Friedrich Nietzsche

1844-1900. German Philosopher. Dead.

Friedrich Nietzsche was born on 15 October 1844, in Rocken, Saxony; he was the son of a Lutheran pastor. It was noted as a particular omen that he shared his birthday with King Wilhelm IV of Prussia. His father died when he was five years old and this formed a traumatic childhood experience that left deep scars on Nietzsche's later development. After the death of his father he moved with his mother and younger sister to Naumburg in 1850. Eight years later he left for boarding school in Pforza, where he became a brilliant scholar. Then he studied classical philology at Bonn and Leipzig Universities, and in 1869, just at the age of 25, he was appointed Extraordinary Professor of Classical Philology at Basle University, where he taught until 1879.

This period reflected the conservative and bourgeois spirit of the town. The initial enthusiasm with which he devoted himself to his studies of Greek literature and mythology was destroyed by the Franco-Prussian War. Shaken by his experience of the war as a volunteer medic, he returned to Basle. The pessimistic attitude that already existed since the death of his father was intensified, and led to his doubting meaning of human existence. His first book, The Birth of Tragedy, which was published in 1872, casts light on his spiritual background, and offers a visionary overview of the origins and decline of Greek tragic culture, and claims that this culture was destroyed by the subordination of the poetic imagination to an uncreative rationalism that has come to rule the modern age.

Fearlessly he exercised his criticism not only of the educational aims but also of the intellectualism and historicism. The Birth of Tragedy was gravely condemned by the academic community for its 'unphilosophical' approach and the dispute between Nietzsche and German intellectual culture was to last the rest of his life. Consequently his books that followed made little impression upon the general reading public. In 1879 he was forced to retire because of mental health problems. From this point, Nietzsche led the life of an independent philosopher. He had little time for the democratic and egalitarian objectives of the radicals and reformers, but joined them in finding the conservatism of German culture and politics foolish and dull. In January 1889, while in Turin, he experienced a complete mental breakdown, from which he never recovered and lived until his death, on 25 August 1900, with his mother and sister.

Sources:

Frey-Rohn, Liliane, Friedrich Nietzsche - A Psychological Approach to his Life and Work, Zürich: Daimon Verlag, 1984.

Spinks, Lee, Friedrich Nietzsche, London: Routledge, 2003.