....
Nietzsche taught at the university of Basel, Switzerland, a serious Protestant city which every spring explodes in a carnival of incredible noise, music, beauty, and nonsense, one week late and at 4 a.m. You would not believe your ears if you were there and didn't know, but would hear lots of people running and whispering in the street as if preparing a coup d´Etat.
So Nietzsche called the industrious city of Basel "the Colourful Cow", "die bunte Kuh" because of the contrast between its silent industrious life and that carnival.
This was in the second half of the 19th century.
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Nietzsche's Philosophy
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Nietzsche taught that reason is some sort of biochemical accident that can't last, because it is at odds with the forces of nature. Reason tries to overcome and stifle nature and thereby brings about its own destruction. --
This would be what many or even most people believe now, though not consciously, not formulated either.
However, Nietzsche is most famous for his attacks on religion. He wrote that God was dead and therefore the "superior human" had to take over to save the West from the spread of nihilism. That "superior human" is not defined by race, but by willpower.
As a philosopher he has been read and studied by many more people than will admit it, but his premises are really not compatible with our laws, our ethics and their Biblical origins, and so the academic talk about him has mostly been vapid or uneasy.
.
Nietzsche lived from 1844 to 1900.
Nobody read his last works until some time after his death, when the Nazis set him up as their thinker. After WWII his reputation had to be repaired. And then, in the sixties, he and Sartre were all the talk. He remains more readable than any of the great philosophers :
"In irgend einem abgelegenen Winkel des in zahllosen Sonnensystemen flimmernd ausgegossenen Weltalls gab es einmal ein Gestirn, auf dem kluge Thiere das Erkennen erfanden. Es war die hochmüthigste und verlogenste Minute der "Weltgeschichte": aber doch nur eine Minute."
"In
some remote corner of one of the innumerable solar systems of the
universe there was once a star where some clever animals invented
Knowledge. It was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of history,
but even so only a minute...."
Nietzsche saw most of man's history as an ongoing party where everyone wears a masque and a costume.
His most famous friend was Lou Salomé.
The best Nietzsche texts, easy, clear and even frank, are his letters at Wikisource.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Selected_Letters_of_Friedrich_Nietzsche
where you see him, from the time he writes home to Mom, until 30 years later, in 1889, when he breaks down, still writing as a visionary, but mad.
The letter collection "My sister and I", sold as Nietzsche´s correspondence with his sister, is forged.
.
Aged 45 Nietzsche collapsed mentally and did not recover. However, he has always been loved best precisely for his later, pigheaded writings and the "abyss" you stare down.
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Nietzsche's Background
Nietzsche was the son of a pastor at Röcken in Germany, and he started out as a philologist studying and teaching about the Greeks.
He should be read as a pastor. He preached and his message was that life without God must be taken much more serious to show its meaning.
.
The house to the right is where Nietzsche was born, and I think (but could not confirm it) that the church in the background is where Nietzsche's father preached.
Look at this architecture and consider what an orderly, intelligible little world that was.
I thought this was the greatest portrait of the young Nietzsche.
However, according to an e-mail received from Gabrio Bevilacqua,the photo is not of Nietzsche, but of King Umberto I of Savoy who was assassinated in 1899.
This is the young Nietzsche:
.
There is a complete collection of his works free, but poorly translated at http://www.openculture.com/2014/11/download-nietzsches-major-works-as-free-ebooks.html
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Postscript
I have seen but not yet read almost any Strauss on Nietzsche, but was shocked to see admiration openly admitted.
Nietzsche deserves it, but not unqualified, because he, unlike Goethe and Shakespeare, omitted to call to mind the simple idealogical safeguard against things like Hitler or Stalin which is the question of proportion:
How can an individual figure out a way to simplify or clarify existence for a thousand million people?
Goethe's Faust was defeated when he uselessly cursed the little chapel bell trying to warn him -
.
Nietzsche taught that reason is some sort of biochemical accident that can't last, because it is at odds with the forces of nature. Reason tries to overcome and stifle nature and thereby brings about its own destruction. --
This would be what many or even most people believe now, though not consciously, not formulated either.
However, Nietzsche is most famous for his attacks on religion. He wrote that God was dead and therefore the "superior human" had to take over to save the West from the spread of nihilism. That "superior human" is not defined by race, but by willpower.
As a philosopher he has been read and studied by many more people than will admit it, but his premises are really not compatible with our laws, our ethics and their Biblical origins, and so the academic talk about him has mostly been vapid or uneasy.
.
Quote : Is man God's blunder? Or is God a blunder of man's?
........................................................................
........................................................................
Nietzsche lived from 1844 to 1900.
Nobody read his last works until some time after his death, when the Nazis set him up as their thinker. After WWII his reputation had to be repaired. And then, in the sixties, he and Sartre were all the talk. He remains more readable than any of the great philosophers :
"In irgend einem abgelegenen Winkel des in zahllosen Sonnensystemen flimmernd ausgegossenen Weltalls gab es einmal ein Gestirn, auf dem kluge Thiere das Erkennen erfanden. Es war die hochmüthigste und verlogenste Minute der "Weltgeschichte": aber doch nur eine Minute."
.
Nietzsche saw most of man's history as an ongoing party where everyone wears a masque and a costume.
.
"You'd
have to write a fable to illustrate how [....] aimless our reason
appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist; and
when it disappears nothing will have happened."
His most famous friend was Lou Salomé.
The best Nietzsche texts, easy, clear and even frank, are his letters at Wikisource.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Selected_Letters_of_Friedrich_Nietzsche
where you see him, from the time he writes home to Mom, until 30 years later, in 1889, when he breaks down, still writing as a visionary, but mad.
The letter collection "My sister and I", sold as Nietzsche´s correspondence with his sister, is forged.
.
Aged 45 Nietzsche collapsed mentally and did not recover. However, he has always been loved best precisely for his later, pigheaded writings and the "abyss" you stare down.
.....................................................................
Nietzsche's Background
.
But this was Nietzsche's home town : solid, simple, honest and hard-working. Doesn't this architecture show it?
.
.
http://www.friedrichnietzsche.de/friends_of_roecken/main_eng.htm.
Nietzsche was the son of a pastor at Röcken in Germany, and he started out as a philologist studying and teaching about the Greeks.
He should be read as a pastor. He preached and his message was that life without God must be taken much more serious to show its meaning.
.
.
http://www.jenakolleg.de/tagesausflug-nach-leipzig-am-10-oktober-2009.html
The house to the right is where Nietzsche was born, and I think (but could not confirm it) that the church in the background is where Nietzsche's father preached.
And yet Nietzsche pronounced it a hoax.
.
.
http://www.leipzig-lese.de/files_leipzig_lese/nietzsche_kirche_mit_gr__bern.jpeg
In the ground beside the church, just barely visible in the photo, there are the graves of Nietzsche and his sister.
.................................................................
.
I thought this was the greatest portrait of the young Nietzsche.
However, according to an e-mail received from Gabrio Bevilacqua,the photo is not of Nietzsche, but of King Umberto I of Savoy who was assassinated in 1899.
This is the young Nietzsche:
.
http://jacketmagazine.com/31/stephens-nietzsche.html
There is a complete collection of his works free, but poorly translated at http://www.openculture.com/2014/11/download-nietzsches-major-works-as-free-ebooks.html
..........................................................................................
Postscript
I have seen but not yet read almost any Strauss on Nietzsche, but was shocked to see admiration openly admitted.
Nietzsche deserves it, but not unqualified, because he, unlike Goethe and Shakespeare, omitted to call to mind the simple idealogical safeguard against things like Hitler or Stalin which is the question of proportion:
How can an individual figure out a way to simplify or clarify existence for a thousand million people?
Goethe's Faust was defeated when he uselessly cursed the little chapel bell trying to warn him -
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