By:Darrell Willis &Erik Hamilton

Edited by: Dr. Kay

Picart and Brett Ader

Friedrich Wilhelm “Fritz”Nietzsche

Student Edition

Friedrich Wilhelm “Fritz” Nietzsche

• Born October 15, 1844.

• Named after the Prussian king, Friedrich Wilhelm IV.

• From a family of Lutheran ministers.

• Father died when Nietzsche was 4 yrs old.

• Brother died six months later at the age of 2.

Family tree

Friedrich Nietzsche

• Moved to Naumburg• Started “Germania”• 1864 University of

Bonn• 1865

University of Leipzig

• Published essays on – Aristotle– Theognis– Simonides

Duty Calls

• Required Military service at age 23

• Chest injury sends him back to the University

First Book

• His first book – The Birth of Tragedy –

• Published when he was 28

Biographical Information

• Resigned from the university in June, 1879 from health problems such as : migraine headaches,

eyesight problems and vomiting resulting from his service as a hospital attendant during the Franco-Prussian war in 1870-71.

Biographical Information

• Wandered around Europe from 1880-89. Wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-85) during this time.

• On the morning of January 3, 1889, Nietzsche experienced a mental breakdown which left him an invalid for the rest of his life. Upon witnessing a horse being whipped by a coachman at the Piazza Carlo Alberto, Nietzsche threw his arms around the horse's neck and collapsed, never to return to full sanity.

• Died on August 25, 1900, 56 years old, from pneumonia and a stroke.

Extra Side Notes

• Influenced by Schopenhauer, F.A. Lange

• Metaphysical speculation is an expression of poetic illusion.

• He was not influential in his time.

• Often referred to as one of the first “existentialist” philosophers.

• Existentialism is:» _________________

____________________________________________________________________

Towards a Genealogy of Morals

• The cause of the origin of a thing and its use are altogether separate.

• Punishment has two separate sides.

• 1. _________________ ___________________.

• 2. _________________ ___________________.

• Nietzsche refers to this higher mode of being as “____________" (_______________), and associates the doctrine of eternal recurrence -- a doctrine for only the healthiest who can love life in its entirety -- with this spiritual standpoint, in relation to which all-too-often downhearted, all-too-commonly-human attitudes stand as a mere bridge to be crossed and overcome.

• The imagery here is probably borrowed from "The Allegory of the Cave" in Plato's Republic.

We have no organ at all for knowledge, for truth: we know, or believe or imagine, precisely as much as may be useful in the interest of the human

herd, the species: and even what is here called usefulness is in the end only a belief, something imagined and perhaps precisely that most fatal piece of

stupidity by which we shall one day perish.   --Friedrich Nietzsche

• Nietzsche was able to write prolifically and profoundly for years, while remaining in a condition of ill-health and often intense physical pain. It is a testament to his spectacular mental capacities and willpower. Lesser people under the same physical pressures might not have had the inclination to pick up a pen, let alone think and record thoughts which -- created in the midst of striving for healthy self-overcoming -- would have the power to influence an entire century.