic works in tone and in its use of natural phenomena as rhetorical and explanatory devices. It also resplendantly abounds with references to the Western literary and philosophical traditions, implicitly offering an interpretation of these traditions and of their problems. Nietzsche achieves all of this through the character of Zarathustra (referring to the historic figure behind Zoroastrianism) who makes speeches on philosophic topics as he moves along a loose plotline marking his developement and the reception of his ideas. One can view this characteristic (following the genre of the bildungsroman) as an inline commentary on Zarathustra (and Nietzsche's) philosophy. All this, along with the book's ambiguity and paradoxical nature, has helped its eventual enthusiastic reception by the reading public, but has frustrated academic attempts at analysis (as Nietzsche may have intended); and Thus Spoke Zarathustra remained for long unpopular as a topic for scholars (especially those in the Anglo-American analytic tradition), until the second half of the twentieth century brought widespread interest in Nietzsche and his unconventional style that does not distinguish between philosophy and literature. It offers complete formulations of eternal recurrence, the will to power, and the Übermensch: themes that would dominate Nietzsche's books from this point onwards.

Beyond Good and Evil

Of the three "late-period" writings of Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (Jenseits von Gut und Böse. Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft, 1886) most closely resembles the aphoristic style of his middle period. Therein he identifies the qualities of genuine philosophers: imagination, self-assertion, danger, originality and the "creation of values" - all else he considers incidental. Continuing from this he contests some key pre-suppositions such as "self-consciousness" and "free-will" as used by some of the great members of the philosophic tradition. Instead of these traditional analyses, which Nietzsche paints as insufficient, he offers the will to power as an explanatory device, being part of his "perspective of life" which he regards as "beyond good and evil", denying a universal morality for all human beings. The master and slave moralities feature prominently as Nietzsche re-evaluates deeply-held humanistic beliefs, portraying even domination, appropriation and injury to the weak as not universaly objectionable. A tone of moral relativism and perspectivism dominates throughout.

On the Genealogy of Morals

The three essays that make up On the Genealogy of Morals, A Polemic (Zur Genealogie der Moral, Eine Streitschrift, 1887) represent the last of Nietzsche's works before his flurry of activity in 1888. Each essay comprises a series of paragraphs (like the longer aphorisms of some of his books) that discusses the details of his moral relativism, especially of how the will to power influences perspectives, and appears more unproblematically philosophical in style and tone than many of his books and all of those written afterwards. For these reasons this book has become a popular topic for scholarly analysis.

'Good and Evil', 'Good and Bad'" continues Nietzsche's discussion of the Master-Slave Morality, maintaining that the slave morality (which labels "good" and "evil" compared to the less judgmental and more masterful "good" and "bad") arises from a denial of life — as opposed to the vitalism of the master morality. Nietzsche identifies ressentiment as the driving force of the slave morality.

'Guilt', 'Bad Conscience', and Related Matters investigates the sources of conscience, especially "bad conscience", and names cruelty as the base of punishment and self-punishment. Cruelty as punishment of others provides gratification because thereby one imposes one's will over another; cruelty to oneself happens through "bad conscience", whereby one punishes oneself because of not holding to a self-imposed standard of dependability. In this way Nietzsche characterises altrusitic, "selfless", behaviour as immense cruelty to oneself by imposing another's will over oneself, an explanation he offers for Christianity and monotheism in general.
What Do Ascetic Ideals Mean? continues the theme. Nietzsche describes how such a paradoxical action as asceticism might serve the interests of life: through asceticism one can attain mastery over oneself. In this way one can express both ressentiment and the will to power. Nietzsche describes the morality of the ascetic priest (as characterised by Christianity as one where, finding oneself in pain, one places the blame for the pain on oneself and thereby attempts and attains mastery over the world, a tactic that Nietzsche places behind secular science as well as behind religion.

Nietzsche's influence and reception

Nietzsche's reception has proved a rather confused and complex affair. Many Germans eventually discovered his appeals for greater individualism and personality development in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but responded to those appeals in diverging ways. He had some following among left-wing Germans in the 1890s; in 1894–95, German conservatives wanted to ban his work as subversive. By the First World War, however, he had acquired a reputation as a source of right-wing German militarism. The Dreyfus Affair (ca 1894 - 1906) provides another example of his reception: the French anti-semitic Right labelled the Jewish and Leftist intellectuals who defended Alfred Dreyfus as "Nietzscheans".

During the interbellum, certain Nazis employed a highly selective reading of Nietzsche's work to advance their ideology, notably Alfred Baeumler in his reading of The Will to Power. The era of Nazi rule (1933 – 1945) saw Nietzsche's writings widely studied in German (and, after 1938, Austrian) schools and universities. The Nazis viewed Nietzsche as one of their "founding fathers". Although there exist few — if any — similarities between Nietzsche's views and Nazism, phrases like "the will to power" became common in Nazi circles. The wide popularity of Nietzsche among Nazis stemmed in part from the endeavors of his sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, the editor of Nietzsche's work after his 1889 breakdown, and an eventual Nazi sympathizer. Nietzsche himself thoroughly disapproved of his sister's anti-Semitic views; in a letter to her he wrote:

You have committed one of the greatest stupidities—for yourself and for me! Your association with an anti-Semitic chief expresses a foreignness to my whole way of life which fills me again and again with ire or melancholy. … It is a matter of honour with me to be absolutely clean and unequivocal in relation to anti-Semitism, namely, opposed to it, as I am in my writings. I have recently been persecuted with letters and Anti-Semitic Correspondence Sheets. My disgust with this party (which would like the benefit of my name only too well) is as pronounced as possible.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Letter to His Sister, Christmas 1887

Moreover, Mazzino Montinari, while editing Nietzsche's posthumous works in the 1960s, found that Förster-Nietzsche, while editing the posthumous fragments making up The Will to Power, had cut extracts, changed their order, and added titles of her own invention.

The psychologist Carl Jung recognized Nietzsche's importance early on: he held a seminar on Nietzsche's Zarathustra in 1934. According to Ernest Jones, biographer and personal acquaintance of Sigmund Freud, Freud frequently referred to Nietzsche as having "more penetrating knowledge of himself than any man who ever lived or was likely to live". Yet Jones also reports that Freud emphatically denied that Nietzsche's writings influenced his own psychological discoveries. Moreover, Freud took no interest in philosophy while a medical student, forming his opinion about Nietzsche later in life.

Early twentieth-century thinkers influenced by Nietzsche include: philosophers Theodor Adorno, Georg Brandes, Henri Bergson, Martin Buber, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Emil Cioran, Michel Foucault, and Muhammad Iqbal; sociologist Max Weber; theologian Paul Tillich; novelists Hermann Hesse, André Malraux, André Gide and D. H. Lawrence; psychologists Alfred Adler, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Rollo May; poets Rainer Maria Rilke, and William Butler Yeats; playwrights George Bernard Shaw, and Eugene O'Neill; and authors Menno ter Braak, and Jack London. American writer H.L. Mencken avidly read and translated Nietzsche's works and has gained the soubriquet "the American Nietzsche".

In 1936 Martin Heidegger lectured on the "Will to Power as a Work of Art"; he later published four large volumes of lectures on Nietzsche. Thomas Mann's essays mention Nietzsche with respect. One of the characters in Mann's 1947 novel Doktor Faustus represents Nietzsche fictionally. In 1938 the German existentialist Karl Jaspers wrote the following about the influence of Nietzsche and the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard:

The contemporary philosophical situation is determined by the fact that two philosophers, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, who did not count in their times and, for a long time, remained without influence in the history of philosophy, have continually grown in significance. Philosophers after Hegel have increasingly returned to face them, and they stand today unquestioned as the authentically great thinkers of their age. ... The effect of both is immeasurably great, even greater in general thinking than in technical philosophy ...

— Jaspers, Reason and Existenz

The appropriation of Nietzsche's work by the Nazis, combined with the rise of analytic philosophy, ensured that British and American academic philosophers would almost completely ignore him until at least 1950. Even George Santayana, an American philosopher whose life and work betray some similarity to Nietzsche's, dismissed Nietzsche in his 1916 Egotism in German Philosophy as a "prophet of Romanticism". Analytic philosophers, if they mentioned Nietzsche at all, characterized him as a literary figure rather than as a philosopher. Nietzsche's present stature in the English-speaking world owes much to the exegetical writings and improved Nietzsche translations by the German-American philosopher Walter Kaufmann, beginning with the 1950 publication of the first edition of his Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist.

It is evident at once that Nietzsche is far superior to Kant and Hegel as a stylist; but it also seems that as a philosopher he represents a sharp decline—and men have not been lacking who have not considered him a philosopher at all—because he had no “system.” Yet this argument is hardly cogent. Schelling and Hegel, Spinoza and Aquinas had their systems; in Kant's and Plato's case the word is far less applicable; and of the many important philosophers who very definitely did not have systems one need only mention Socrates and many of the pre-Socratics. Not only can one defend Nietzsche on this score—how many philosophers today have systems?—but one must add that he had strong philosophic reasons for not having a system.

— Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, p. 79

Nietzsche's influence on continental philosophy increased dramatically after the second World War, especially among the French intellectual Left and post-structuralists. Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Michel Foucault all owe a heavy debt to Nietzsche. Gilles Deleuze and Pierre Klossowski wrote monographs drawing new attention to his work, and a 1972 conference at Cérisy-la-Salle ranks as the most important event in France for a generation's reception of Nietzsche.

Harold Bloom has described Nietzsche as "Emerson's belated rival". Bloom's theory of the "anxiety of influence" betrays a Nietzschean influence. Others influenced by Nietzsche include "Death of God" theologian Thomas Altizer; novelists Nikos Kazantzakis, Mikhail Artsybashev, Jack Kerouac, Donna Tartt, Philippe Sollers and Lu Xun; musicians Jim Morrison and Marilyn Manson; the Church of Satan and founder Anton LaVey; and Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

(Source : wikipedia)

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