Abstract
Many texts can be adduced to show that Nietzsche considered himself to be a philosopher, and this is what he is currently held to be.
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References
Cf. for instance, Ecce Homo, Warum ich so klug bin 3, in: K. Schlechta (ed.), Friedrich Nietzsche in drei Bänden (Munich 1960). References to passages in works of Nietzsche are made to this edition, identified by book and section numbers; references to posthumous notes are identified by volume and page number of this edition. See also Götzen-Dämmerung 45.
Götzen-Dämmerung 45.
Its Russian title is: Zapiski iz Podpolya.
The parallels which may be drawn between Nietzsche and certain characters in “the polyphonic” novels of Dostoevsky are more than curious, as the following example may show. Kirillov in the Devils (part I, chap. 3, section 8; cf. also part III, chap. 6, section 2) speaks of God having been destroyed (or annihilated) and Nietzsche (in Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, III:125, and elsewhere) of His having been killed, and both believe that this deed may lead to a profound transformation of the human race; men will — or must — become gods. The similarity between the two utterances is as evident as the difference between their opinion and a mere denial of the existence of God, a negation which was as current in nineteenth century Russia as in other countries. Yet Nietzsche does not refer here to the freedom of man resulting from the destruction of God, whereas Kirillov insists upon this consequence of the event: man liberated from the fear of God and the fear of afterlife — the two are clearly regarded as going together — dares to kill himself because it is indifferent to him whether he lives or dies. However, as far as Kirillov himself is concerned, the demands of his terrible freedom are evidently as absolute as those of the most rigorous moral imperative: he is required to manifest his freedom by committing suicide. The Devils was published in Russia in 1872, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft in 1882, four or five years before Nietzsche was aware of the existence of Dostoevsky. It may have been Thomas Mann’s sense of Nietzsche’s kinship with some characters of Dostoevsky’s that led him to crib from Ivan Karamaz-ov’s conversation with the (or a) devil some important traits that are found in the scene in Doktor Faustus in which this personage addresses Adrian Leverkühn, who, though a musician, is to a great extent modelled upon Nietzsche (see G. Bergsten, Thomas Manns Doktor Faustus, Tübingen 1974, p. 87f.). Perhaps — I am not quite certain about this — the following autobiographical note, supposed to have been written by Nietzsche in the autumn of 1868 or in the beginning of 1869, should be quoted in this context: “Was ich fürchte ist nicht die schreckliche Gestalt hinter meinem Stuhle, sondern ihre Stimme, auch nicht die Worte, sondern der schauderhaft unartikulierte und unmenschliche Ton jener Gestalt. Ja, wenn sie noch redete, wie Menschen reden” (quoted in CP. Janz, Friedrich Nietzsche Biographie, Munich 1978, I:265f.).
The postcard, dated July 30, 1881, seems to have been written by Nietzsche after having read Kuno Fischer’s account of Spinoza’s doctrine. Menschliches allzu Menschliches was published in 1878.
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, IV: 333; for other passages which are critical of Spinoza, see 1:37, V:372.
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, V:349. In this passage Nietzsche establishes a connection of some kind between the importance attributed in the Darwinist teaching, which he rejects, to the struggle for existence, with Spinoza’s doctrine. Cf. also Der Wille zur Macht, III:650.
Such as the pre-Socratic or pre-philosophical Greeks, see, for instance, Götzen-Dämmerung, Was Ich den Alten Verdanke, 3, and Nachlass, III:748.
See S. Pines, “On Spinoza’s Conception of Human Freedom and of Good and Evil,” Spinoza — His Thought and Work (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1983), pp. 147–159.
Der Wille zur Macht, 11:244.
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, V:382; Jenseits von Gut und Böse, 2; cf. Ecce Homo, on Also sprach Zarathustra 2.
Ecce Homo, Vorwort, 3.
See Jenseits von Gut und Böse 7. In this passage Nietzsche interprets Epicurus’ description of Plato and the Platonists and it is evident that he agrees with Epicurus.
Götzen-Dämmerung, Was ich den Alten verdanke, 2: “Zuletzt geht mein Misstrauen bei Plato in die Tiefe: ich finde ihn so abgeirrt von allen Grundinstinkten der Hellenen…, dass ich von dem ganzen Phänomen Plato eher das harte Wort ‘höherer Schwindel’ oder, wenn man’s lieber hört, Idealismus — als irgendein andres gebrauchen möchte.” Many derogatory remarks of Nietzsche concerning Plato could be mentioned. In a letter to Overbeck dated January 9, 1887 (III:1247–1248) he calls him “Europe’s greatest misfortune.”
Hanswurst. He also uses other expressions to convey this view of himself. Cf., for instance, E.F. Podach, Nietzsches Zusammenbruch, Heidelberg 1930, p. 78 ff.
Cf. also 40, and 278, and Lou Andreas Salomé, Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken (Dresden, no date, a reprint of the first edition, published in Vienna in 1894), p. 19ff.
Nachlass, III:578–579. Cf. Der Antichrist, 27.
Ecce Homo, Warum ich so klug bin, 8.
Some of the sources that can be adduced to support this thesis are given in my article on “The Historical Evolution of a Certain Concept of Freedom,” Iyyun, A Hebrew Philosophical Quarterly 33 (1984):247–265.
Pirqei Abot (The Sayings of the Fathers), III:4–5.
See for instance, Galateans, 11:4; V:l (in this verse the word “yoke” also occurs; apparently the yoke of the Law is meant); I Corinthians, X:28–30.
See Jenseits von Gut und Böse. 195; Zur Genealogie der Moral, I:7–10.
Zur Genealogie der Moral, I:10. According to Nietzsche, the slave insurrection in the sphere of morals begins with the Jews, whose prophets have made an amalgam of the words rich, violent, evil (böse) and sensual, and have given the term “world” (Welt) an opprobrious meaning; only the poor, the miserable, the powerless, the deseased, are regarded as the good. Christianity went even further, negating even the last reality that subsisted in Judaism; for it negated “the holy people,” “the people of the chosen.” Jesus incited the outcasts, “the sinners” within the Jewish community to rebel against the established order that prevailed in that community (Der Antichrist, 27). Paul annulled Christianity as it was at its origin and falsified the life and death of Jesus. What was important was not the life of Jesus, but his resurrection (see Der Antichrist,.
, cf. Nachlass, III:656). Paul understood that a conflagration spreading over the whole world could be started with the help of the small Christian community, that all the elements in the Roman Empire that had in secret rebellious tendencies could be united by means of the symbol: “God on the cross” (Gott am Kreuze) and transformed through their union into a most powerful community (Der Antichrist, 58). In Zur Genealogie der Moral, I:8, in a context in which Nietzsche treats of the slave insurrection in the sphere of morals he remarks concerning the symbol “God on the cross” (which, as we have just seen, he states in Der Antichrist to have been set up by Paul) “that sub hoc signo Israel with its vengeance and its transmutation of all [moral] values (Umwertung aller Werte) has up to now again and again triumphed over all other ideals, over all ideas of a nobler quality (vornehmere).”
Cf., for instance, Der Antichrist, 6 and 7; Nachlass, III:634 f.
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, III:122. In a passage of the Nachlass (III:881) Nietzsche states that Christianity will be destroyed by the will to truth (Wahrhaftigkeit), which it has furthered. For the will to truth brings about disgust with the falsity and mendacious character of all Christian interpretations of the universe and of history.
In a passage of the Nachlass (III:432) Nietzsche states that the Greeks misunderstood the tragical element (das Tragische) because of their “moralistic superficiality.” In other passages, in which Nietzsche does not directly refer to the inadequacy of the psychological comprehension characteristic of the Greeks, he speaks of the latter being superficial because they were profound, oberflächlich aus Tiefe; cf., for instance, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, Vorrede 4 and Nietzsche contra Wagner, Epilog 2. In these passages he praises the Greeks for their ability or their courage to keep to the surface of things. It may be maintained — though like all broad generalizations, which cannot but be approximations, the thesis is open to innumerable objections — that insofar as Nietzsche considered himself as “Psychologe,” he was aware, at least sometimes, that he derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition, whereas as a philosopher he often felt a profound affinity with some of the Greeks. He had this feeling with regard to Heraclitus even in his later period when he wrote Ecce Homo (See Ecce Homo on Die Geburt der Tragödie, 3).
Cf. Nachlass, III:825f., III:614.
Cf. my article on Spinoza referred to above in footnote 9.
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© 1986 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht / Boston / Lancaster
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Pines, S. (1986). Nietzsche: Psychology vs. Philosophy, and Freedom. In: Yovel, Y. (eds) Nietzsche as Affirmative Thinker. Martinus Nijhoff Philosophy Library, vol 13. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4360-5_10
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