Search results
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche ( / ˈniːtʃə, ˈniːtʃi / NEE-chə, NEE-chee, [10] German: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈniːtʃə] ⓘ or [ˈniːtsʃə]; [11] [12] 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person to hold the ...
- Overview
- Early years
- Basel years (1869–79)
Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher who became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. His attempts to unmask the motives that underlie traditional Western religion, morality, and philosophy deeply affected generations of theologians, philosophers, psychologists, poets, novelists, and playwrights.
What was Friedrich Nietzsche’s childhood like?
Friedrich Nietzsche’s home was a stronghold of Lutheran piety. His father, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, was a pastor who died before Nietzsche’s fifth birthday. Friedrich spent most of his early life in a household consisting of five women: his mother, Franziska; his younger sister, Elisabeth; his maternal grandmother; and two aunts.
Where did Friedrich Nietzsche study?
In 1864 Friedrich Nietzsche went to the University of Bonn to study theology and classical philology. In 1865 he transferred to the University of Leipzig. During the years at Leipzig, Nietzsche discovered Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy, met the great operatic composer Richard Wagner, and began his lifelong friendship with fellow classicist Erwin Rohde.
What did Friedrich Nietzsche write?
Nietzsche’s home was a stronghold of Lutheran piety. His paternal grandfather had published books defending Protestantism and had achieved the ecclesiastical position of superintendent; his maternal grandfather was a country parson; his father, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, was appointed pastor at Röcken by order of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, after whom Friedrich Nietzsche was named. His father died in 1849, before Nietzsche’s fifth birthday, and he spent most of his early life in a household consisting of five women: his mother, Franziska, his younger sister, Elisabeth, his maternal grandmother, and two aunts.
In 1850 the family moved to Naumburg on the Saale River, where Nietzsche attended a private preparatory school, the Domgymnasium. In 1858 he was admitted to Schulpforta, Germany’s leading Protestant boarding school. He excelled academically and received an outstanding classical education there. Having graduated in 1864, he went to the University of Bonn to study theology and classical philology. Despite efforts to take part in the university’s social life, the two semesters at Bonn were a failure, owing chiefly to acrimonious quarrels between his two leading classics professors, Otto Jahn and Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl. Nietzsche sought refuge in music, writing a number of compositions strongly influenced by Robert Schumann, the German Romantic composer. In 1865 he transferred to the University of Leipzig, joining Ritschl, who had accepted an appointment there.
Nietzsche prospered under Ritschl’s tutelage in Leipzig. He became the only student ever to publish in Ritschl’s journal, Rheinisches Museum (“Rhenish Museum”). He began military service in October 1867 in the cavalry company of an artillery regiment, sustained a serious chest injury while mounting a horse in March 1868, and resumed his studies in Leipzig in October 1868 while on extended sick leave from the military. During the years in Leipzig, Nietzsche discovered Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy, met the great operatic composer Richard Wagner, and began his lifelong friendship with fellow classicist Erwin Rohde (author of Psyche).
Britannica Quiz
When a professorship in classical philology fell vacant in 1869 in Basel, Switzerland, Ritschl recommended Nietzsche with unparalleled praise. He had completed neither his doctoral thesis nor the additional dissertation required for a German degree; yet Ritschl assured the University of Basel that he had never seen anyone like Nietzsche in 40 years of teaching and that his talents were limitless. In 1869 the University of Leipzig conferred the doctorate without examination or dissertation on the strength of his published writings, and the University of Basel appointed him extraordinary professor of classical philology. The following year Nietzsche was promoted to ordinary professor.
Nietzsche obtained a leave to serve as a volunteer medical orderly in August 1870, after the outbreak of the Franco-German War. Within a month, while accompanying a transport of wounded, he contracted dysentery and diphtheria, which ruined his health permanently. He returned to Basel in October to resume a heavy teaching load, but as early as 1871 ill health prompted him to seek relief from the stultifying chores of a professor of classical philology; he applied for the vacant chair of philosophy and proposed Rohde as his successor, all to no avail.
Are you a student? Get Britannica Premium for only 24.95 - a 67% discount!
Learn More
During those early Basel years Nietzsche’s ambivalent friendship with Wagner ripened, and he seized every opportunity to visit Richard and his wife, Cosima. Wagner appreciated Nietzsche as a brilliant professorial apostle, but Wagner’s increasing exploitation of Christian motifs, as in Parsifal (1882), coupled with his chauvinism and anti-Semitism proved to be more than Nietzsche could bear. By 1878 the breach between the two men had become final.
Nietzsche’s first book, Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik (1872; The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music), marked his emancipation from the trappings of classical scholarship. A speculative rather than exegetical work, it argued that Greek tragedy arose out of the fusion of what he termed Apollonian and Dionysian elements—the former representing measure, restraint, and harmony and the latter representing unbridled passion—and that Socratic rationalism and optimism spelled the death of Greek tragedy. The final 10 sections of the book are a rhapsody about the rebirth of tragedy from the spirit of Wagner’s music. Greeted by stony silence at first, it became the object of heated controversy on the part of those who mistook it for a conventional work of classical scholarship. It was undoubtedly “a work of profound imaginative insight, which left the scholarship of a generation toiling in the rear,” as the British classicist F.M. Cornford wrote in 1912. It remains a classic in the history of aesthetics to this day.
- Bernd Magnus
Mar 17, 2017 · Friedrich Nietzsche. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher and cultural critic who published intensively in the 1870s and 1880s. He is famous for uncompromising criticisms of traditional European morality and religion, as well as of conventional philosophical ideas and social and political pieties associated with modernity ...
A comprehensive overview of the life and works of Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher, essayist, and cultural critic. Learn about his major themes, interpretations, and influence on Western philosophy and intellectual history. Explore his biography, problems of interpretation, nihilism, will to power, eternal recurrence, and more.
Friedrich Nietzsche, in circa 1875. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) developed his philosophy during the late 19th century. He owed the awakening of his philosophical interest to reading Arthur Schopenhauer 's Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung ( The World as Will and Representation, 1819, revised 1844) and said that Schopenhauer was one of ...
People also ask
Why was Friedrich Nietzsche important?
Who was Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche?
What is Nietzsche's philosophy of the future?
When did Friedrich Nietzsche develop his philosophy?
Aug 8, 2023 · Learn about the life and work of Friedrich Nietzsche, a major influence on 20th-century philosophy, theology and art. He wrote on good and evil, the end of religion, the concept of a "super-man" and individuality. He suffered from insanity and died in 1900.
May 30, 1997 · Friedrich Nietzsche. Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher of the late 19th century who challenged the foundations of Christianity and traditional morality. He believed in life, creativity, health, and the realities of the world we live in, rather than those situated in a world beyond. Central to his philosophy is the idea of “life ...
