PHL 333 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Plastic Arts, The Gay Science, Philology
15 Oct 2018
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Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
• Although unlike Kierkegaard in many respects, especially regarding the ultimate
meaning of individuality, Friedrich Nietzsche is very much like him in his intense
personalism, in rejection a systematic approach to man in positioning the subject
of man as the true object of philosophy, and in literary style
o He was born in 1844 near Leipzig
o His father was a Lutheran minister who died young, leaving his son to
grow up in a society of women including his mother, sister, grandmother,
and two aunts
o After normal schooling at the local gymnasium, he briefly attended the
University of Bonn, where he studied theology, but gave it up once he lost
the faith he was born in, beginning a separation from religion which grew
more entrenched over the years
o From 1864 to 1869 he attended the University of Leipzig, where he gained
a reputation as a brilliant student in classical philology
o In a most unusual move, he was appointed professor of philology at the
University of Basel, Switzerland, at the age of twenty-four, without having
completed the formal requirement of the doctorate, whereupon the
University of Leipzig conferred it on him without an examination
o For a short time during the Franco-Prussian War he served with the
ambulance corps, but illness forced him to resign and return to his
professional duties
• While at Basel he developed a disciple-like friendship with the great composer
Richard Wagner and helped him to establish the famous Beyreuth Festival
o He accepted Wagner not only as a musical genius but also a cultural hero
who would become the longed-for messiah destined to save a retrograde
German culture and lead it to new heights; these themes he put forward
as early as 1872 in his first book, The Birth of Tragedy
o After 1876, however, he broke with Wagner becoming disillusioned with
him not only for personal reason but also because of what he felt was
Wagner's abuse of the art of music
o Along with this disillusionment went his despair at ever seeing the rescue
of German culture
o Offering ill health as a reason, he resigned his chair at Basel in 1879, but
no doubt felt that continuing in an academic career would hamper his
development as a writer
o From then on he led a lonely life, but his writing increased apace until he
had fairly well expended himself by 1889, when having shown sign of
mental instability and after being treated clinically, he lived out his
remaining days with his sister at Weimar until he died in 1900
o For most of his life, his work was not seriously received; ironically,
acceptance and fame came in the last ten years of his life; at a time when
