Ethical Communication: Moral Stances in Human Dialogue

8. Friedrich Nietzsche: Becoming an Übermensch

61 Friedrich Nietzsche Becoming an Übermensch Clifford G. Christians Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the most influential European thinkers of the nineteenth century. His controversial ideas have been of interest to philosophers, sociologists, literary theorists, artists, and psychologists ever since. He was a philologist specializing in the Greek language and an amateur composer of music, so students of communication have a fascination with his work as well. He believed that since God was dead, morality no longer made sense. And he introduced other concepts still debated today such as Übermensch and the will to power. He was born on October 15, 1844, near Leipzig, Germany, on the day of the Prussian king’s (Friedrich Wilhelm IV) forty-ninth birthday, and was named after him. Nietzsche’s father was a Lutheran minister, as were his grandfather and an uncle, and his paternal grandfather was a distinguished theologian. When Nietzsche was four, his father died from a brain disease; six months later his twenty-six-year-old brother died as well. His mother gave him special care even in his adult life, and his sister nursed him during his ill health in the last years before his death at the early age of fifty-six. From the ages of fourteen to nineteen he attended a boarding school to prepare for a university education. He participated in a literature and music club during those years and became acquainted with Richard Wagner’s music. He read the German romantic writings of Friedrich Hölderlin, and David Strauss’s controversial Life of Jesus Critically Examined. He entered the University of Bonn at nineteen and studied theology and also philology, especially the interpretation of classical and 8 62 . Clifford G. Christians biblical texts. During the first semester he lost his faith and dropped theological studies. Inspired by the classics scholar Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl, he transferred to the University of Leipzig after one year, and established a dazzling reputation as a student with published essays on Aristotle, Simonides, and others. At twenty-one he read the most momentous book of his life to that time, Arthur Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation (1818), an atheistic vision of the world in conjunction with his praise of music as an art form. When he met the composer Richard Wagner at twenty-three they shared an interest in Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, who had composed music since he was a teenager, admired his musical genius. A language scholar married to Wagner’s sister was a specialist in the Zoroastrian religion and its prophet Zarathustra (Zoroaster). These books and people influenced him deeply for the rest of his life. Wilhelm Ritschl was so impressed with Nietzsche’s brilliance that he recommended him at the astonishing age of twenty-four for a position as professor of classical philology at the University of Basel in Switzerland. Nietzsche was granted this appointment even before he had completed his doctorate or a certificate for teaching. However, his attempt to transfer that position to the philosophy department failed. At twenty-seven he brought his early influences together in his first book, The Birth of Tragedy. And over the next three years he published four studies of German culture, The Unfashionable Observations —including a response to the historian of religion, David Strauss. At age thirty-two he completed Human, All-Too-Human. But poor health—migraine headaches, violent vomiting, shortsightedness , and occasional blindness—necessitated his resignation in 1879 from the university after only ten years on the faculty. For the decade following, he was officially stateless: he had renounced his Prussian citizenship upon moving to Switzerland, and never applied for Swiss citizenship. He lived with his mother, but traveled around various cities in Europe, staying in each only a few months at a time. During these nomadic years he wrote his main works, such as Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1885), Beyond Good and Evil (1886), On the Genealogy of Morals (1887), The Antichrist (1888), Ecce Homo (1888), and Nietzsche Contra Wagner (1888). In January 1889, Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown that left him an invalid for the rest of his life. He may have had a syphilis infection, or a brain disease inherited from his father, or the drugs he used as a sedative may have been the cause. He was at first hospital- .   63 Friedrich Nietzsche ized and placed in a sanatorium, but his mother then took care of him in her home...