Did his philosophies drive him to madness? Did the madness come first, driving him to philosophize? Did he choose to go mad (diving into the abyss)? Was it completely unrelated to his philosophies? What do post-mortem studies suggest?
I think madness is the only way anyone can dwell within the kinds of questions (inately Human questions) that Nietzsche and those like him dwelled within.
It wasn’t meerly a matter of asking a question, it was more that it consumed them, it was their life, their work, their everything. Intelligent people are always a little eccentric - it’s how they do what they do best… taking a question like “why are we here?” and twisting it around and around and upside down so that at the end the question becomes more complicated and less likely to find an answer (the deeper you dig the harder it is to get out of the hole) but in doing so, they bring us a step closer to helping us find our own answers.
I’ve never read anything about the post mortem of the condition of his brain. Now I’m going to have to!
I’m fairly certain I’ve read somewhere that his disease was biological in origin, and thus unrelated to his thinking. Though the other idea might be more interesting.
The same could be said for Poe of course. He drank constantly and wrote everything long handed. As would be suspected he was a “biological alcoholic” (I had a friend try that for one year… he got to october and joined AA).
Point is, Poe wouldn’t have written what he wrote if he hadn’t been off his face when he was doing so. Neitzsche wouldn’t have written what he wrote if he wasn’t mad. You have to be a little nuts to even attempt it.
Ah, yes, I might have been a bit unclear in my statement. My point was that thinking did not cause him to go mad, but certainly being mad might have influenced his thinking, particularly in his later works.
syphilus drove alot of people mad in olden times. wasn’t Nietzche a womanizer?
no, Nietzsche wasn’t a womanizer. the leading theory is that he had a brain tumor like his father.
vho.org/News/GB/News2_04.html#m18
-Imp
N was physically in pain all of his life. That would probably drive me insane…
To be honest though, I would think the real reason he went mad is that one day he realized that the will to power wasn’t his idea… that’s when the Jesus signatures started. Fritz’s jesus doesn’t save, he steals 
I’ve read somewhere (it escapes me at the moment) the same thing. But I would think you couldn’t have a neurological disfunction without some kind of psychological experience to go along with it - and visa-versa - don’t you? Which makes me wonder - is it even possible to drive one’s self into insanity just by thinking?
I am not one to say what did or did not cause Nietzsche to “go mad.” And I am not one to be able to declare what madness is from a perspective in madness.
If I had to speculate on Nietzsche’s sexual relationships, I would say that they were extremely frustrating if not scarce. I believe he maintained an ideal of “the woman” which far surpassed the availability of satisfying relationships. In short, Fritz had no match. His morals were the most difficult and ironic when compared to what he generally professed in his philosophy; his constant criticism of women (like Schopenhauer) distanced Nietzsche from them, rather than providing him with excuses to exploit them.
Such a rage, perhaps having its origins in his unsuspecting visit to the brothel, seemed enough to pit Nietzsche against women completely…or fall totally into them.
Yet he did neither.
He exhalted women and had a great respect for them, I believe. The greater woman is a more exceptional case than the greater man, and when a great woman is achieved there is a magnificent form of progress in the ideal of the type. Individuals which break out of gender based stereotypes and demonstrate contrary behaviors are often extremely attractive, and in the case of a woman, we notice with more suprise a woman who is more than womanly, a woman who has a bit of the masculine characteristic which contrasts so clearly the average “woman hood” with this new woman, this “more-than-a-woman” who makes men run away rather than assume confident dominance.
The man is not as significant. He is not as refined in his greatest type because his average is not so explicit, while the great woman is far beyond only the average woman.
I think Nietzsche simply refused to compromise his standards, kept a stringent sexuality, and after failing with Lou, he just said fuck it.
“She said she had no morality, and I thought she had, like myself, a more severe morality than anyone.”- Nietzsche
Certainly his illnesses affected his writing in noticable ways. As Hegel famously said, “[The philosopher is] the son of his times.”
I am skeptical of even this.
It is one thing to assume that physical degeneration is occuring neurologically by notice of writing mistakes, and another to judge the content or theme of what is written as evidence for delusional state of mind.
We often hear about Nietzsche proclaiming to be the new Jesus or Napolean. So what. Just reduce the significance of the icon you wish to idolize and it is no longer grandiose to liken oneself to them. It is the spirit and the metaphor, the language and the semiotics, the signs, that are significant to the character, not vice-versa. It is not “a” Jesus, but “another Jesus type,” that envelops the idea of the character. All heros go home at night and go to bed. They are only human.
Recall also that aside from Ecce Homo, the only other “disorderly” writing that smacked of delusional pretenses were personal letters, and we all know how we joke in personal letters. Hell, I’m possessed with the daemon of Che, but its no big deal, really. Its just a way to keep a passion and play alive in writing where we take our pens as “our grip on the world (JPS)” and invent philosophy and drama.
But come on…do you really think Fritz thought he was Jesus? Please. That’s what happens when your letters get exploited by journalists and/or relatives and opponents who publish your material posthumously when you are no longer around to represent yourself.
I’ll tell you this one time: There will never be another philosopher like Fritz. Any philosopher alive today, tomorrow, and even yesterday would do himself well to avoid argumentation and an attempt at rhetorical authority over Fritz.
They don’t make em like they used to.
And someone from the back says “but he’s so popular because he’s so easy and simple, if he even makes sense at all,” and I say unto you:
A thunderstorm can be seen from a great distance and from miles around, where brief flashes and crashing can be glimpsed at…but the point of concentration underneath it is an entirely different experience.
An appeal to popularity and the irony that the “masses read Nietzsche” is only the notice of this storm from that distance. This does not mean he is correctly or even fully interpreted, only that he covers such a great distance with his reach that everyone feels his effects.
This century belongs to him. From teenage marlyn manson fans to astute pompasadors at Harvard, Fritz has stolen many hearts the world over.
We may die now, because Friedrich Nietzsche has lived.
(okay, maybe I’m over doing it here but I really like Nietzsche a whole bunch)
We cannot mistake a poet for a philosopher when he intends us to see him in his present form as a poet, and likewise for the contrary. Deciphering his moments of critical thinking from his parablism is that task.
Detrop –
I don’t entirely understand your reasons for disagreeing that Nietzsche was, in some way, altered by his illness. But I think it would be worth-while to note that the origination of Nietzsche’s thought should not at all affect the way we read Nietzsche. Just as conservatives are quick to point towards Heidegger’s flirtation with the Nazi movement as reasons “against Heidegger,” we cannot simply discredit a thinker’s ideas on such superficial, ad hominem criterion. No less it’s always fun and interesting to speculate!
Yes of course, I didn’t mean to sound obtrusive or demanding. I just wanted to make an emphasis on how his “philosophy” has been associated with nihilism and is only worsened by considering his “mental breakdown,” as the pathologists describe his condition. This is to a large degree caused by a bias interpretation of some of his themes, and they draw a corelation between his philosophy and his sickness, blaming what they understand to be “nihilistic” on what they understand to be “pathological.”
No problem. I would rather people find out Nietzsche collapsed from his condition after they read his work, since knowing his outcome effects the interpretation, especially when mental illness is considered.
thinking is the reflection of feeling not happy, so the question is why wasn’t he ? the answer would be like for all men, slavery pains fears unability to feel love, he must had felt a depth of the truth that all men can’t see, that is why they feel connected to what he says even if they don’t understand, because it is always one truth that made men
The one unproven assumption on this thread (one that only detrop has moved to quash) is that Nietzsche went mad at all. According to Kaufmann, even after his incarceration he still had moments of tremendous intellectual lucidity…
“Went mad” is the kind of quick, easy stereotype that lazey judges cling to.
Each of us is born with a mind that functions in a certain way. All forms of difficulty are dealt with in a unique way. Some people are born ritch, some are born poor. Some are born with more mental resiliance, others have less mental resiliance. “Madness” is a question of resiliance vs difficulties/problems.
This is actually quite an impressive analysis (though I do not mean that you’re to expand on it hyperactively for a thousand words by way of a response to my compliment, I know what you’re like) and one that I could see Nietzsche endorsing…
A quarter of a century has now passed since Nietzsche’s death and more than a generation has gone by since an incurable disease excluded him, who thought of himself as the returning Dionysus, from the ranks of living and active men. His figure has meanwhile become mythical, was in part already so when his body remained on earth for almost a dozen years while darkness already held the godlike spirit prisoner. Having become mythical through necessity: for everything great in events and persons becomes mythology for posterity. But that does not exempt one from the duty to obtain clarity about how things and persons “really” were (to use one of Ranke’s terms). That is not an easy task in Nietzsche’s case. For besides a person’s own testimonies, those of his contemporaries are also necessary, and the number of Nietzsche companions was few even from his youth on, and the older he became, the more he withdrew into his self-chosen solitude. Only a few, however, had an opportunity to see him after his mental breakdown. So a personal memory precisely of this time may have its modest value.
In the winter semester 1888-89 I was a medical student in Jena and attended the lecture and clinic of the famous psychiatrist Professor Otto Binswanger. One day—it must have been in January 1889—a patient who had recently been brought in was led into the classroom. Binswanger presented him to us as … Professor Nietzsche! Now one thinks that this would have caused a mighty uproar! Not a trace. Although as early as 1888 Georg Brandes had given lectures on him in Copenhagen, the name Nietzsche was practically unknown in Germany, not only to us clinicians in Jena but also to quite different people. There is a classical witness to this fact: Nietzsche is not to be found in the fourth edition of Meyers grosses Konversationslexikon from the year 1889. And how many small feathered creatures can be found there—and in the year 1889 Nietzsche’s literary activity was finished forever. So Professor Binswanger should not be blamed if all he could tell us about Nietzsche’s writing activity was that Nietzsche had formerly been active as a zealous Wagner-apostle but that he had in recent years become just as fanatical a Wagner-enemy, and that this change had perplexed his friends. I, for myself, when I heard the name Nietzsche, recalled having read it once in the writings of the outstanding Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick, namely in an essay written in the year of the first Bayreuth Nibelungen festivals (1876), in which the Wagner literature of that time was examined critically. Two books which Nietzsche had in print at that time, belonging to this circle were: The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music and “Richard Wagner in Bayreuth.” Hanslick dismissed them with a gesture of contempt and characterized the writer as a crazy philologist who really had no idea of music. At the time when he was brought into the Jena psychiatric clinic, Nietzsche was unknown to the German public, and it must well be the greatest irony of literary history that people were beginning to read his works precisely when he stopped writing: one or two years later Nietzsche was the great literary fashion.
But let us return to that Jena classroom. The man sitting before us did not at first sight have the external appearance of a sick man. He kept his figure, of middle height, in a stiff position; his face was haggard, but not exactly emaciated—his face, which a short time later the whole world knew from countless pictures: the magnificent forehead bordered by thick, plain, dark brown hair, the spirit-filled eyes under strong brows, the nose short as Bismarck’s, and under it, also suggestive of Bismarck, the mustache that covered the beautifully matched lips, and to top the whole thing off, an unspeakably beautiful chin. The clothing simple, but clean and neat. However, the patient seemed to be having one of his good days: he was of clear consciousness and good memory-capacity. Professor Binswanger began a conversation with him about his former life. We learned to our astonishment that he had been a professor in Basel at just twenty-four years of age, even before receiving his doctorate, and that later persistent headaches had forced him to resign from his office. He did not say a word about his activities as a writer. Finally, as he reported, he had lived in Turin, and he began to praise this place, which had particularly suited him since it combined the advantages of the big city and the small town. This discussion made us all listen attentively, for we had never heard a man speak this way. And in Jena we were spoiled on this point, for teaching there at the same time were people like Ernst Haeckel, Rudolf Eucken, Otto Liebmann, Wilhelm Preyer, all not only famous scientists but also brilliant speakers. But this Basel professor emeritus was quite something else! Later, when I read Nietzsche’s works it became clear to me what had startled me. I had just felt the magic power of the Nietzsche style for the first time. For he spoke as he wrote: short sentences full of peculiar word combinations and elaborate antitheses: even the scattered French and Italian expressions which he so loved, especially in his last writings, were not missing. His way of speaking had nothing of the lecturing professor about it. It was “conversation,” and by the soft tone of the pleasant voice one recognized the man of best education. Unfortunately he did not finish his discussion. His thread broke off in the middle of a sentence and he sank into silence. Professor Binswanger then wanted to demonstrate a few disturbances in the patient’s gait. He asked Nietzsche to walk back and forth in the room. But the patient did this so slowly and lazily that one could not perceive the phenomenon in question. “Now, professor,” Binswanger said to him, “an old soldier like you will surely be able to march correctly!” This memory of his military time seemed to have a stimulating effect on him. His eyes lit up, his form straightened up, and he began to pace the room with a firm stride.
I subsequently saw Nietzsche quite often during visits to the patients’ ward which our teacher used to make with us. His health varied: sometimes one saw him quiet and friendly, sometimes he had his bad days. When I saw him for the last time, he presented a different picture than the first time: he was in a highly excited state, and his consciousness was apparently troubled. He sat there with a strongly reddened face and eyes that flared up wildly and painfully, guarded by a keeper. On the whole, however, institutional treatment had a favorable effect on him. He calmed down and could for a time be left in the care of his mother and sister, who took him to their home in Naumburg.
And Nietzsche’s disease? Someone will ask what really was wrong with him? In Jena the diagnosis had been made: “Progressive paralysis on a syphilitic basis.” For as Nietzsche himself very clearly indicated in Jena, he had during the 1870-71 campaign, which he took part in as a medical corpsman, contracted syphilis, which soon afterwards, still during his days in Basel, had manifested itself in a syphilitic infection of the retina of his eyes; Professor Schiess, ophthalmologist in Basel at the time, had treated this disease. Nietzsche’s own data were that precise and accurate. After the diagnosis made in Jena no long duration of his life could be predicted for Nietzsche. But he did live on for almost a dozen years in a tolerable physical condition. Was he really syphilitic? I began to doubt it more and more as time went on, but in the course of the years I was too far removed from these fields of thought to venture a judgment, or indeed even just an opinion. Soon after Nietzsche’s death I had the occasion to consult an important neurosurgeon, Dr. Erlenmeyer-Benndorf. We soon got into a conversation about the great deceased person: I told him of my experiences and also expressed my doubts as to the diagnosis of paralysis. He agreed with me completely on this and came to the conclusion that Nietzsche’s case must have been not a progressive paralysis but a luetic infection of the brain. The rest must be left to medical science.
A generation has now gone by since I had the privilege of seeing Zarathustra face to face. But these images have remained fresh and vivid in my memory: the image of the calm man sitting before us in the gray classroom on that dismal January afternoon surrounded by an almost Apollonian charm, and the image of the man in his room cruelly tormented by disease, whom one could observe only with the deepest pity. And although I have seen his suffering with my bodily eyes and the analytical mind asks for reason and cause, in the mind’s eye, in inner contemplation he does again become mythical: the incomparable face contorted with Laocoöntic pain, his gaze glowing with affliction—yes, he himself is the god of life, so ardently honored, wound about by the serpent of the mortal disease: the sick Dionysus.
—Simchowitz, S. “Der sieche Dionysos: Eine persönliche Erinnerung,” Kölnische Zeitung, August 29, 1925, from Conversations with Nietzsche: A Life in the Words of His Contemporaries (Oxford Univ. Press, 1987), pp. 222-225.
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Both , as is the case will all good mentally ill philosophers
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