A Note on the Life and Work of Friedrich
Nietzsche
[A
short note prepared by Ian Johnston as a postscript to the translation of Beyond
Good and Evil]
Friedrich
Nietzsche died in 1900, at the dawn of the new century, and since then many
people have seen something significant in the date.
For as the century progressed, Nietzsche’s work, largely ignored in his
own day, became increasingly well known. Indeed, in the past fifty years (at
least) Nietzsche’s work has grown so influential that it is associated with
many of the most important trends of modern thought, not merely in philosophy
but in a very wide range of subjects, so much so that it is almost impossible to
participate in modern intellectual discussions without some familiarity with his
writings.
Nietzsche
was born in 1844 in Röcken bei Lützen, in Prussia. After graduating from
school, he studied classical philology at universities in Bonn and Leipzig, and
in 1869 took up a position as professor of Classical Philology at Basel. After
serving as a medical orderly during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), he began
to suffer from a number of serious ailments, which a few years later became so
serious he had to resign his position at Basel.
For
most of the rest of his life Nietzsche lived as an independent writer,
travelling a great deal throughout Europe, mainly in Italy and Switzerland,
publishing several books, including Beyond Good and Evil in 1886, and
republishing some of the writings from his university days. His work, however,
received relatively little attention.
In
1889 Nietzsche began to suffer from a serious mental deterioration.
His friends and family took charge of him, especially his sister
Elizabeth, but he never fully regained his sanity and died after a bout of
pneumonia ten years later.
Interpreting
Nietzsche makes special demands, mainly because he presents his ideas, not in
the rational systematic way traditionally associated with philosophical writing,
but often as a series of aphorisms combined with energetic and frequently very
sweeping assertions. And he is very
fond of poetical images and enigmatic questions. He typically offers his
thoughts in sequences of numbered paragraphs, but the connections between these
are frequently difficult to understand. As a result his argument is often
ambiguous and requires further interpretation, as he himself points out.
In
addition Nietzsche has a unique style, by turns serious, sarcastic, scathing,
friendly, humorous, assertive, self-deprecating, candid, secretive, admiring,
cryptic, and dismissive. Given this shifting and frequently ambiguous tone, it
is often difficult to tell just how one is supposed to take a particular
statement or interpret a particular image.
The
central thrust of Nietzsche’s thinking in Beyond Good and Evil is,
however, clear enough. He is launching an assault on traditional European
thinking about morality. In his view, past attempts to define the truth about
morality have been superficial because the philosophers proposing various
systems have all started by assuming the essential points which need to be
explored at the outset and because they have been seduced into error by the
nature of language, by their own unconscious motivation, and by their limited
understanding of the history of moral thinking.
Nietzsche
insists that human beings are, first and foremost, biological creatures driven
by their instincts, their wills, among which the will to power is the most
important. In order to understand and to discuss human morality, we need to have
a much better understanding of human psychology and of human history so that we
can “unmask” the ways in which traditional philosophers have deceived us
into thinking that what they have to offer is anything more than their own
personal interpretations and so that we all have a clear idea about some of
their most cherished assumptions, for example, that we understand what
“thinking” and “willing” are, that we are confident in our knowledge of
the “soul,” and so on.
As
a result of our subservience to traditional ways of thinking, Nietzsche claims,
we have demeaned human beings. Under centuries of Christianity and now under the
rule of science and “modern ideas” (especially the faith in democracy and a
morality of pity) we have developed a herd mentality, a culture of mediocrity in
which the greatest and most creative human spirits cannot flourish.
Nietzsche
believes the time is right for the emergence of new philosophers, “free
spirits,” who will recognize the fictional nature of all accounts of the truth
and the biological nature of human life and who will, nonetheless, take delight
in exploring new directions and subjecting the received tradition to ruthless
criticism. They will do this, not in order to offer new truths, but in order to
create their own personal languages and their own values in a spirit of creative
play. Hence, they will be able to
move “beyond good and evil.”
Nietzsche’s
ideas, especially his view of the poetical, fictional nature of all accounts of
the truth (including science) and his psychological acuity in dealing with the
human “soul” or “ego,” have been immensely influential, helping to
promote all sorts of later philosophical movements, including existentialism,
pragmatism, and various forms of antifoundationalism. His name is frequently
invoked in critiques of science and in discussions of role of the artist in
modern society.
[For a
much more detailed treatment of Nietzsche’s thinking, particularly with
reference to Beyond Good and Evil, click here]
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