When Nietzsche was four years old, his father died of a brain disease, and six months later his two-year-old brother Joseph died. Thus, Nietzsche, at a very young and impressionable age, learned the tragedy of death, as well as the uncertainty and obvious injustice of life. His later books would contain many passages dealing with death. For example: “Let us be careful not to say that death is the opposite of life. Life is but a prototype of that which is already dead; and this is a very rare prototype".
After these events, he was raised as the only male in a family consisting of his mother Franziska, sister Elisabeth, two unmarried aunts and his grandmother - until, at the age of 14, he entered Schulforte, the most famous Protestant boarding school.
Here several significant events awaited him: he became acquainted with the literature of the ancient Greeks and Romans, with the music of Richard Wagner; wrote several “musical works that could be performed in church with all decency”; was churched at the age of 17; I read David Strauss’s controversial work “The Life of Jesus,” which had a profound influence on him.
Teaching career
At the age of 19, Nietzsche entered the University of Bonn at the Faculty of Theology and Classical Philology (study based on ancient written texts). After studying for one semester, he abandoned theology and lost all the faith he had. He moved to the University of Leipzig, where he established a reputation in academic circles by publishing articles on Aristotle and other Greek philosophers.
At the age of 21, he read Arthur Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation. One commentator writes: “Schopenhauer replaced the omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent God who rules the universe with a blind, aimless and virtually insensitive energetic impulse, which he could only describe as “blind and perfect “will”.
By this time, six years had already passed since the first publication of Darwin's book " On the Origin of Species” in English, and five years from its first publication in German. At the age of 23, Nietzsche joined the army for one year. One day, while trying to jump up, he suffered a serious chest injury and became unfit for military service. He returned to the University of Leipzig, where he met the famous opera composer Richard Wagner, whose music he had long admired. Wagner shared his passion for Schopenhauer. He was a former student at the University of Leipzig, and in age he was old enough to be Nietzsche’s father. Thus, Wagner became almost like a father to Friedrich. Subsequently, this role was occupied by a figment of Nietzsche’s imagination - the superman (German). Übermensch) - super strong not only physically, but also in all other respects, an imaginary individual with his own morality, who overcame everyone, supplanted God and became an expression of opposition to the world.
In 1869, Nietzsche renounced Prussian citizenship, without taking any other one in return. Officially, he remained stateless for the remaining 31 years of his life. That year, at the incredibly young age of 24, Nietzsche was appointed professor of classical philology at the Swiss University of Basel, a position he held for ten years. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. He served as a hospital orderly for three months, where he saw first-hand the traumatic consequences of battle, as well as diphtheria and dysentery. These battles had other consequences for him. Dr John Figgis writes: “Once, while helping the sick, and being in a frenzy of compassion, he glanced briefly at a herd of Prussian horses noisily descending from the hill into the village. Their magnificence, strength, bravado and power immediately amazed him. He realized that suffering and compassion were not, as he had previously believed in the manner of Schopenhauer, the deepest experiences in life. The power and authority were much higher than this pain, and the pain itself became unimportant - this was the reality. And life began to seem to him like a struggle for power.” .
Last years of life, madness and death
In 1879, at the age of 34, he resigned from his job at the University of Basel due to deteriorating health, after three days of incessant migraines, vision problems that caused him to be close to blindness, severe vomiting and unrelenting pain . Due to illness, Nietzsche often traveled to places with climatic conditions beneficial to his health. From 1879 to 1888 he received a small pension from the University of Basel, and this allowed him to lead a modest itinerant life as a stateless freelance writer in various cities in Sweden, Germany, Italy and France. During this time, he wrote his semi-philosophical anti-religious works, which brought him fame (or infamy), including the books " Fun Science"(1882, 1887), " Thus spoke Zarathustra" (1883–85), " Antichrist" (1888), " Twilight of the Idols"(1888), and his autobiography entitled " Ecce Homo»( this book, also called "How to Become Yourself" was written in 1888, but published only posthumously, in 1908, by his sister Elizabeth).
At the age of 44, Nietzsche lived in Turin. It is said that one day he saw a coachman beating a horse and wrapped his arms around it to protect it from the beatings. He then fell to the ground, and from that moment on, for the next eleven years, he was in a state of insanity, due to which he was unable to speak or write coherently until his death in 1900. Nietzsche's biographer Kaufmann describes these events as follows: “He fell right on the street, and after that he collected the rest of his sanity to write several crazy, but at the same time beautiful letters, and then darkness covered his mind, extinguishing all his ardor and intelligence. He completely burned out". Modern medical diagnoses describing the cause of his insanity are very varied. Nietzsche was buried in the family tomb next to the church in Recken.
The pain of unrequited love
During his visit to Rome in 1882, Nietzsche, then 37 years old, met Lou von Salomé (Louise Gustavovna Salomé), a Russian student of philosophy and theology (later Freud's assistant). They were introduced by a mutual friend, Paul Reu. She spent the entire summer with Nietzsche, mostly accompanied by his sister, Elisabeth. Salomé later claimed that both Nietzsche and Reuux proposed to her in turn (although these claims have been questioned).
In the following months, the relationship between Nietzsche and Salome deteriorated, much to his disappointment. He wrote to her about “the situation I found myself in after taking an exorbitant dose of opium – out of despair”. And to his friend, Overbeck, he wrote: "This last one a piece bitten off from life- the most difficult of all that I have ever chewed... I am crushed by the wheel of my own feelings. If only I could sleep! But the strongest doses of opiates save me only for six to eight hours... I have the greatest opportunity prove that “any experience can be useful...”
Kaufman comments: "Any experience really was useful for Nietzsche. He transferred his sufferings to books of the later period - “ Thus spoke Zarathustra" And " Ecce Homo» .
« Thus spoke Zarathustra" - Nietzsche's most famous work. This is a philosophical novel in which a fictional prophet named after Zarathustra (the Persian founder of the religion of Zoroastrianism in the 6th century BC) reveals to the world the ideas of Nietzsche himself.
In his autobiography, How to Become Yourself, Nietzsche writes: “I have not said here a word of what I said five years ago through the mouth of Zarathustra.”. Among these ideas are the idea that “God is dead,” the idea of “eternal repetition” (i.e., the idea that what has happened will continue to happen again ad infinitum), and the idea of the “will to power.” In the original, Nietzsche used a biblical style of writing to proclaim his opposition to Christian morality and tradition, with many blasphemous words against God.
Nietzsche and the "death of God"
Nietzsche's statements about the death of God appear in their fullest form as an anecdote or parable in The Gay Science:
“Mad man.
Have you heard about that crazy man who lit a lantern on a bright afternoon, ran out to the market and kept shouting: “I am looking for God! I am looking for God!” Since many of those who did not believe in God were gathered there, there was laughter around him. Has he disappeared? - said one. “He’s lost like a child,” said another. Or hid? Is he afraid of us? Did he set sail? Emigrated? - they shouted and laughed intermixed. Then the madman ran into the crowd and pierced them with his gaze. “Where is God? - he exclaimed. – I want to tell you this! We killed him- You and I! We are all his killers! But how did we do this?... The gods are decaying! God is dead! God will not rise again! And we killed him! How comforted we are, murderers of murderers! The most holy and powerful Being that ever existed in the world bled to death under our knives - who will wash this blood from us? …Isn’t the greatness of this thing too great for us? Shouldn't we ourselves turn into gods in order to be worthy of him? sometimes a greater deed was not accomplished, and whoever is born after us will, thanks to this deed, belong to a history higher than all previous history!” – Here the mad man fell silent and again began to look at his listeners; They too were silent, looking at him in surprise. Finally, he threw his lantern to the ground, so that it broke into pieces and went out. “I came too early,” he said then, “my hour has not yet struck. This monstrous event is still on the way and is coming to us - the news about it has not yet reached human ears. Lightning and thunder need time, starlight needs time, deeds need time after they have been done to be seen and heard. This act is still further from you than the most distant luminaries - and yet you did it!»
Not surprisingly, this passage has generated a great deal of debate about what Nietzsche meant when he wrote these lines. Here he is not talking about the death of Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, on the cross. Such a statement was true during the three days that Christ was in the tomb, but the continuation of this reasoning was forever refuted by the resurrection of Christ from the dead.
Some have called Nietzsche's words that "God is dead" the words of a "madman." However, Nietzsche used this term many times, speaking in his own voice, not in the voice of a madman. In section 108 of the same Gay Science, Nietzsche wrote:
« New contractions . After Buddha died, for centuries his shadow was shown in one cave - a monstrous, terrible shadow. God is dead: but such is the nature of people that for thousands of years there may still exist caves in which his shadow is shown. “And we—we must also defeat his shadow!”
And in section 343 of The Gay Science, Nietzsche explains what he meant: “The greatest of new events - that “God is dead” and that faith in the Christian God has become something unworthy of trust - is already beginning to cast its first shadows on Europe.”.
In fact, Nietzsche believes that God never existed. This is his reaction to the concept of God as "the only, absolute and judgmental power interested in hidden and obscene personal secrets". But here another problem arises. If God is dead, then who will save us now? Nietzsche offers a solution consisting of three elements. In Twilight of the Idols he writes:
Philosophy teacher Giles Fraser writes: “The struggle that Nietzsche is waging is not a struggle between atheism and Christianity; this, as he explicitly writes, is the struggle of Dionysus with the Crucified. The whole point here is the spiritual superiority of Nietzsche's faith over Christianity. This, contrary to the view which commentators readily accept, is not a struggle against faith, but a struggle between faiths, or rather a battle between competing soteriologies.".
Nietzsche against the book of Genesis
In his book Antichrist, Nietzsche pours out a torrent of insults against God and the story of creation, the Fall and the Flood of Noah as told in the book of Genesis:
“Have you understood the famous story that is placed at the beginning of the Bible - the story of God’s hellish fear of science?.. They didn’t understand her. This priestly book par excellence begins, as one might expect, with the great inner difficulty of the priest: he has only one great danger hence, God only has one great danger. The old God, the “spirit” entirely, the real high priest, the true perfection, is strolling in his garden: the only trouble is that he is bored. Even the gods fight in vain against boredom. What is he doing? He invents man: man is entertaining... But what is it? and the person is also bored. God's mercy is limitless for that one disaster from which no paradise is free: God immediately created other animals. First God's mistake: man did not find animals entertaining - he dominated them, he did not want to be an “animal”. - Because of this, God created woman. And indeed, the boredom was over, but not yet the other one! The woman was second God's failure. - “A woman is essentially a snake, Heva,” - every priest knows this; “Every misfortune in the world comes from a woman,” every priest also knows this. " Hence, from her comes science”... Only through a woman did man learn to eat from the tree of knowledge. - What happened? The old God was gripped by hellish fear. The man himself became greatest God's blunder created in him a rival: science makes him equal to God - the end of priests and gods comes when man begins to learn science! - Morality: science is something forbidden in itself, it alone is forbidden. Science is the first sin, the seed of all sins, firstborn sin. This alone is morality. - "You Not must cognize"; everything else follows from this. - Hellish fear does not prevent God from being prudent. How defend yourself from science? - this became his main problem for a long time. Answer: get man out of heaven! Happiness and idleness lead to thoughts - all thoughts are bad thoughts... A person does not must think. - And the “priest in himself” invents need, death, pregnancy with its danger to life, all kinds of disasters, old age, the hardship of life, and above all illness - all the right means in the fight against science! Need not allows a person to think... And yet! terrible! The work of knowledge rises, rising to the skies, darkening the gods - what to do? - The Old God invents war, he separates peoples, he makes it so that people mutually destroy each other (the priests always needed war...). War, along with other things, is a great obstacle to science! - Incredible! Cognition, emancipation from the priest even increases, despite the war. - And now the last decision comes to the old God: man has learned science, - nothing helps, you need to drown him!»
The first reaction of anyone will be to ask: “How could a person in his right mind write such nonsense? And perhaps the most merciful answer is that these senseless insults were a foreshadowing of the madness Nietzsche suffered in the last 11 years of his life.
Nietzsche vs Darwin
In the book " Thus spoke Zarathustra", Nietzsche reveals his superman to the world, in the evolutionary words of his prophet:
“I teach you about the Superman... You have made the journey from a worm to a man, but much still in you is from a worm. Once you were apes, and even now man is more of an ape than any of the apes.”
However, contrary to expectations, Nietzsche, being an obvious evolutionist, opposed Darwin and Darwinism. If there was a doctrine to which he was slightly inclined, it was Lamarck's theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. In fact, Nietzsche had his own theory to explain evolution. He called it “the will to power,” which was actually the will to superiority.
The important factor for Nietzsche was not the number of offspring produced by any individual or species, as for Darwin, but the quality of those offspring. And Darwinism was not the basis and did not even influence this worldview. Nietzsche said that Darwin was wrong in four fundamental aspects of his theory.
1. Nietzsche questioned the mechanism of formation of new organs through small changes, because he understood that a half-formed organ had absolutely no survival value.
In his book " Will to power" he wrote:
“Against Darwinism. The usefulness of an organ does not explain its origin, on the contrary! Indeed, during the very long time that is necessary for the emergence of a certain property, this latter does not preserve the individual and does not bring him any benefit, least of all in the fight against external circumstances and enemies.”
2. Nietzsche questioned Darwin's worldview of natural selection because in real life he saw that the weak rather than the strong survive.
In Twilight of the Idols he wrote:
“Anti-Darwin. Regarding the famous “struggle for existence”, then it seems to me, however, more the fruit of an assertion than a proof. It happens, but as an exception; there is a general view of life Not need, not hunger, but, on the contrary, wealth, abundance, even absurd extravagance - where they fight, they fight for power... Malthus should not be confused with nature. - But let us suppose that this struggle exists - and in fact, it occurs - in this case, it, unfortunately, ends contrary to what the Darwinian school wishes, as perhaps we would you dare to desire with her: it is precisely unfavorable for the strong, for the privileged, for the happy exceptions. Childbirth Not grow in perfection: the weak constantly become masters over the strong again - this happens because there is a great number of them, that they also cleverer... Darwin forgot about his mind (that's in English!), the weak have more intelligence... One must need intelligence in order to acquire intelligence; it is lost when it becomes no longer necessary. He who has power renounces the mind (“Get lost!” they think in Germany today, “ empire should still remain with us”...). As you see, by mind I understand caution, patience, cunning, pretense, great self-control and everything that is pretense (the latter includes b O most of so-called virtue).
3. Nietzsche also questioned Darwin's theory of sexual selection, since he did not observe that it actually takes place in nature.
In the book " Will to power" Under the heading "Anti-Darwin" he wrote:
“The significance of the selection of the most beautiful was so exaggerated that it turned out to go far beyond the beauty of our own race! In fact, the most beautiful creature often mates with very disadvantaged creatures, the highest with the lowest. We almost always see males and females coming together through some chance meeting, without being particularly discriminating.”
4. Nietzsche argued that there are no transitional forms.
In the same section entitled "Anti-Darwin" he writes:
“There are no transitional forms. It is claimed that the development of beings is moving forward, but there is no basis for this assertion. Each type has its own boundary - beyond it there is no development. Until then - absolute correctness."
Nietzsche then offers us another lengthy chapter, again entitled “ Anti-Darwin»:
« Anti-Darwin. What strikes me most when I mentally cast my gaze over man’s great past is that I always see in him the opposite of what Darwin and his school currently sees or wants to see, i.e. selection in favor of stronger, more successful ones, progress of the species. Just the opposite is evident: extinction happy combinations, the uselessness of higher order types, the inevitability of the dominance of average, even lower average types. Until we are shown why man should be an exception among other creatures, I am inclined to suppose that the school of Darwin is mistaken in all its assertions. That will to power, in which I see the final basis and essence of any change, gives us the means to understand why selection does not occur in the direction of exceptions and happy cases, the strongest and happiest turn out to be too weak when they are opposed by organized herd instincts, timidity weak, numerical superiority. The general picture of the world of values, as it seems to me, shows that in the area of the highest values that hang over humanity in our time, the predominance belongs not to happy combinations, selective types, but, on the contrary, to types of decadence - and perhaps there is nothing more interesting in the world than this disappointing spectacle... I see all the philosophers, I see science on its knees before the fact of the perverted struggle for existence, which the school of Darwin teaches, namely: I see everywhere that those who compromise life remain on the surface, experience the value of life. The error of Darwin's school took the form of a problem for me - to what extent must one be blind in order not to see the truth here? That species are the bearers of progress is the most unreasonable statement in the world - they so far represent only a known level. That higher organisms developed from lower ones has not yet been confirmed by a single fact.”
Kaufmann writes lucidly about this: “[Nietzsche] has in mind his “fortunate predecessors” Socrates or Caesar, Leonardo or Goethe: people whose power gives them an advantage in any “struggle for existence”, people who, even if they outlived Mozart, Keats or Shelley, did not abandon after themselves children or heirs. However, it is these people who represent the “power” that all people crave. After all, the basic instinct, according to Nietzsche, is not their desire to preserve life, but the desire for power. And it should be obvious how far apart Nietzsche’s “power” is from Darwin’s “adaptability.”.
In light of the above, it is not surprising that in his book “ Ecce Homo“Nietzsche calls scientists who believe that superman is a product of Darwinian evolution “bulls.”
Nietzsche, of course, was a philosopher, not a scientist, and he does not explain the subtleties of how the "will to power" works in an evolutionary scenario - other than that superior individuals have always had and will have the power to rebel over their contemporaries in their journey from apes in the past to a highly evolved superman in the future.
This has led some modern commentators to go out of their way to emulate Nietzsche and Darwin, for example in books such as Nietzsche's New Darwinism» John Richardson.
Nietzsche, Darwin and Hitler
Nietzsche may not have foreseen the events of the twentieth century, but the main modern example of his “superman”, a strong personality who lived by the laws of his own morality, was Adolf Hitler. Hitler accepted both Darwin's "science" and Nietzsche's philosophy. For him, Darwin's notion that the strong dominate the weak was the greatest good. At the same time, he considered himself a superman, according to Nietzsche's philosophy, and used Nietzsche's idea of superior individuals to convince the German nation that they were a "superior race." Hitler took both of their ideas about morality to their logical conclusion, leading to the sack of Europe and the murder of over six million innocent people in the Holocaust.
What motivated Nietzsche?
In his autobiographical book " Ecce Homo", Nietzsche leaves us in no doubt about his own self-perception and about his books.
He took the title for his book, Ecce Homo (meaning “Behold the Man!”) from Pilate's description of Jesus Christ in John 19:5. The four chapters that make up the book are titled: "Why I'm So Wise," "Why I'm So Smart," "Why I Write Such Good Books," and "Why I'm Fate." In a chapter entitled “Why I Am So Wise,” he wrote:
“I am militant in my own way... Task Not is to overcome resistance in general, but one on which you need to expend all your strength, dexterity and skill in wielding weapons - resistance equal enemy..."
So, Nietzsche chose not just anyone but Almighty God himself as his “equal” opponents! Compare this with Eve's first temptation by Satan in the Garden of Eden - the serpent promised Eve that they would become "like gods" (Genesis 3:5). In this “competition” Nietzsche stands side by side with Dionysus. He wrote: “I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus: I would rather be a satyr than a saint.”. In fact, Dionysus was not a philosopher, but the Greek god of wine, the inspirer of ritual madness, ecstasy and orgiatic excess. Dionysus is the embodiment of everything that the Apostle Paul calls “sinful nature”:
“The works of the flesh are known; they are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, quarrels, envy, anger, strife, disagreements, (temptations), heresies, hatred, murder, drunkenness, disorderly conduct and the like. I warn you beforehand, as I warned you before, that those who do these things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:19–21).
This self-identification with Dionysus gives Nietzsche the right to call himself the first immoralist and lies at the basis and is also the result of his entire anti-divine, anti-Christian moral theology. The very last sentence of the book " Ecce Homo" sounds like this: “Did you understand me? – Dionysus vs. Crucified…» .
We know that his mind was filled with the works of atheists and skeptics such as Strauss and Schopenhauer. He also talks about having "no pleasant memories of his childhood or youth." Some have suggested that Nietzsche's anger against Christianity conveyed unconscious feelings, repressed from childhood, towards the "benevolent" spinster aunts and other women who lived with him. One commentator goes so far as to write: “We just have to replace the phrases “my aunts” or “my family” with the word “Christianity” and his angry attacks will become clearer.”.
In one of the chapters of the book Ecce Homo entitled "Why Am I So Clever", Nietzsche writes:
“It completely escaped me how “sinful” I could be. Likewise, I have no reliable criterion for what remorse is. ... “God”, “immortality of the soul”, “salvation”, “otherworldly” - all concepts to which I never gave either attention or time, even as a child - perhaps I was never child enough for this? – I know atheism not at all as a result, still less as an event: it is implied in me instinctively. I'm too curious, too not obvious, too passionate to allow himself an answer as rough as a fist. God is an answer as rude as a fist, indelicacy towards us, thinkers - in fact, even just rude as a fist, ban for us: you have nothing to think about!..”
Was it really true that at Nietzsche’s young age, no one explained that the world had ceased to be the way God created it in the first place, that sin had entered the world, and that the world was cursed, that God, the Great Judge, whom Nietzsche hated so much because he was Accountable to him is also the loving God who sent His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to die on the cross and rise again so that He could forgive us our sins?
However, in his work Antichrist, as well as in many other books, Nietzsche demonstrates that he was well aware of all these concepts, but vehemently rejected them. Many people have tried to counter the concept of future judgment, for example by claiming that there is no absolute good and evil. Nietzsche took a more radical approach: he proclaimed the death of the Judge!
Conclusion
In the last chapter of the book " Ecce Homo", Nietzsche culminates in his angry outpourings against "God", "truth", "Christian morality", "salvation of the soul", "sin", etc. He sums it all up in his screaming climax: “Did you understand me? – Dionysus vs. Crucified…».
However, wait a minute, Nietzsche, you chose Almighty God as your “equal” opponent! It may seem that you have failed your final blow against God by your extreme reverence for Christ, (unwittingly?) recognizing that He, the Crucified One, is Almighty God.
Nietzsche shook his fist at God, but Nietzsche himself is now dead, and God is not. Therefore, the final word remains with God.
“The fool said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” (Psalm 14:1).
“For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will destroy the understanding of the prudent.” (1 Corinthians 1:18–19)
Nietzsche's popularity
Nietzsche's works did not gain widespread popularity among his contemporaries. First edition of the book Thus spoke Zarathustra"was published in a circulation of only 400 copies. However, after his death, as the wave of evolutionary atheism swept the world in the 20th century, he became one of the most widely read philosophers due to the fact that his books were translated into many languages and many authors cited them for their own glory. Contemporary political leaders have claimed to have read his works - among them Mussolini, Charles de Gaulle, Theodore Roosewelt and Richard Nixon.
In the Encyclopedia Britannica“The following is said: “The associations with Adolf Hitler and fascism that we have in connection with the name of Nietzsche are mainly due to the way his sister Elisabeth, who married one of the leaders of the anti-Semitic movement, took advantage of his works. Despite the fact that Nietzsche was an ardent opponent of nationalism, anti-Semitism and power politics, his name was subsequently used by the fascists to promote ideas that were disgusting to him.”
During the First World War, the German government published a book “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” edition in 1,150,000 copies, and they were issued to German soldiers along with the Gospel of John. " Encyclopedia Britannica“With a touch of slight irony, he comments on this situation as follows: “It is difficult to say which of the authors was more compromised by such a gesture.”
Links and notes
- Nietzsche carefully wrote his works in numbered sections (sometimes these sections are numbered throughout the book, sometimes by chapter) and thanks to this, any quotation can be easily found in any translation and any edition by section number. In this article we will resort to this practice by citing the works of Nietzsche.
Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the most influential and odious philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries, ironically turned out to be the most profaned. His ideas, picked up and distorted by the Nazis, became overgrown with myths and painted in diabolical tones for many decades to come, although in most cases they had nothing in common with what they were presented as.
It is not surprising that the legends continue to live to this day, despite the fact that researchers have convincingly proven that the Germans relied not so much on Nietzsche’s views as on the ideological compilation of the philosopher’s works (the collection “The Will to Power”), which was made by his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche , having received after the death of his famous brother the exclusive right to his archives.
Source: Flickr
Perhaps today, like ancient wandering stories, there are three main myths about Nietzsche and his philosophy:
1. Nietzsche is a preacher of Nazism, an anti-Semite (see above about this);
2. Nietzsche is a misogynist (the phrase from his book “when you go to a woman, don’t forget the whip” has excited and outraged ladies of all stripes for more than a hundred years);
3. Nietzsche is the Antichrist who proclaimed the death of God (the book “Antichrist” is a sufficient basis for such accusations, according to some).
Well what can I say? Everything is bad.
First myth Doctor of Philology Greta Ionkis perfectly debunks it in her article “Friedrich Nietzsche and the Jews.” In short, for all his ambiguous attitude towards Jews, Nietzsche was not an anti-Semite. Here are the words from the philosopher’s letter to his friend Franz Overbeck, written in 1884:
Damn anti-Semitism caused a radical collapse between me and my sister...Anti-Semites need to be shot.
Of course, it cannot be said that Nietzsche had great sympathy for them, but the criticism mainly concerned only one point and boiled down to the fact that the Jews were the source of the emergence of Christianity with its morality of equality and justice, which, according to the philosopher, weakened the will to power most strong minority and made it possible for the weak and faceless to equal the chosen ones and even surpass them in life status. This is all that Nietzsche accused them of. On the other hand, he understood how much this unique people had done for European civilization and took off his hat to them for this. As Nietzsche admitted in Human, All Too Human, the Jews are a people “who, not without our collective guilt, have had the most painful history of all peoples and to whom we owe the noblest man (Christ), the purest sage (Spinoza) , the most powerful book and the most influential moral law in the world."
Regarding the Myth of Nietzsche's Misogyny you can think for a very long time, since the philosopher’s attitude towards women is as ambivalent as any of his other views. However, it is worth noting that the most ardent rejection on the part of the fair sex is caused by a single phrase, taken out of context (the words “When you go to a woman, don’t forget to take a whip” found in the work “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” and does not even belong to Zarathustra himself, but to the old woman teaching him).
And here are other statements by Nietzsche, which allow us to see in the philosopher not so much a misogynist, but a person who fears intimacy with these creatures. Well, it happens.
This is what Nietzsche writes in “Beyond Good and Evil” (Book 7, Af. 239):
What inspires respect for a woman, and quite often fear, is her nature, which is “more natural” than a man’s, her true predatory, insidious grace, her tigress’s claws under her glove, her naivety in selfishness, her inner savagery that cannot be educated, incomprehensible, immense, elusive in her desires and virtues... What, with all the fear, inspires compassion for this dangerous and beautiful cat, “woman”, is that she is more suffering, more vulnerable, more in need of love and more doomed to disappointment than any other animal. Fear and compassion: with these feelings the man has stood before the woman, always with one foot already in the tragedy that torments him, at the same time enchanting him.
This confession is taken from the treatise “The Gay Science” (Book 2, Af. 70):
A low, strong viola suddenly raises before us a curtain of possibilities in which we usually do not believe: and we immediately begin to believe that somewhere in the world there may be women with high, heroic, regal souls, capable and ready for grandiose objections, decisions and victims, capable and ready to dominate men, because the best that is in a man has become an embodied ideal in them, regardless of gender.
I don’t think that a man whose fantasies rise to such heights can be called a misogynist. Moreover, we all know that Nietzsche’s relationships with women never worked out: there was unhappy love, but there was no connection (as you know, the philosopher abstained from sex all his life, explaining this by the fact that such “purity” contributes to special poignancy and the richness of his thoughts, and ecstatic insights bring him pleasure comparable to orgasm). In light of this, all the statements of the “great and terrible” Frederick take on a completely different character, in which there is more personal and abstract than what claims to be an objective and well-founded view.
And here concept "God is dead"(Gott ist tot), which is being replicated today with or without reason, needs additional clarification - first of all, what Nietzsche himself put into his words. Of course, you need to read about this from Nietzsche himself. The idea of the death of God was first voiced in 1882 in the work “The Gay Science” (“La gaya scienza”) in this form (excerpt “The Madman”):
Madman.- Why, you haven’t heard anything about that crazy man who lit a lantern in broad daylight, went to the square and there shouted without a break: “I’m looking for God! I’m looking for God!”?! And there were just a crowd of unbelievers who, hearing his screams, began to laugh loudly. “Is he lost?” - said one. “Isn’t he lost like a little child?” - said another. “Or did he hide in the bushes? Or is he afraid of us? Or did he go to the galley? Said overseas? - they made noise and cackled incessantly. And the madman rushed into the very crowd, piercing them with his gaze. “Where has God gone? - he cried. - Now I’ll tell you! We killed him - you and me! We are all his killers! But how did we kill him? How did they manage to exhaust the depths of the sea? Who gave us a sponge to erase the entire firmament? What did we do when we uncoupled the Earth from the Sun? Where is she going now? Where are we all going? Away from the Sun, away from the suns? Are we falling continually? And down - and back, and to the sides, and forward, and in all directions? And is there still up and down? And are we not wandering in the endless Nothing? And isn’t the emptiness yawning in our faces? Hasn't it gotten colder? Isn't it night that comes every moment and more and more Night? Don't you have to light lanterns in broad daylight? And can’t we hear the pick of the grave-digger burying God? And our noses - don’t they smell the stench of a rotting God? - After all, even the Gods smolder! God is dead! He will remain dead! And we killed him! How can we, the murderers of murderers, console ourselves? The most sacred and powerful thing that the world has possessed until now - it bled to death under the blows of our knives - who will wipe the blood from us? What water will we cleanse ourselves with? What redemptive festivals, what sacred games will we have to invent? Isn't the greatness of this feat too great for us? Will we have to become gods ourselves in order to be worthy of it? Never before has such a great deed been accomplished - thanks to it, whoever is born after us will enter into a history more sublime than everything that happened in the past! They were silent and looked at him with distrust. At last he threw the lantern to the ground, so that it broke and went out. “I came too early,” he said after a pause, it was not my time yet. A monstrous event - it is still on the way, it wanders its way - it has not yet reached human ears. Lightning and thunder require time, the light of stars requires time, deeds require time for people to hear about them, for people to see them already accomplished. And this act is still farther than the farthest stars from people. - and yet they did it!”... They also say that on the same day a madman broke into churches and began to sing “Requiem aeternam” there. When they took him out by the hand, demanding an answer, he answered each time with the same words: “What are all these churches now, if not the tombs and tombstones of God?”
It seems that in this fiery speech there is as much militant atheism, with which Nietzsche’s ideas are often confused, as there are scientific terms in the speeches of the Pope.
What do we see here? The tragedy of the loss of something important, absolute, some guarantor of meaning and order, the feeling of a free fall into the unknown, the loss of all sorts of guidelines - a state that can probably be designated as the onset of a moral - or even existential - crisis of humanity. This is not about whether God exists or not, but about the fact that the time has come for a reassessment of values, a deeper look at human nature, because Christian morality no longer “works” - it does not bear fruit, does not correspond to a person’s knowledge of himself, does not participate in life.
This is how Heidegger comments in his article “ Nietzsche's words "God is Dead" this snippet:
However, in the face of such a shaken dominance of former values, one can try to do something different. Namely: if God - the Christian God - disappeared from his place in the supersensible world, then this place itself still remains - even if it is empty. And this empty region of the supersensible, the region of the ideal world, can still be retained. And the empty place even cries out to be occupied, replacing the disappeared God with something else. New ideals are being erected. According to Nietzsche ("The Will to Power", aphorism 1021 - dates back to 1887 12), this happens through new teachings that promise to make the world happy, through socialism, and equally through the music of Wagner - in other words, everything this happens everywhere where “dogmatic Christianity” has already “outlived its time.”
That is, Nietzsche’s philosophy is a breakthrough philosophy that appeared at a turning point, requiring a new model of the world, a new model of man and relations between people. Probably, at a time when old values are becoming obsolete, life itself begins to give rise to such powerful concepts aimed at re-creating the world. Which of these revolutionary ideas will take root is another matter. Judging by the myths that exist around Nietzsche’s philosophy, there is nothing to take root yet, because Nietzsche is still not fully understood and we still have to take a fresh look at his creative legacy.
Moreover, it seems that those processes that he wrote about more than a hundred years ago have received a new round of development in our era - and the round, alas, is not the most successful: despite Nietzsche’s proclaimed death of old Christian values, which have lost their meaning for humans , they have not lost anything, freedom of choice in the 21st century has turned into, and Nietzsche’s superman, his beautiful blond beast, is given an ever smaller role in the world, .
That's how we live. But these are other stories, follow the development of which in our new articles.
Finally, three videos about Nietzsche and his ideas, in order, so to speak, to consolidate the material.
Igor Ebanoidze: “Nietzsche and Nietzscheanism”
In the Mayak radio studio, Igor Ebanoidze, candidate of philological sciences and editor-in-chief of the Cultural Revolution publishing house, reflects on the ambivalence of Nietzsche’s ideas, their connection with the work of Schopenhauer, the relationship between the world and the individual in Nietzsche’s work, the specific religiosity of the philosopher, his concept of death God, relationships with women and much more. In general, a universal conversation about Nietzsche the philosopher, Nietzsche the artist and Nietzsche the man.
Valery Podoroga: “The History of God in Modern Times”
What is the highest happiness? How are death and a person’s awareness of his “I” connected? Is it possible to live correctly and die correctly?
In a very meditative lecture, Doctor of Philosophy, Head of the Analytical Anthropology Sector of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor of the Russian State Humanitarian University Valery Podoroga talks about the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, about the aphoristic field with which he worked, about the metaphysics of death and how “Nietzsche’s calling card” was born - formula "death of God". Cholerics are contraindicated.
The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and the theory of the superman today
In Vitaly Tretyakov’s program “What to do?” Several modern philosophers met at once to discuss the main ideas of Nietzsche, the philosopher’s place in the pantheon of thinkers of human civilization and the significance of his work for the modern world. Why did Nietzsche come to the conclusion about the death of God? On what basis did he derive the thesis about the appearance of a superman? What is the essence of Nietzsche’s moral doctrine, is it a doctrine of immorality? Is Nietzsche responsible for those political and ethical views that in the twentieth century directly appealed to his philosophical heritage? How popular is the idea of a superman among today's youth, who largely adhere to the values of individualism? Here is the range of issues discussed in the program.
Based on materials: Nietzsche F. Complete works in 13 volumes;
radio "Mayak", TV channel "Russia - Culture", Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center.
"God is Dead", or "God is dead"(German: Gott ist tot or Gott starb) - Nietzsche's saying. Appeared in the book “The Gay Science” written in 1881-1882. The metaphor of postmodern philosophy is associated with the statement - death of God .
Usually associated with the destruction of ideas about the presence of some guarantor of the existence of humanity, lying beyond the boundaries of immediate empirical life, containing a plan of history that gives meaning to the existence of the world. The idea of the absence of such a guarantor arose as a consequence of the discussion about the justification of God (see theodicy) and is one of the main premises of modern European philosophy [ ] .
God is dead: but such is the nature of people that for thousands of years there may still exist caves in which his shadow is shown. - And we - we must also defeat his shadow!
God is dead! God will not rise again! And we killed him! How comforted we are, murderers of murderers! The most holy and powerful Being that ever existed in the world bled to death under our knives - who will wash this blood from us?
The greatest of new events - that "God is dead" and that faith in the Christian God has become something unworthy of trust - is already beginning to cast its first shadows over Europe.
For Nietzsche, Christianity is a phenomenon of the church with its claims to power, a historical phenomenon, a phenomenon of secular politics within the framework of the formation of Western humanity and the culture of modern times. God” in the words “God is dead,” if thought through in its essence, replaces the supersensible world of ideals that contain the purpose of life, which rises above earthly life itself, and thereby determine it from above and, in a certain sense, from the outside. When the unclouded faith in God, defined by the church, begins to disappear, and in particular the doctrine of faith and theology in its role of setting the measure of explanation of existence as a whole is limited and pushed into the background, then as a result of this the fundamental structure according to which the earthly, sensual life is governed by goal-setting, which goes into the sphere of the supersensible.
The authority of God, the authority of the church with its teaching mission disappears, but in its place is taken the authority of conscience, the authority of reason rushing here. Social instinct rebels against them. Flight from the world into the sphere of the supersensible is replaced by historical progress. The otherworldly goal of eternal bliss is transformed into earthly happiness for the majority. Concern for the religious cult is replaced by the inspired creation of culture or the spread of civilization. Creativity, which was once the hallmark of the biblical God, now marks human activity. Human creativity is finally turning into business and gesheft. Thus, with the words “God is dead,” Nietzsche wants to show that the church and creed will not disappear, but instead the authority of reason and conscience will appear.
3. What is the meaning of Nietzsche’s concepts of “will to power” and “superman”?
The will to power means a person’s desire for knowledge, to tame reality.
That humanity which wills its own human existence as the will to power, comprehending what is human as a reality determined as a whole by the will to power - this humanity is determined by such an essential appearance of man that rises above the former man.
There is a name for such an essential appearance rising above the previous human makeup of humanity - it is “superman”. By such Nietzsche does not mean some individual human individual in which the abilities and intentions of the well-known ordinary person are gigantically multiplied and sublime. “Superman” is not that human species that arises only through the application of Nietzsche’s philosophy to life. The word “superman” names the essence of humanity, which, being the humanity of a new time, begins to enter into the completion of the essence of its era. “Superman” is a person who exists on the basis of reality, determined by the will to power, and for it.
One could, to put it crudely, think that these words mean the following: dominion over being now passes from God to man, and even more crudely: Nietzsche puts man in the place of God. Whoever thinks this way does not think very divinely about the essence of God. Man can never take the place of God, because man's existence will never reach the existential sphere of God. Meanwhile, on the contrary, something may happen that, in comparison with this impossibility, will be much more terrible - we have not even begun to really think about the essence of this horror.
Superman is a man of new times, he exists on the basis of reality, strives to replace God and become him.
4. What consequences regarding the relationship between nature and society follow from Nietzsche’s ideas about the will to power and the superman?
Man enters into his revolt. The world becomes an object, a pre-standing. In such a restorative objectification of everything that exists, that which must first of all be put at the disposal of representation and composition - the earth - is moved into the very center of human positing and disposition. The earth itself can manifest itself only as an object of attack, an attack that is arranged in the will of man as the unconditionality of objectification. Nature appears everywhere - for everywhere it is found from within the essence of being - as an object of technology.
Nietzsche’s following note dates back to 1881-1882, when the passage “Mad Man” appeared: “The time is coming when the struggle for dominion over the earth will be waged - it will be waged in the name of fundamental philosophical teachings” (XII, 441).
This does not at all say that in the struggle for the unlimited use of the earth’s subsoil, deposits of raw materials, for the use of “human material” alien to any illusions - in the service of the unconditional empowerment of the will to power to enter into its essence - they will resort to direct references to such and such a philosophy. On the contrary, one can assume that philosophy as a doctrine, as a cultural formation will disappear, and it can disappear in its current form, because it - to the extent that it was genuine - has already declared in its own language the reality of the real, and thereby already introducing being as such into the historical fulfillment of its being. “Fundamental philosophical teachings” do not imply the doctrines of scientists, but the language of the truth of existence as such - this truth is metaphysics itself in its guise as the metaphysics of the unconditional subjectivity of the will to power.
Not long ago, atheists were disappointed. Even while denying the existence of God, they admitted that the world with God would be better than without Him. They still find various arguments and reasons to refute the existence of God - such as the problem of evil and the apparent ability of natural science to explain the structure of the universe. Although it is now recognized that God has no place in space, many still find it difficult to reconcile the fact of His existence with evil and suffering. But the sad thing is that most atheists turned out to be extremely concerned about this. By their own admission, they reluctantly came to disbelief.
However, this is not the case with the so-called "New Atheists" - people like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. These courageous thinkers saw in the assertion of the absence of God not a reason for regret, but, on the contrary, a reason for joy. And yet, their enthusiasm and sarcastic attacks on religious beliefs find a parallel in the past, namely in the writings of the 19th century philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche.
Starting point, not destination
Despite the movement's widespread appeal, the most interesting feature of the New Atheism is its evangelical fervor and militant eloquence - none of which originate with Dawkins, Harris or Hitchens. In fact, what is unprecedented is the weakness of their arguments. Careful readers will find that cogent arguments and cogent arguments have no place in Dawkins's The God Delusion, Hitchens's God Is Not Love, or Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation. On the contrary, their arguments are surprisingly weak. If you're looking for a reason to take the views of the New Atheists seriously, their work will seem weak.
However, this does not mean that Nietzsche represents the best arguments in favor of one's disbelief; he doesn't do anything like that. Unlike Dawkins and company, he sees no need for this. Nietzsche sees atheism not as a conclusion to be provided, but as a postulate to be developed. In other words, he argues not behind atheism, but rather pushing away from him; unbelief is for him the starting point, not the end point. When he publicly proclaimed the death of God, for example, he did not do so to show - he did not even try to show it - that God does not exist. Rather, he took it for granted, because, in his opinion, critics of the second half of the 19th century, like himself, could no longer take faith in God seriously. He stated that such faith “has become incredible.”
Joyful knowledge
Nietzsche made this statement in his work The Gay Science ( The Gay Science), the name of which deserves special attention. Here the word “gay” does not have the meaning it has acquired over the past 50 years, but rather its traditional meaning of “joyful.” Moreover, the term “science” comes from the Latin word scientia, which means "knowledge". So " Gay Science" means "joyful knowledge" - the kind of knowledge that brings joy to the knower. From Nietzsche's point of view, joyful knowledge is the knowledge that God is dead.
In proclaiming the death of God, Nietzsche did not mean the literal meaning of this phrase. In his opinion, God never existed initially, and therefore talk about His “death” refers more to the human than to the divine. We humans, Nietzsche suggests, find the existence of God both unprovable and undesirable. Consequently, he assumes rather than states that belief in God is unprovable, even when he explains its undesirability.
Why is belief in God undesirable? Because the death of God allows us to become gods ourselves.
God doesn't die alone
In simple terms, God does not die alone. When He dies, meaning, morality and reason die with Him.
First, if God does not exist, then life has no meaning. When there is no author, history has no meaning; Moreover, when there is no author, there is no story itself. Moreover, if God does not exist, morality becomes biased and moral judgment becomes merely an interpretation based on nothing more than personal preference.
Secondly, Nietzsche shows the artificial nature morality, inviting us to reflect on birds of prey and the sheep they hunt. When birds feed on sheep, their actions are neither good nor bad from a moral point of view. Birds simply act according to their nature; morality has nothing to do with it.
So while sheep's "judgment" of birds surprises no one - except perhaps the birds themselves - their judgment has nothing to do with morality, but rather their understandable desire not to become bird food. Of course, as Nietzsche points out, birds see things differently. But in neither case can moral categories be applied - and if this applies to birds and sheep, then it also applies to us. Moral judgments express our own preferences; they do not reflect objective reality.
Finally, the death of God shows the importance mind. When it comes to human origins, uncontrollable evolutionary processes are the atheists' best argument. Given the fact that evolution selects the strongest for survival, the intellectual abilities resulting from these processes should be well adapted to survival. But, as Nietzsche states, there is no necessary connection between survival and truth; As far as we know, he calls our attention to the fact that a naturalistic universe will be one in which the knowledge of truth will hinder rather than promote survival. In his own opinion, then the atheist has no reason to trust his own reason.
Liberation leading to slavery
For Nietzsche, the death of God leads to the end of meaning, morality, and reason—which means he sees the potential consequences of his unbelief more clearly than his other atheist contemporaries, such as Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. Although, it is noteworthy that Nietzsche sees these possible consequences as liberating, not destructive. Neither God, nor meaning, nor morality, nor reason holds us back, he exclaims. We are free to live as we please and to do with our lives what satisfies us.
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Only in such a radically human-centric form does Nietzsche proclaim life - and thereby scratch curious ears. But, of course, Nietzsche’s approach does not lead to blessing, peace and life, but to sorrow, pain and death. May God give our friends and neighbors eyes to see this truth.
Douglas Blount- Professor of Christian Philosophy and Ethics at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, NY. Kentucky.
