INTRODUCTION
FRIEDRICH
NIETZSCHE
THE MAN AND HIS IDEAS
Because
of his ideas Friedrich Nietzsche is the representative voice of modernity at
the end of the 19th century. Nietzsche revolutionized the style of
philosophical and psychological thought. In the eyes of Freud he is the first
psychoanalyst; in philosophy he thematicized the primacy of language before
Wittgenstein. Finally he is the man who “philosophized with a hammer”, who
exhorted the “free spirits of
This
also is illustrated by the question once addressed to me by J. Dinter: “don’t
you agree that Nietzsche is in fact the end of systematic philosophy?”. Thinking this over on the
But
vice versa Nietzsche takes over, where Wittgenstein ends his Tractatus: Wovon man nicht sprechen
kann, darüber muss man schweigen [Tractatus 7.].
As
Havelock Ellis amends in the introduction to his own book Affirmations [1898] on Nietzsche, Casanova and others: “Yet every
man must make his own affimations. The great questions of life are immortal,
only because no one can answer them for his fellows.”
This
is what in my personal feeling especially my preferred aphoristic Nietzsche is all about.
Not
that this form was a deliberate choice: it has been suggested, that the health
condition of Nietzsche in the years after 1878 did not allow him a span of
thinking longer than that of an aphorism. However this ill health resulted in
many brilliant miniatures, giving a sudden completely surprising new insight,
connection or turn of mind. At the same time showing ironicly the fallacies of
preceeding systematic philosophy and stating a Havelock Ellis type of
affirmation. Having started to read
those aphorisms 40 years ago, I remember quite some moments of laughing, just
from perplexity at the intellectual audacity of this dear paper friend. Such
aphorisms are like a good 20 year old glass of Grand Cru
It
also has been suggested, that Nietzsche adopted the aphorism from the Jesuit
Baltasar Gracian, however in Nietzsche’s work there is no reference to this
author, and his library did not hold a copy of the Oraculo Manual or of Schopenhauer’s 1862 German translation
thereof. So this suggestion should be doubted. If there is any connexion, it
could be indirectly through Schopenhauer.
Finally
it is a small family drama, that in the end, of all
people, his anti-semitic sister Elisabeth tried to put a system into all this.
In addition to his contribution as thinker, Nietzsche was also quite a
remarkable composer.
His
name nowadays is as famous as he predicted it would be, but his influence and
the application of his thought is still a source of real unrest. Still living,
I am sure, he would have quite liked the latter.
This
is my personal affirmation of Nietzsche, the man and his ideas.
Of
course it will prove possible to shoot a nice Nietzschean hole in this short
introduction. Serious attention will be paid only to a reaction of that kind,
if it comprises just a short aphorism.
1882
HIS WORKS
While
Nietzsche´s overall output was large, his books sold very poorly during his
lifetime. Most were issued in an edition of 1,000 copies or less, but none of
his works ever “sold out” in the first edition, first issue state. Therefore
first edition, first issue copies of Nietzsche´s books in any contemporary or
even later binding are considered scarce. For many of Nietzsche´s works, there
are less than perhaps two hundred copies extant with the first issue title
pages.
As
more and more of Nietzsche´s books accumulated in the warehouse, first one
publisher, then another went bankrupt, making it necessary for the works to be
reissued with new title pages (first edition, second issue). For five of his
works Nietzsche prepared new introductions in the futile hope of making his
writings more accessible and more popular. He once stated that those introductions
were the most important texts that ever came out of his pen.
Not
until some years after his mental breakdown in 1889 were Nietzsche´s books
spread all over the world.
It
should be noted at the end of this introduction that I especially thank Bill
Schaberg. His book, The Nietzsche
Canon [1996] made me explore all
those Nietzsche titles and was an indispensable starting point in the
compiling of those digital pages. In addition to this I am grateful to John
Wronoski, H. Blank,
M. F. Burger, J. Dinter, W.
Ritschel, E. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and
others for their invaluable guidance in additional research. I further thank
all of them and my wife Margaritha for listening to and commenting on the
exploring views, that necessarily preceeded the final
result presented here.
References are to well known sources. It should be
noted however, that those to WNB are to the digital version of the Weimarer
Nietzsche Bibliographie, available under the heading online-Angebote
at the website of the
Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek in
Nietzschehaus Sils [Engadin
CH]
Remembrance plate on it