Nietzsche: A Philosophical Journey

Nietzsche’s Life and Thought

Friedrich Nietzsche’s life and work significantly impacted the 19th century, reflecting the era’s transformative changes. This period witnessed workers’ revolutions, the rise of international workers’ movements, socialism, anarchism, and the conservative counter-revolution. It also saw the clash between old aristocratic values and emerging democratic ideals.

Cultural Context

The 19th century’s cultural landscape featured an apparent break from established norms. Painting, music, and poetry reflected a decadent and bored bourgeoisie, often expressing elitist sentiments. A bohemian model emerged, rejecting dominant societal values and embracing new experiences. Oscar Wilde exemplifies this trend. Artists like Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec captured this atmosphere, portraying a sense of bitterness, lack of ideals, and hopelessness. Impressionism in painting, influenced by discoveries in the physics of light, broke with earlier traditions.

Intellectual Background

Nietzsche’s intellectual roots lie in the 18th-century theoretical revolution. Anti-dogmatism, anti-clericalism, and rationalism challenged feudal traditions and emphasized reason as the foundation of ethical, political, and religious principles. In the 19th century, the urban industrial proletariat and the bourgeoisie demanded recognition, leading to confrontations between new ideas and traditional conservative thought. Figures like Wagner inspired many in Nietzsche’s circle.

Philosophical Influences

Romanticism and positivism were significant philosophical movements. Positivism, reacting against Hegelian idealism and metaphysics, emphasized scientific observation. Comte, its founder, believed humanity progressed through theological, metaphysical, and positive (scientific) stages. In Twilight of the Idols (1888), Nietzsche critiques Western tradition, including positive science, Judeo-Christian religions, traditional morality, and Socratic philosophy.

Nietzsche’s “Idols”

Nietzsche’s “idols” represent the old truths of Socratic-Platonic metaphysics, persisting in Cartesian and Kantian thought. He challenges the Western ideology of universal concepts and the traditional structure of being.

Nietzsche’s Philosophical Periods

Nietzsche’s work can be divided into distinct periods:

1. Romantic Period

Influenced by Wagner, Schopenhauer, and Greek philosophy, Nietzsche’s key work is The Birth of Tragedy in the Spirit of Music (1871). He viewed art as the best way to understand reality. He developed the contrast between Apollonian and Dionysian forces. On Truth and Lies in an Extramoral Sense anticipates his later exploration of truth and falsehood.

2. Positivist Period

Distancing himself from Wagner and Schopenhauer, Nietzsche condemned metaphysics, religion, and art, embracing science as the path to deeper reality. He used science to critique culture, arguing that metaphysics, religion, art, and morality originate from hidden human instincts. In The Gay Science (1882), he first mentions the “death of God.” Other works include Human, All Too Human (1878) and Daybreak (1881).

3. Zarathustra’s Message

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-1885) is his most poetic work, presenting symbolic discourses and the concept of eternal recurrence.

4. Critical Period: Philosophizing with a Hammer

This passionate period includes Beyond Good and Evil (1886), On the Genealogy of Morality (1887), Twilight of the Idols (1889), The Antichrist (1888), and Ecce Homo (1888).