Friedrich Nietzsche

Wilhelm, Bismarck, and all anti-Semites abolished.

Additionally, he commanded the German emperor to go to Rome to be shot and summoned the European powers to take military action against Germany,^[74] writing also that the pope should be put in jail and that he, Nietzsche, created the world and was in the process of having all antisemites shot dead.^[75]

On 6 January 1889, Burckhardt showed the letter he had received from Nietzsche to Overbeck. The following day, Overbeck received a similar letter and decided that Nietzsche's friends had to bring him back to Basel. Overbeck travelled to Turin and brought Nietzsche to a psychiatric clinic in Basel. By that time Nietzsche appeared fully in the grip of a serious mental illness,^[76] and his mother Franziska decided to transfer him to a clinic in Jena under the direction of Otto Binswanger.^[77] In January 1889, they proceeded with the planned release of Twilight of the Idols, by that time already printed and bound. From November 1889 to February 1890, the art historian Julius Langbehn attempted to cure Nietzsche, claiming that the methods of the medical doctors were ineffective in treating Nietzsche's condition.^[78] Langbehn assumed progressively greater control of Nietzsche until his secretiveness discredited him. In March 1890, Franziska removed Nietzsche from the clinic and, in May 1890, brought him to her home in Naumburg.^[76] During this process Overbeck and Gast contemplated what to do with Nietzsche's unpublished works. In February, they ordered a fifty-copy private edition of Nietzsche contra Wagner, but the publisher C. G. Naumann secretly printed one hundred. Overbeck and Gast decided to withhold publishing The Antichrist and Ecce Homo because of their more radical content.^[76] Nietzsche's reception and recognition enjoyed their first surge.^[79]

In 1893, Nietzsche's sister, Elisabeth, returned from Nueva Germania in Paraguay following the suicide of her husband. She studied Nietzsche's works and, piece by piece, took control of their publication. Overbeck was dismissed and Gast finally co-operated. After the death of Franziska in 1897, Nietzsche lived in Weimar, where Elisabeth cared for him and allowed visitors, including Rudolf Steiner (who in 1895 had written Friedrich Nietzsche: A Fighter Against His Time, one of the first books praising Nietzsche),^[80] to meet her uncommunicative brother. Elisabeth employed Steiner as a tutor to help her to understand her brother's philosophy. Steiner abandoned the attempt after only a few months, declaring that it was impossible to teach her anything about philosophy.^[81]

Nietzsche's insanity was originally diagnosed as

tertiary syphilis, in accordance with a prevailing medical paradigm of the time. Although most commentators^[who?] regard his breakdown as unrelated to his philosophy, Georges Bataille wrote poetically of his condition ("'Man incarnate' must also go mad")^[82] and René Girard's postmortem psychoanalysis posits a worshipful rivalry with Richard Wagner.^[83] Girard suggests that Nietzsche signed his final letters as both Dionysus and the Crucified One because he was demonstrating that by being a god (Dionysus), one is also a victim (Crucified One) since a god still suffers by overcoming the law. Nietzsche had previously written, "All superior men who were irresistibly drawn to throw off the yoke of any kind of morality and to frame new laws had, if they were not actually mad, no alternative but to make themselves or pretend to be mad." (Daybreak, 14) The diagnosis of syphilis has since been challenged and a diagnosis of "manic-depressive illness with periodic psychosis followed by vascular dementia" was put forward by Cybulska prior to Schain's study.^[84][85] Leonard Sax suggested the slow growth of a right-sided retro-orbital meningioma as an explanation of Nietzsche's dementia;^[86] Orth and Trimble postulated frontotemporal dementia^[87] while other researchers have proposed a hereditary stroke disorder called CADASIL.^[88] Poisoning by mercury, a treatment for syphilis at the time of Nietzsche's death,^[89] has also been suggested.^[90]

In 1898 and 1899, Nietzsche suffered at least two strokes. They partially paralysed him, leaving him unable to speak or walk. He likely suffered from clinical hemiparesis/hemiplegia on the left side of his body by 1899. After contracting pneumonia in mid-August 1900, he suffered another stroke during the night of 24–25 August and died at about noon on 25 August.^[91] Elisabeth had him buried beside his father at the church in Röcken near Lützen. His friend and secretary Gast gave his funeral oration, proclaiming: "Holy be your name to all future generations!"^[92]

General commentators and Nietzsche scholars, whether emphasising his cultural background or his language, overwhelmingly label Nietzsche as a "German philosopher."[95]^[96][32][97] Others do not assign him a national category.^{[98][99][100]} While Germany had not yet been unified into a single sovereign state, Nietzsche was born a citizen of Prussia, which was mostly part of the German Confederation.^[101] His birthplace, Röcken, is in the modern German state of Saxony-Anhalt. When he accepted his post at Basel, Nietzsche applied for annulment of his Prussian citizenship.^[102] The official revocation of his citizenship came in a document dated 17 April 1869,^[103] and for the rest of his life he remained officially stateless.

At least towards the end of his life, Nietzsche believed his ancestors were

Most scholars dispute Nietzsche's account of his family's origins. Hans von Müller debunked the genealogy put forward by Nietzsche's sister in favour of Polish noble heritage.[113] Max Oehler, Nietzsche's cousin and curator of the Nietzsche Archive at Weimar, argued that all of Nietzsche's ancestors bore German names, including the wives' families.^[109] Oehler claims that Nietzsche came from a long line of German Lutheran clergymen on both sides of his family, and modern scholars regard the claim of Nietzsche's Polish ancestry as "pure invention."^[114] Colli and Montinari, the editors of Nietzsche's assembled letters, gloss Nietzsche's claims as a "mistaken belief" and "without foundation."^[115][116] The name Nietzsche itself is not a Polish name, but an exceptionally common one throughout central Germany, in this and cognate forms (such as Nitsche and Nitzke). The name derives from the forename Nikolaus, abbreviated to Nick; assimilated with the Slavic Nitz; it first became Nitsche and then Nietzsche.^[109]

It is not known why Nietzsche wanted to be thought of as Polish nobility. According to the biographer R. J. Hollingdale, Nietzsche's propagation of the Polish ancestry myth may have been part of his "campaign against Germany."^[109] Nicholas D. More states that Nietzsche's claims of having an illustrious lineage were a parody on autobiographical conventions, and suspects Ecce Homo, with its self-laudatory titles, such as "Why I Am So Wise", as being a work of satire.^[117] He concludes that Nietzsche's supposed Polish genealogy was a joke—not a delusion.^[117]

Nietzsche was never married. He proposed to Lou Salomé three times and each time was rejected.^[118] One theory blames Salomé's view on sexuality as one of the reasons for her alienation from Nietzsche. As articulated in her 1898 novella Fenitschka, Salomé viewed the idea of sexual intercourse as prohibitive and marriage as a violation, with some suggesting that they indicated sexual repression and neurosis.^[119] Reflecting on unrequited love, Nietzsche considered that "indispensable ... to the lover is his unrequited love, which he would at no price relinquish for a state of indifference".^[iv]

Deussen cited the episode of Cologne's brothel in February 1865 as instrumental to understanding the philosopher's way of thinking, mostly about women. Nietzsche was surreptitiously accompanied to a "call house" from which he clumsily escaped upon seeing "a half dozen apparitions dressed in sequins and veils." According to Deussen, Nietzsche "never decided to remain unmarried all his life. For him, women had to sacrifice themselves to the care and benefit of men."^[45] Nietzsche scholar Joachim Köhler [de] has attempted to explain Nietzsche's life history and philosophy by claiming that he was homosexual. Köhler argues that Nietzsche's supposed syphilis, which is "... usually considered to be the product of his encounter with a prostitute in a brothel in Cologne or Leipzig, is equally likely. Some maintain that Nietzsche contracted it in a male brothel in Genoa."^[120] The acquisition of the infection from a homosexual brothel was the theory believed by Sigmund Freud, who cited Otto Binswanger as his source.^[121] Köhler also suggests that Nietzsche had a romantic relationship, as well as a friendship, with Paul Rée.^[122] There is the claim that Nietzsche's homosexuality was widely known in the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, with Nietzsche's friend Paul Deussen claiming that "he was a man who had never touched a woman."^[123][124]

Köhler's views have not found wide acceptance among Nietzsche scholars and commentators. Allan Megill argues that, while Köhler's claim that Nietzsche was conflicted about his homosexual desire cannot simply be dismissed, "the evidence is very weak," and Köhler may be projecting twentieth-century understandings of sexuality on nineteenth-century notions of friendship.^[122] It is also rumoured that Nietzsche frequented heterosexual brothels.^[121] Nigel Rodgers and Mel Thompson have argued that continuous sickness and headaches hindered Nietzsche from engaging much with women. Yet they offer other examples in which Nietzsche expressed his affections to women, including Wagner's wife Cosima Wagner.^[125]

Other scholars have argued that Köhler's sexuality-based interpretation is not helpful in understanding Nietzsche's philosophy.^[126][127] However, there are also those who stress that, if Nietzsche preferred men—with this preference constituting his psycho-sexual make-up—but could not admit his desires to himself, it meant he acted in conflict with his philosophy.^[128]

Because of Nietzsche's evocative style and provocative ideas, his philosophy generates passionate reactions. His works remain controversial, due to varying interpretations and misinterpretations. In Western philosophy, Nietzsche's writings have been described as a case of free revolutionary thought, that is, revolutionary in its structure and problems, although not tied to any revolutionary project.^[129] His writings have also been described as a revolutionary project in which his philosophy serves as the foundation of a European cultural rebirth.^[130][131]

The Apollonian and Dionysian is a two-fold philosophical concept based on two figures in ancient Greek mythology, Apollo and Dionysus. This relationship takes the form of a dialectic.^[132] Even though the concept is related to The Birth of Tragedy, the poet Hölderlin had already spoken of it, and Winckelmann had talked of Bacchus.

Nietzsche found in classical Athenian tragedy an art form that

However, Nietzsche strongly distinguishes his Dionysus from the Dionysus of the Orphic tradition, which he considers a later corruption of the original Dionysian force. To him in the pre-Homeric world, Dionysian civilisations were marked by barbarism, cruelty, and ecstatic sexual excess, unrestrained by rational or moral principles. Nietzsche associates this period with unmediated life-affirmation, where violence and eroticism intertwined as expressions of raw vitality.[133] However, the Orphics, overwhelmed by anxiety toward this unmitigated savagery, reacted by turning away from the physical world and abstracting their gods into metaphysical ideas. In doing so, they transformed Dionysus from a figure of visceral power into a god of suffering and redemption and, in parallel, converted man from a being of flesh and instincts into a soul burdened with guilt and the need for purification.^[134]

Nietzsche criticises this Orphic reinterpretation as an early decline in Greek spiritual health, arguing that it marked the beginning of an anti-life tendency that would later manifest in Platonism and Christianity.^[135] He further argues that Socrates and Euripides continued the Orphic trajectory, replacing instinct, myth, and artistic frenzy with rationalism, dialectic, and moral didacticism. By doing so, they undermined the ecstatic and violent balance of Apollonian and Dionysian forces, ultimately leading to the decline of Greek tragedy.^[136]

Nietzsche used these two forces because, for him, the world of mind and order on one side, and passion and chaos on the other, formed principles that were fundamental to the Greek culture:^[137][138] the Apollonian a dreaming state, full of illusions; and Dionysian a state of intoxication, representing the liberation of instincts and dissolution of boundaries. In this mould, a man appears as the satyr. He is the horror of the annihilation of the principle of individuality and at the same time someone who delights in its destruction.^[139]

Apollonian and Dionysian juxtapositions appear in the interplay of tragedy: the tragic hero of the drama, the main protagonist, struggles to make (Apollonian) order of his unjust and chaotic (Dionysian) fate, though he dies unfulfilled. Elaborating on the conception of Hamlet as an intellectual who cannot make up his mind, and is a living antithesis to the man of action, Nietzsche argues that a Dionysian figure possesses the knowledge that his actions cannot change the eternal balance of things, and it disgusts him enough not to act at all. Hamlet falls under this category—he glimpsed the supernatural reality through the Ghost; he has gained true knowledge and knows that no action of his has the power to change this. For the audience of such drama, this tragedy allows them to sense what Nietzsche called the Primordial Unity, which revives Dionysian nature. He describes primordial unity as the increase of strength, the experience of fullness and plenitude bestowed by frenzy. Frenzy acts as intoxication and is crucial for the physiological condition that enables the creation of any art.^{[citation needed]} Stimulated by this state, a person's artistic will is enhanced:

In this state one enriches everything out of one's own fullness: whatever one sees, whatever wills is seen swelled, taut, strong, overloaded with strength. A man in this state transforms things until they mirror his power—until they are reflections of his perfection. This having to transform into perfection is—art.

Nietzsche is adamant that the works of Aeschylus and Sophocles represent the apex of artistic creation, the true realisation of tragedy; it is with Euripides, that tragedy begins its Untergang (literally 'going under' or 'downward-way;' meaning decline, deterioration, downfall, death, etc.). Nietzsche objects to Euripides' use of Socratic rationalism and morality in his tragedies, claiming that the infusion of ethics and reason robs tragedy of its foundation, namely the fragile balance of the Dionysian and Apollonian. Socrates emphasised reason to such a degree that he diffused the value of myth and suffering to human knowledge. Plato continued along this path in his dialogues, and the modern world eventually inherited reason at the expense of artistic impulses found in the Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy. He notes that without the Apollonian, the Dionysian lacks the form and structure to make a coherent piece of art, and without the Dionysian, the Apollonian lacks the necessary vitality and passion. Only the fertile interplay of these two forces brought together as an art represented the best of Greek tragedy.^[140]

An example of the impact of this idea can be seen in the book Patterns of Culture, where the anthropologist

Nietzsche claimed the

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche proclaimed that a table of values hangs above every great person. He pointed out that what is common among different peoples is the act of esteeming, of creating values, even if the values are different from one person to the next. Nietzsche asserted that what made people great was not the content of their beliefs, but the act of valuing. Thus the values a community strives to articulate are not as important as the collective will to see those values come to pass. The willingness is more essential than the merit of the goal itself, according to Nietzsche. "A thousand goals have there been so far", says Zarathustra, "for there are a thousand peoples. Only the yoke for the thousand necks is still lacking: the one goal is lacking. Humanity still has no goal." Hence, the title of the aphorism, "On The Thousand And One Goal". The idea that one value-system is no more worthy than the next, although it may not be directly ascribed to Nietzsche, has become a common premise in modern social science. Max Weber and Martin Heidegger absorbed it and made it their own. It shaped their philosophical and cultural endeavours, as well as their political understanding. Weber, for example, relied on Nietzsche's perspectivism by maintaining that objectivity is still possible—but only after a particular perspective, value, or end has been established.^[149][150]

Among his critique of traditional philosophy of

For it was Nietzsche's historic achievement to understand more clearly than any other philosopher ... not only that what purported to be appeals of

objectivity were in fact expressions of subjective will, but also the nature of the problems that this posed for philosophy.^[154]

In Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche's genealogical account of the development of modern moral systems occupies a central place. For Nietzsche, a fundamental shift took place during the human history from thinking in terms of "good and bad" toward "good and evil".

The initial form of morality was set by a warrior aristocracy and other ruling castes of ancient civilisations. Aristocratic values of good and bad coincided with and reflected their relationship to lower castes such as slaves. Nietzsche presented this "master morality" as the original system of morality—perhaps best associated with Homeric Greece.^[155] To be "good" was to be happy and to have the things related to happiness: wealth, strength, health, power, etc. To be "bad" was to be like the slaves over whom the aristocracy ruled: poor, weak, sick, pathetic—objects of pity or disgust rather than hatred.^[156]

"Slave morality" developed as a reaction to master morality. Value emerges from the contrast between good and evil: good being associated with other-worldliness, charity, piety, restraint, meekness, and submission; while evil is worldly, cruel, selfish, wealthy, and aggressive. Nietzsche saw slave morality as pessimistic and fearful, its values emerging to improve the self-perception of slaves. He associated slave morality with the Jewish and Christian traditions, as it is born out of the ressentiment of slaves. Nietzsche argued that the idea of equality allowed slaves to overcome their own conditions without despising themselves. By denying the inherent inequality of people—in success, strength, beauty, and intelligence—slaves acquired a method of escape, namely by generating new values on the basis of rejecting master morality, which frustrated them. It was used to overcome the slave's sense of inferiority before their (better-off) masters. It does so by depicting slave weakness, for example, as a matter of choice, by relabelling it as "meekness". The "good man" of master morality is precisely the "evil man" of slave morality, while the "bad man" is recast as the "good man".^[155]

Nietzsche saw slave morality as a source of the nihilism that has overtaken Europe. Modern Europe and Christianity exist in a hypocritical state due to a tension between master and slave morality, both contradictory values determining, to varying degrees, the values of most Europeans (who are "motley"). Nietzsche called for exceptional people not to be ashamed in the face of a supposed morality-for-all, which he deems to be harmful to the flourishing of exceptional people. He cautioned, however, that morality, per se, is not bad; it is good for the masses and should be left to them. Exceptional people, in contrast, should follow their own "inner law".^[155] A favourite motto of Nietzsche, taken from Pindar, reads: "Become what you are."^[157]

A long-standing assumption about Nietzsche is that he preferred master over slave morality. However, eminent Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann rejected this interpretation, writing that Nietzsche's analyses of these two types of morality were used only in a descriptive and historic sense; they were not meant for any kind of acceptance or glorification.^[158] On the other hand, Nietzsche called master morality "a higher order of values, the noble ones, those that say Yes to life, those that guarantee the future".^[159] Just as "there is an order of rank between man and man", there is also an order of rank "between morality and morality".^[160] Nietzsche waged a philosophic war against the slave morality of Christianity in his "revaluation of all values" to bring about the victory of a new master morality that he called the "philosophy of the future" (Beyond Good and Evil is subtitled Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future).^[161]

In

Art as the single superior counterforce against all will to negation of life, art as the anti-Christian, anti-Buddhist, anti-Nihilist par excellence.[165]

Nietzsche claimed that the Christian faith as practised was not a proper representation of Jesus' teachings, as it forced people merely to believe in the way of Jesus but not to act as Jesus did; in particular, his example of refusing to judge people, something that Christians constantly did.^[164] He condemned institutionalised Christianity for emphasising a morality of pity (Mitleid), which assumes an inherent illness in society:^[166]

Christianity is called the religion of pity. Pity stands opposed to the tonic emotions which heighten our vitality: it has a depressing effect. We are deprived of strength when we feel pity. That loss of strength in which suffering as such inflicts on life is still further increased and multiplied by pity. Pity makes suffering contagious.^[167]

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche called the establishment of moral systems based on a dichotomy of good and evil a "calamitous error",^[168] and wished to initiate a re-evaluation of the values of the Christian world.^[169] He indicated his desire to bring about a new, more naturalistic source of value in the vital impulses of life itself.

While Nietzsche attacked the principles of Judaism, he was not

Nietzsche felt that modern antisemitism was "despicable" and contrary to European ideals.[171] Its cause, in his opinion, was the growth in European nationalism and the endemic "jealousy and hatred" of Jewish success.^[171] He wrote that Jews should be thanked for helping uphold a respect for the philosophies of ancient Greece,^[171] and for giving rise to "the noblest human being (Christ), the purest philosopher (Baruch Spinoza), the mightiest book, and the most effective moral code in the world".^[172]

The statement "God is dead," occurring in several of Nietzsche's works (notably in

One such reaction to the loss of meaning is what Nietzsche called passive nihilism, which he recognised in the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer's doctrine—which Nietzsche also referred to as Western Buddhism—advocates separating oneself from will and desires to reduce suffering. Nietzsche characterised this ascetic attitude as a "will to nothingness". Life turns away from itself as there is nothing of value to be found in the world. This moving away of all value in the world is characteristic of the nihilist, although, in this, the nihilist appears to be inconsistent; this "will to nothingness" is still a (disavowed) form of willing.^[175]

A nihilist is a man who judges that the real world ought not to be and that the world as it ought to do not exist. According to this view, our existence (action, suffering, willing, feeling) has no meaning: this 'in vain' is the nihilists' pathos—an inconsistency on the part of the nihilists.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, KSA 12:9 [60], taken from The Will to Power, section 585, translated by Walter Kaufmann

Nietzsche approached the problem of nihilism as a deeply personal one, stating that this problem of the modern world had "become conscious" in him.^[176] Furthermore, he emphasised the danger of nihilism and the possibilities it offers, as seen in his statement that "I praise, I do not reproach, [nihilism's] arrival. I believe it is one of the greatest crises, a moment of the deepest self-reflection of humanity. Whether man recovers from it, whether he becomes a master of this crisis, is a question of his strength!"^[177] According to Nietzsche, it is only when nihilism is overcome that a culture can have a true foundation on which to thrive. He wished to hasten its coming only so that he could also hasten its ultimate departure. Heidegger interpreted the death of God with what he explained as the death of metaphysics. He concluded that metaphysics has reached its potential and that the ultimate fate and downfall of metaphysics was proclaimed with the statement "God is dead."^[178]

Scholars such as

With regard to Nietzsche's development of thought, it has been noted in research that although he dealt with "nihilistic" themes ("pessimism, with nirvana and with nothingness and non-being"[184]) from 1869 onwards, a conceptual use of nihilism first took place in handwritten notes in mid-1880. This period saw the publication of a then popular work that reconstructed so-called "Russian nihilism" on the basis of Russian newspaper reports (N. Karlowitsch: The Development of Nihilism. Berlin 1880), which is significant for Nietzsche's terminology .^[185]

A basic element in Nietzsche's philosophical outlook is the "will to power" (der Wille zur Macht), which he maintained provides a basis for understanding human behaviour—more so than competing explanations, such as the ones based on pressure for adaptation or survival.^[186][187] As such, according to Nietzsche, the drive for conservation appears as the major motivator of human or animal behaviour only in exceptions, as the general condition of life is not one of a 'struggle for existence.'^[188] More often than not, self-conservation is a consequence of a creature's will to exert its strength on the outside world.

In presenting his theory of human behaviour, Nietzsche also addressed and attacked concepts from philosophies then popularly embraced, such as Schopenhauer's notion of an aimless will or that of utilitarianism. Utilitarians claim that what moves people is the desire to be happy and accumulate pleasure in their lives. But such a conception of happiness Nietzsche rejected as something limited to, and characteristic of, the bourgeois lifestyle of the English society,^[189] and instead put forth the idea that happiness is not an aim per se. It is a consequence of overcoming hurdles to one's actions and the fulfilment of the will.^[190]

Related to his theory of the will to power is his speculation, which he did not deem final,

Other scholars disagree that Nietzsche considered the material world to be a form of the will to power: Nietzsche thoroughly criticised metaphysics, and by including the will to power in the material world, he would simply be setting up a new metaphysics. Other than Aphorism 36 in Beyond Good and Evil, where he raised a question regarding will to power as being in the material world, they argue, it was only in his notes (unpublished by himself), where he wrote about a metaphysical will to power. And they also claim that Nietzsche directed his landlord to burn those notes in 1888 when he left Sils Maria.[195] According to these scholars, the "burning" story supports their thesis that Nietzsche rejected his project on the will to power at the end of his lucid life. However, a recent study (Huang 2019) shows that although it is true that in 1888 Nietzsche wanted some of his notes burned, this indicates little about his project on the will to power, not only because only 11 "aphorisms" saved from the flames were ultimately incorporated into The Will to Power (this book contains 1067 "aphorisms"), but also because these abandoned notes mainly focus on topics such as the critique of morality while touching upon the "feeling of power" only once.^[94]

"Eternal return" (also known as "eternal recurrence") is a hypothetical concept that posits that the universe has been recurring, and will continue to recur, for an infinite number of times across infinite time or space. It is a purely physical concept, involving no supernatural reincarnation, but the return of beings in the same bodies. Nietzsche first proposed the idea of eternal return in a parable in Section 341 of The Gay Science, and also in the chapter "Of the Vision and the Riddle" in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, among other places.^[196] Nietzsche considered it as potentially "horrifying and paralyzing", and said that its burden is the "heaviest weight" imaginable (" das schwerste Gewicht").^[197] The wish for the eternal return of all events would mark the ultimate affirmation of life, a reaction to Schopenhauer's praise of denying the will-to-live. To comprehend eternal recurrence, and to not only come to peace with it but to embrace it, requires amor fati, "love of fate".^[198] As Martin Heidegger noted in his lectures on Nietzsche, Nietzsche's first mention of eternal recurrence presents this concept as a hypothetical question rather than stating it as fact. According to Heidegger, it is the burden imposed by the question of eternal recurrence – the mere possibility of it, and the reality of speculating on that possibility – which is so significant in modern thought: "The way Nietzsche here patterns the first communication of the thought of the 'greatest burden' [of eternal recurrence] makes it clear that this 'thought of thoughts' is at the same time 'the most burdensome thought.'"^[199]

Alexander Nehamas writes in Nietzsche: Life as Literature of three ways of seeing the eternal recurrence:

1. "My life will recur in exactly identical fashion:" this expresses a totally fatalistic approach to the idea;
2. "My life may recur in exactly identical fashion:" This second view conditionally asserts cosmology, but fails to capture what Nietzsche refers to in The Gay Science, p. 341; and finally,
3. "If my life were to recur, then it could recur only in identical fashion." Nehamas shows that this interpretation exists totally independently of physics and does not presuppose the truth of cosmology.

Nehamas concluded that, if individuals constitute themselves through their actions, they can only maintain themselves in their current state by living in a recurrence of past actions.^[200] Nietzsche's thought is the negation of the idea of a history of salvation.^[201]

Another concept important to understanding Nietzsche is the Übermensch (Superman).^{[202][203][204][205]} Writing about nihilism in Also Sprach Zarathustra, Nietzsche introduced an Übermensch. According to Laurence Lampert, "the death of God must be followed by a long twilight of piety and nihilism (II. 19; III. 8). Zarathustra's gift of the overman is given to mankind not aware of the problem to which the overman is the solution."^[206] Zarathustra presents the Übermensch as the creator of new values, and he appears as a solution to the problem of the death of God and nihilism. The Übermensch does not follow the morality of common people since that favours mediocrity but rises above the notion of good and evil and above the "herd".^[207] In this way Zarathustra proclaims his ultimate goal as the journey towards the state of the Übermensch. He wants a kind of spiritual evolution of self-awareness and overcoming of traditional views on morality and justice that stem from the superstitious beliefs still deeply rooted or related to the notion of God and Christianity.^[208]

From Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Zarathustra's Prologue; pp. 9–11):^[209]

I teach you the Übermensch. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All beings so far have created something beyond themselves: and you want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment. And just the same shall man be to the Übermensch: a laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much within you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any ape. Even the wisest among you is only a conflict and hybrid of plant and ghost. But do I bid you become ghosts or plants? Behold, I teach you the Übermensch! The Übermensch is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Übermensch shall be the meaning of the earth... Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Übermensch—a rope over an abyss... What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an over-going and a going under.

Zarathustra contrasts the Übermensch with the

Some^[211] have suggested that the eternal return is related to the Übermensch, since willing the eternal return of the same is a necessary step if the Übermensch is to create new values untainted by the spirit of gravity or asceticism. Values involve a rank-ordering of things, and so are inseparable from approval and disapproval, yet it was dissatisfaction that prompted men to seek refuge in other-worldliness and embrace other-worldly values. It could seem that the Übermensch, in being devoted to any values at all, would necessarily fail to create values that did not share some bit of asceticism. Willing the eternal recurrence is presented as accepting the existence of the low while still recognising it as the low, and thus as overcoming the spirit of gravity or asceticism. One must have the strength of the Übermensch to will the eternal recurrence. Only the Übermensch will have the strength to fully accept all of his past life, including his failures and misdeeds, and to truly will their eternal return. This action nearly kills Zarathustra, for example, and most human beings cannot avoid other-worldliness because they really are sick, not because of any choice they made.

The Nazis attempted to incorporate the concept into their ideology by means of taking Nietzsche's figurative form of speech and creating a literal superiority over other ethnicities. After Nietzsche's death his sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, became the curator and editor of her his manuscripts. She reworked Nietzsche's unpublished writings to fit her own German nationalist ideology while often contradicting or obfuscating Nietzsche's stated opinions, which were explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism. Through her published editions, Nietzsche's work became associated with fascism and Nazism;^[212] 20th-century scholars contested this interpretation of his work and corrected editions of his writings were soon made available.

Although Nietzsche has been misrepresented as a predecessor to Nazism, he criticised antisemitism,

Friedrich Nietzsche held a pessimistic view of modern society and culture. He believed that the press and mass culture led to conformity and brought about mediocrity, and that the lack of intellectual progress was leading to the decline of the human species. In his opinion, some people would be able to become superior individuals through the use of willpower. By rising above mass culture, those persons would produce higher, brighter, and healthier human beings.[215]

A trained philologist, Nietzsche had a thorough knowledge of

In his Egotism in German Philosophy, the philosopher George Santayana claimed that Nietzsche's whole philosophy was a reaction to Schopenhauer. Santayana wrote that Nietzsche's work was "an emendation of that of Schopenhauer. The will to live would become the will to dominate; pessimism founded on reflection would become optimism founded on courage; the suspense of the will in contemplation would yield to a more biological account of intelligence and taste; finally in the place of pity and asceticism (Schopenhauer's two principles of morals) Nietzsche would set up the duty of asserting the will at all costs and being cruelly but beautifully strong. These points of difference from Schopenhauer cover the whole philosophy of Nietzsche."^[224][225]

The superficial similarity of Nietzsche's Übermensch to Thomas Carlyle's Hero as well as both authors' rhetorical prose style has led to speculation concerning the degree to which Nietzsche might have been influenced by his reading of Carlyle.^{[226][227][228][229]} G. K. Chesterton believed that "Out of [Carlyle] flows most of the philosophy of Nietzsche", qualifying his statement by adding that they were "profoundly different" in character.^[230] Ruth apRoberts has shown that Carlyle anticipated Nietzsche in asserting the importance of metaphor (with Nietzsche's metaphor-fiction theory "appear[ing] to owe something to Carlyle"), announcing the death of God, and recognising both Goethe's Entsagen (renunciation) and Novalis's Selbsttödtung (self-annihilation) as prerequisites for engaging in philosophy. apRoberts writes that "Nietzsche and Carlyle had the same German sources, but Nietzsche may owe more to Carlyle than he cares to admit", noting that "[Nietzsche] takes the trouble to repudiate Carlyle with malicious emphasis."^[231] Ralph Jessop, senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow, has recently argued that a reassessment of Carlyle's influence on Nietzsche is "long-overdue".^[232]

Nietzsche expressed admiration for 17th-century French moralists such as

In 1861 Nietzsche wrote an enthusiastic essay on his "favourite poet," Friedrich Hölderlin, mostly forgotten at that time.^[252] He also expressed deep appreciation for Adalbert Stifter's Indian Summer,^[253] Lord Byron's Manfred and Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer.^[254]

A translation by Louis Jacolliot of the Calcutta version of the ancient Hindu text the Manusmriti was reviewed by Nietzsche. He commented on it both favourably and unfavourably:

• He deemed it "an incomparably spiritual and superior work" to the Christian Bible, observed that "the sun shines on the whole book" and attributed its ethical perspective to "the noble classes, the philosophers and warriors, [who] stand above the mass".^[255] Nietzsche does not advocate a caste system, states David Conway, but endorses the political exclusion conveyed in the Manu text.^[256] Nietzsche considered Manu's social order as far from perfect, but considers the general idea of a caste system to be natural and right, and stated that "caste-order, order of rank is just a formula for the supreme law of life itself", a "natural order, lawfulness par excellence".^[257][258] According to Nietzsche, states Julian Young, "Nature, not Manu, separates from each other: predominantly spiritual people, people characterized by muscular and temperamental strength, and a third group of people who are not distinguished in either way, the average".^[257] He wrote that "To prepare a book of law in the style of Manu means to give a people the right to become master one day, to become perfect, – to aspire to the highest art of life."^[258]
• The Law of Manu was also criticised by Nietzsche. Nietzsche writes, "these regulations teach us enough, in them we find for once Aryan humanity, quite pure, quite primordial, we learn that the concept of pure blood is the opposite of a harmless concept."^[259]

Nietzsche's works did not reach a wide readership during his active writing career. However, in 1888 the influential Danish critic

Nietzsche was an early influence on the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke.^[282] Knut Hamsun counted Nietzsche, along with Strindberg and Dostoyevsky, as his primary influences.^[283] The author Jack London wrote that he was more stimulated by Nietzsche than by any other writer.^[284] Critics have suggested that the character of David Grief in A Son of the Sun was based on Nietzsche.^[285] Nietzsche's influence on Muhammad Iqbal is most evidenced in Asrar-i-Khudi (The Secrets of the Self).^[286] Wallace Stevens^[287] was another reader of Nietzsche, and elements of Nietzsche's philosophy were found throughout Stevens's poetry collection Harmonium.^[288][289] Olaf Stapledon was influenced by the idea of the Übermensch and it is a central theme in his books Odd John and Sirius.^[290] In Russia, Nietzsche influenced Russian symbolism^[291] and figures such as Dmitry Merezhkovsky,^[292] Andrei Bely,^[293] Vyacheslav Ivanov and Alexander Scriabin incorporated or discussed parts of Nietzsche philosophy in their works. Thomas Mann's novel Death in Venice^[294] shows a use of Apollonian and Dionysian, and in Doctor Faustus Nietzsche was a central source for the character of Adrian Leverkühn.^[295][296] Hermann Hesse, similarly, in his Narcissus and Goldmund presents two main characters as opposite yet intertwined Apollonian and Dionysian spirits. The painter Giovanni Segantini was fascinated by Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and he drew an illustration for the first Italian translation of the book. The Russian painter Lena Hades created the oil painting cycle Also Sprach Zarathustra dedicated to the book Thus Spoke Zarathustra.^[297]

By

Nietzsche's growing prominence suffered a severe setback when his works became closely associated with Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. Many political leaders of the twentieth century were at least superficially familiar with Nietzsche's ideas, although it is not always possible to determine whether they actually read his work. It is debated among scholars whether Hitler read Nietzsche, although if he did, it may not have been extensively.^{[vi][vii][318][319]} He was a frequent visitor to the Nietzsche museum in Weimar and used expressions of Nietzsche's, such as "lords of the earth" in Mein Kampf.^[320] The Nazis made selective use of Nietzsche's philosophy. Alfred Baeumler was perhaps the most notable exponent of Nietzschean thought in Nazi Germany. Baeumler had published his book "Nietzsche, Philosopher and Politician" in 1931, before the Nazis' rise to power, and subsequently published several editions of Nietzsche's work during the Third Reich.^[321][322] Benito Mussolini,^[323][324] Charles de Gaulle^[325] and Huey P. Newton^[326] read Nietzsche. Richard Nixon, the 37th president of the United States, read Nietzsche with "curious interest", and his book Beyond Peace might have taken its title from Nietzsche's book Beyond Good and Evil, which Nixon read beforehand.^[327] Bertrand Russell wrote that Nietzsche had exerted great influence on philosophers and on people of literary and artistic culture, but warned that the attempt to put Nietzsche's philosophy of aristocracy into practice could only be done by an organisation similar to the Fascist or the Nazi party.^[328]

A decade after World War II, there was a revival of Nietzsche's philosophical writings thanks to translations and analyses by

Camus described Nietzsche as "the only artist to have derived the extreme consequences of an aesthetics of the absurd".^[344] Paul Ricœur called Nietzsche one of the masters of the "school of suspicion", alongside Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud.^[345] Carl Jung was also influenced by Nietzsche.^[346] In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, a biography transcribed by his secretary, he cites Nietzsche as a large influence.^[347] Aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy, especially his ideas of the self and his relation to society, run through much of late-twentieth and early twenty-first century thought.^[348][349] Nietzsche's writings have also been influential to some advancers of Accelerationist thought through his influence on Deleuze and Guattari.^[350] His deepening of the romantic-heroic tradition of the nineteenth century, for example, as expressed in the ideal of the "grand striver" appears in the work of thinkers from Cornelius Castoriadis to Roberto Mangabeira Unger.^[351] For Nietzsche, this grand striver overcomes obstacles, engages in epic struggles, pursues new goals, embraces recurrent novelty, and transcends existing structures and contexts.^[348]: 195

• The Birth of Tragedy (1872)
• On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873)
• Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (1873; first published in 1923)
• Untimely Meditations (1876)
• Human, All Too Human (1878)
• The Dawn
  (1881)
• The Gay Science (1882)
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883)
• Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
• On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
• The Case of Wagner (1888)
• Twilight of the Idols (1888)
• The Antichrist (1888)
• Ecce Homo (1888; first published in 1908)
• Nietzsche contra Wagner (1888)
• The Will to Power (various unpublished manuscripts edited by his sister Elisabeth; not recognised as a unified work after c. 1960)
• Magnum in parvo: A philosophy in compendium (1888, a reconstruction of a project of work conceived by Nietzsche in Sils Maria at the end of August 1888, the last summer of his lucid life).