In sum: Nietzsche’s challenge is twofold. He might conceivably come into his own by re-establishing some bond between what are now two completely divergent branches of modern thought, thus benefiting both. Meanwhile it is the individual reader whom he addresses. And he does not want to be read as an arsenal of arguments for or against something, nor even for a point of view. He challenges the reader not so much to agree or disagree as to grow.
W.K.
Strobl, Austria
February 1953
Chronology
This includes the original titles and dates of publication of all of Nietzsche’s books. The discrepancies between the figures here given and those found in most reference works are due to the fact that it has become customary to copy at least some of the dates from the bindings of various German collected editions. The dates on the bindings, however, refer to the approximate periods of composition. Most of Nietzsche’s books were written during the year preceding publication; the outstanding exceptions to this rule are noted.
1844 Nietzsche is born in Röcken, Germany, on October 15.
1849 Death of his father, a Lutheran pastor, on July 30.
1850 The family moves to Naumburg.
1858-64 Nietzsche attends the boarding school Schulpforta.
1864 Studies classical philology at Bonn University.
1865 Continues his studies at Leipzig and accidentally discovers Schopenhauer’s main work in a secondhand bookstore.
1868 First meeting with Richard Wagner.
1869 Professor extraordinarius of classical philology at the University of Basel, Switzerland.
1870 Promoted to full professor. A Swiss subject now, he volunteers as a medical orderly in the Franco-Prussian war and serves briefly with the Prussian forces. Returns to Basel in October, his health shattered.
1872 Publication of Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik (The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music), his first book.
1873 Publication of the first two Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen (Untimely Meditations): David Strauss, der Bekenner und Schriftsteller (David Strauss, the Confessor and Writer), and Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben (On the Use and Disadvantage of History for Life).
1874 Schopenhauer als Erzieher (Schopenhauer as Educator) is published as the third Untimely Meditation.
1876 After many delays, Nietzsche completes and publishes Richard Wagner in Bayreuth as the last of the Untimely Meditations, although more had been planned originally. Poor health. Leave from the university. Sorrento.
1878 Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (Human, All-Too-Human ) appears. For the next ten years a new book is printed every year.
1879 Resignation from the university with pension. Vermischte Meinungen und Sprüche (Mixed Opinions and Maxims) published as Anhang (appendix) of Human, All-Too-Human. Summer in St. Moritz in the Engadin.
1880 Der Wanderer und sein Schatten (The Wanderer and His Shadow) appears as Zweiter und letzter Nachtrag (second and final sequel) of Human, All-Too-Human.
1881 Publication of Die Morgenröte (The Dawn). Winter and spring in Genoa, summer in Sils Maria (Engadin), fall in Genoa.
1882 Publication of Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft (The Gay Science). Winter in Genoa, spring in Messina, summer in Tautenburg with Lou Salomé and his sister Elisabeth, fall in Leipzig. Goes to Rapallo in November.
1883 Writes the First Part of Also Sprach Zarathustra in Rapallo during the winter; spends March and April in Genoa, May in Rome, and the summer in Sils Maria, where he completes Part Two. Both parts are published separately in 1883. From now until 1888, Nietzsche spends every summer in Sils Maria, every winter in Nizza.
1884 Writes the Third Part in Nizza in January. It is published later the same year.
1885 The Fourth and Last Part of Zarathustra is written during the winter in Nizza and Mentone. Forty copies are printed privately, but only seven distributed among friends.
1886 Publication of Jenseits von Gut und Böse (Beyond Good and Evil). A new preface is added to the remaining copies of both previous editions of The Birth of Tragedy (1872 and 1878, textually different); the last part of the title is now omitted in favor of a new subtitle: Griechentum und Pessimismus (The Greek Spirit and Pessimism). Second edition of Human, All-Too-Human with a new preface and with the two sequels printed as volume two.
1887 Publication of Zur Genealogie der Moral (Toward a Genealogy of Morals). Second edition of The Dawn, with a new preface, and of The Gay Science, with a newly added fifth book (aphorisms 343-383) and an appendix of poems.
1888 Winter in Nizza, spring in Turin, summer in Sils Maria, fall in Turin. Publication of Der Fall Wagner (The Wagner Case). The beginning of fame: Georg Brandes lectures on Nietzsche at the University of Copenhagen.
1889 Nietzsche becomes insane early in January in Turin. Overbeck, a friend and former colleague, brings him back to Basel. He is committed to the asylum in Jena, but soon released in care of his mother, who takes him to Naumburg. Die Götzen-Dämmerung (Twilight of the Idols), written in 1888, appears in January.
1891 The first public edition of the Fourth Part of Zarathustra is held up at the last minute lest it be confiscated. It is published in 1892.
1895 Der Antichrist. and Nietzsche contra Wagner, both written in 1888, are finally published in volume eight of Nietzsche’s collected works—the former, mistakenly, as Book One of Der Wille zur Macht (The Will to Power).
1897 Nietzsche’s mother dies. His sister moves him to Weimar.
1900 Nietzsche dies in Weimar on August 25.
1901 His sister publishes some 400 of his notes, many already fully utilized by him, in Volume XV of the collected works under the title Der Wille zur Macht.
1904 His sister integrates 200 pages of further material “from The Will to Power” in the last volume of her biography, Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches. A completely remodeled version of The Will to Power, consisting of 1067 notes, appears in a subsequent edition of the works in Volumes XV (1910) and XVI (1911).
1908 First edition of Ecce Homo, written in 1888.
Bibliography
Some studies of Nietzsche are listed here; editions of Nietzsche’s writings, both in the original and in English, are listed at the end of this volume, beginning on page 688.
The comprehensive but incomplete International Nietzsche Bibliography, ed. Herbert W. Reichert and Karl Schlechta (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960) lists close to 4000 items in 27 languages. The bibliography in the 3rd rev. ed. (1968) of Kaufmann’s Nietzsche (see below) includes well over a hundred studies, as well as a detailed account of the various collected editions of his works.
Binion, Rudolph. Frau Lou. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968. Supersedes all previous studies of Lou Andreas-Salomé and of her relationship to Nietzsche.
Brandes, Georg. Friedrich Nietzsche. Tr. from the Danish by A. G. Chater. London: Heinemann, 1914. Four essays by the critic who “discovered” Nietzsche, dated 1889, 1899, 1900, and 1909.
Brinton, Crane. Nietzsche. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1941; New York: Harper & Row, Torchbook ed. with new preface, epilogue, and bibliography, 1965. In the new edition, the numerous errors of the original edition remain uncorrected, but in a short preface Brinton disowns the chapter “Nietzsche in Western Thought.” The rev. bibliography adds serious new errors.
Camus, Albert. “Nietzsche et le nihilisme” in L’homme révolté. Paris: Gallimard, 1951, pp. 88—105. “Nietzsche and Nihilism” in The Rebel, Engl. tr. by Anthony Bower. New York, Vintage Books, 1956, pp. 65—80. This essay throws more light on Camus than on Nietzsche.
Danto, Arthur C. Nietzsche as Philosopher. New York: Macmillan, 1965. A hasty study, full of old misconceptions, new mistranslations, and unacknowledged omissions in quotations. The context of the snippets cited is systematically ignored, and no effort is made to consider even most of what Nietzsche wrote on any given subject.
Drimmer, Melvin. Nietzsche in American
Thought: 1895—1925. Ph.D. thesis, The University of Rochester (N.Y.), 1965. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, Inc., 727 pp., includes Bibliography, 634—727.
Heidegger, Martin. “Nietzsches Wort ‘Gott ist tot’” in Holzwege. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1950.
————. “Wer ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?” in Vorträge und Aufsätze. Pfullingen: Neske, 1954. English translation by Bernd Magnus in Lectures and Addresses. New York: Harper & Row, 1967.
————. Nietzsche. 2 vols. Pfullingen: Neske, 1961. One of the major efforts—certainly the bulkiest one—of the later Heidegger: important for those who would understand him.
Hollingdale, R. J. Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965. Sympathetic, informed, and well written; the best biography in English, but the account of Nietzsche’s relationships to Salomé and Rée is dated by Binion’s book. Nietzsche’s philosophy is discussed in the context of his life.
Jaspers, Karl. Nietzsche: Einführung in das Verständnis seines Philosophierens. Berlin and Leipzig: De Gruyter, 1936 (2nd ed., 1947, “unchanged,” but with a new preface). Engl. tr. by Charles F. Wallraff and Frederick J. Schmitz, Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1965
———. Nietzsche und das Christentum. Hameln: Verlag der Bücherstube Fritz Seifert, n.d. (“This essay was written as the basis for a lecture which was delivered . . . May 12, 1938. It is here printed without any changes or additions. . . .”) Engl. tr. by E. B. Ashton, Nietzsche and Christianity. Chicago: Henry Regnery, Gateway Editions, 1961. A miniature version of the approach encountered in Jaspers’ big Nietzsche.
———. “Kierkegaard und Nietzsche” in Vernunft und Existenz. Groningen: J. W. Wolters, 1935. Engl. tr. by William Earle in Reason and Existenz. New York: Noonday Press, 1955. Reprinted in Walter Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. New York: Meridian Books, 1956, pp. 158—84.
Kaufmann, Walter. Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950. 2nd rev. ed., New York: Meridian Books, 1956. 3rd rev. ed. (with substantial additions, including a comprehensive bibliography, a long appendix dealing with recent German editions of Nietzsche, and a detailed discussion of Nietzsche’s relationship to Paul Rée and Lou Salomé), Princeton: Princeton University Press, and New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1968.
————. Five chapters on Nietzsche in From Shakespeare to Existentialism. Boston: Beacon Press, 1959; rev. ed., Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1960.
————. Articles on Nietzsche in Encyclopedia Americana; Encyclopaedia Britannica; Collier’s Encyclopedia; Grolier Encyclopedia; The Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
———. Tragedy and Philosophy. Garden City, N.Y.: Double-day, 1968.
————. Exposes of My Sister and I as a forgery, falsely attributed to Nietzsche, in Milwaukee Journal, February 24, 1952; in Partisan Review, vol. XIX no. 3 (May/June 1952), 372—76; and of the rev. ed. in The Philosophical Review, vol. LXIV no. 1 (January 1955), 152f.
Klages, Ludwig. Die Psychologischen Errungenschaften Nietzsches. Leipzig: Barth, 1926.
Löwith, Karl. Von Hegel bis Nietzsche. Zürich and New York: Europa, 1941. Engl. tr. by David E. Green, From Hegel to Nietzsche. New York: Holt, 1964; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1967. Includes eight sections on Nietzsche.
Love, Frederick R. Young Nietzsche and the Wagnerian Experience . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963. A good monograph that takes into account Nietzsche’s compositions, including unpublished items in the archives in Weimar. It is full of pertinent, but untranslated, German quotations. The break with Wagner is not included. Love shows how Nietzsche. never was “a passionate devotee of Wagnerian music.”
Morgan, George A., Jr. What Nietzsche Means. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1941. Reprinted, unrev., New York: Harper & Row, Torchbooks, 1965. An exceptionally careful study very useful as a reference work.
Vaihinger, Hans. Die Philosophie des Als-Ob. Leipzig: Meiner, 1911. Eng. tr. by C. K. Ogden, The Philosophy of ‘As If.’ New York: Harcourt Brace, 1924. The chapter “Nietzsche and His Doctrine of Conscious Illusion (The Will to Illusion),” pp. 341—62, remains one of the most interesting studies in any language of Nietzsche’s theory of knowledge.
THE PORTABLE
NIETZSCHE
LETTER TO HIS SISTER
(Bonn, 1865)
. . . As for your principle that truth is always on the side of the more difficult, I admit this in part. However, it is difficult to believe that 2 times 2 is not 4; does that make it true? On the other hand, is it really so difficult simply to accept everything that one has been brought up on and that has gradually struck deep roots—what is considered truth in the circle of one’s relatives and of many good men, and what, moreover, really comforts and elevates man? Is that more difficult than to strike new paths, fighting the habitual, experiencing the insecurity of independence and the frequent wavering of one’s feelings and even one’s conscience, proceeding often without any consolation, but ever with the eternal goal of the true, the beautiful, and the good? Is it decisive after all that we arrive at that view of God, world, and reconciliation which makes us feel most comfortable? Rather, is not the result of his inquiries something wholly indifferent to the true inquirer? Do we after all seek rest, peace, and pleasure in our inquiries? No, only truth—even if it be the most abhorrent and ugly. Still one last question: if we had believed from childhood that all salvation issued from someone other than Jesus—say, from Mohammed—is it not certain that we should have experienced the same blessings? . . . Faith does not offer the least support for a proof of objective truth. Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire. . . .
FRAGMENT OF A CRITIQUE OF SCHOPENHAUER
(1867)
. . . The errors of great men are venerable because they are more fruitful than the truths of little men. . . .
(I, 393)1
ON ETHICS
(1868)
Schopenhauer’s ethics is often criticized for not having the form of an imperative.
What the philosophers call character is an incurable disease. An imperative ethics is one that deals with the symptoms of the disease, having the faith, while it fights them, that it is getting rid of the real origin, the basic evil. Anyone who would base practical ethics on aesthetics would be like a physician who would fight only those symptoms which are ugly and offend good taste.
Philosophically viewed, it makes no difference whether a character expresses itself or whether its expressions are kept back: not only the thought but the disposition already makes the murderer; he is guilty without any deed. On the other hand, there is an ethical aristocracy just as there is a spiritual one: one cannot enter it by receiving a title or by marriage.
In what way, then, are education, popular instruction, catechism, justified and even necessary?
The unchangeable character is influenced in its expressions by its environment and education—not in its essence. A popular ethics therefore wants to suppress bad expressions as far as possible, for the sake of the general welfare—an undertaking that is strikingly similar to the police. The means for this is a religion with rewards and punishments: for the expressions alone matter. Therefore the catechism can say: Thou shalt not kill! Thou shalt not curse! etc. Nonsensical, however, is an imperative: “Be good!” as well as, “Be wise!” or, “Be talented!”
The “general welfare” is not the sphere of truth; for truth demands to be declared even if it is ugly and unethical.
If we admit, for example, the truth of the doctrine of Schopenhauer (but also of Christianity) concerning the redemptive power of suffering, then it becomes regard for the “general welfare” not only not to lessen suffering, but perhaps even to increase it—not only for oneself but also for othe
rs. Pushed to this limit, practical ethics becomes ugly—even consistent cruelty to human beings. Similarly, the effect of Christianity is unnerving when it commands respect for every kind of magistrate, etc., as well as acceptance of all suffering without any attempt at resistance.
(I, 404 f.)
NOTE (1870-71)
A state that cannot attain its ultimate goal usually swells to an unnaturally large size. The world-wide empire of the Romans is nothing sublime compared to Athens. The strength that really should go into the flower here remains in the leaves and stem, which flourish.
(III, 384)
FROM Homer’s Contest2
(1872)
When one speaks of humanity, the idea is fundamental that this is something which separates and distinguishes man from nature. In reality, however, there is no such separation: “natural” qualities and those called truly “human” are inseparably grown together. Man, in his highest and noblest capacities, is wholly nature and embodies its uncanny dual character. Those of his abilities which are terrifying and considered inhuman may even be the fertile soil out of which alone all humanity can grow in impulse, deed, and work.