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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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