Julian Young’s Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography (Cambridge)Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche talks the end of all the philosophical and religious traditions of his time

From Wikipedia: An important binary in the New Testament is the opposition between law and love. Accordingly, the New Testament, particularly the Synoptic Gospels, presents the Pharisees as obsessed with man-made rules (especially concerning purity) whereas Jesus is more concerned with God’s love; the Pharisees scorn sinners whereas Jesus seeks them out.Synoptic Gospelssinners “Thus doth the greatest evil pertain to the greatest good,”

YOU! CJ: The first thing that I noticed while reading was the fact that Nietzsche writes that God is dead. This statement isn’t meant in a literal sense. He didn’t think that God had lived and died as human being do. He meant that the values of christianity were now void and they carried no meaning. He realized that people didn’t live in fear of God anymore and lost their moral belifes that the bible and christian life and God would control their fate. People had taken their own will and life into their hands and had killed God in the process. I would rather believe in the goodness of people for the sake of them just being good, as opposed to because they are being dictated by some higher power. In “Joys and Passions”, Zarathustra essentially states that if you are to have a virtue, you should have it because it is truly yours and you love it, not because of a God telling you to have it. John: I did understand from the prologue that he believed that true enlightenment was to be found on earth and not in the havens Kelly: he believes men should make their own choices Jacqueline: I agree with Zarathustra in that most of society isn’t actually happy, they just believe they are happy because they have made the “quota” or the “norm”. I also find it very interesting how he views God and religion, and how he thinks religion has turned into something it never was intended to be, a safe blanket for most people to find justice in their actions. Zarathustra admires the man on the tightrope because he is not blending in with the rest of society and he is metaphorically and literally going out on the limb and being his own person

Death Alexis: In the next excerpt Voluntary Death it makes me think about when elderly people die. For example say a couple is 80 years old and they have been together since they were 18 so 62 years together. One day the husband dies unexpectedly the wife is so upset that a few weeks later she dies too. I think the wife chose to die she “died at the right time.”

Life  1844  Lived in Prussia  He played the piano, read poetry and studied  He went to college in Bonn and spent the first year having fun, joining a fraternity and studying very little  He then decided to drop Theology, which his mother pressured him to undertake, and devote himself to the study of Philology  Immediately he started writing and his works were already so impressive that at the age of 24 he was already nominated professor at the University of Basel, in Switzerland  He served in the Prussian army twice: The first time in 1868, when he had a terrible riding accident that probably left him a number of ailments that lasted all his life

The second time, during the Franco- Prussian war and during this time he was profoundly traumatized by the violence he witnessed. He also contracted various diseases and, some scholars argue, also the syphilis that would be responsible for his final dementia  He was profoundly influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer and later in his life by Fyodor Dostoyevsky  His academic career ended early when he was asked to retire with a small pension at the age of 34, mostly because of his declining physical conditions but also because of his disdain of the academic professions and the increasing radicalism of his work  He then started a nomadic life, almost completely devoted to writing  His health however continue to get worse and in 1889, while Nietzsche was in the Italian city of Turin, at the sight of a horse being beaten by its owner, he had a final break down from which he never recovered. "I have had Caiaphas put in fetters. Also, last year I was crucified by the German doctors in a very drawn-out manner. Wilhelm, Bismarck, and all anti-Semites abolished."Caiaphasfetters Bismarck

Historical context Nietzsche was born and grew up during the era of the Prussian empire. He witnessed the war against France and, in 1870, the birth of the German empire, under the wing of Otto Von Bismarck. He was always very skeptical about the authenticity of the political operations that were carried on during his time and already in hi early writings he vehemently questions the mainstream German culture of its time For this reason he was destined (or maybe he chose) from the beginning to be an outsider (or maybe a precursor)

Works The Greek StateThe Greek State (1871) [ [ The Birth of TragedyThe Birth of Tragedy (1872) On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral SenseOn Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873) PP hilosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greekshilosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (1873) Untimely MeditationsUntimely Meditations (1876) Human, All Too HumanHuman, All Too Human (1878; additions in 1879, 1880) The DawnThe Dawn (1881) The Gay ScienceThe Gay Science (1882) Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1885)Thus Spoke Zarathustra Beyond Good and EvilBeyond Good and Evil (1886) On the Genealogy of MoralityOn the Genealogy of Morality (1887) The Case of Wagner (1888) TThe Case of WagnerT wilight of the Idolswilight of the Idols (1888) The AntichristThe Antichrist (1888) Ecce HomoEcce Homo (1888) Nietzsche contra WagnerNietzsche contra Wagner (1888) The Will to PowerThe Will to Power (unpublished manuscripts edited together by his sister) Unpublished WritingsUnpublished Writings (1869–1889)

The one who died many times He died to Wagner and Schopenhauer. With the publication on ‘Human, All too human’ he distanced himself from the pessimism of their thinking Nietzsche later thematized the importance of “self- overcoming” for the project of cultivating a free spirit

Fortune Some interpreters of Nietzsche believe he embraced nihilism, rejected philosophical reasoning, and promoted a literary exploration of the human condition, while not being concerned with gaining truth and knowledge in the traditional sense of those terms.nihilism Other interpreters of Nietzsche say that in attempting to counteract the predicted rise of nihilism, he was engaged in a positive program to reaffirm life, and so he called for a radical, naturalistic rethinking of the nature of human existence, knowledge, and moralitynaturalistic One year before dying, Nietzsche wrote an autobiographical work called ‘Ecce Homo’ and, in the preface he wrote: "Hear me! For I am such and such a person. Above all, do not mistake me for someone else.“ In 1886 Nietzsche broke with his editor, Ernst Schmeitzner, disgusted by his anti-Semitic opinions. Nietzsche saw his own writings as "completely buried and unexhumeable in this anti-Semitic dump" of Schmeitzner—associating the editor with a movement that should be "utterly rejected with cold contempt by every sensible mind". [ [

In 1886 his sister Elisabeth married the anti- Semite Bernhard Förster and traveled to Paraguay to found Nueva Germania, a "Germanic" colony—a plan to which Nietzsche responded with mocking laughter.anti- SemiteBernhard Förster ParaguayNueva Germania

Lou Andreas Salome’

At what point in his life was Zarathustra written In 1883, after breaking up definitely with Lou Salome’ and his friend Paul Ree’ from one side, and with his mother and sister, on the other, in isolation and in only 10 days, he wrote the first part of the book. The book remained largely unsold and because of the anti- Christian and anti- German views expressed in the book, it was made clear to him that he could never work again in a German University In 1888, when Nietzsche was already too ill to really notice, George Brand gave the first lecture on Nietzsche's philosophy at the University of Copenhagen

And thus he spoke! The book inspired Richard Strauss to compose the tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra, which he designated "freely based on Friedrich Nietzsche." [13] Zarathustra's Roundelay is set as part of Gustav Mahler's Third Symphony (1895-6), originally under the title What Man Tells Me, or alternatively What the Night tells me (of Man). Frederick Delius based his major choral- orchestral work A Mass of Life (1904-5) on texts from Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The work ends with a setting of Zarathustra's Roundelay which Delius had composed earlier, in 1898, as a separate workRichard Strausstone poemAlso sprach Zarathustra Friedrich Nietzsche [13] Zarathustra's RoundelayGustav MahlerThird SymphonyFrederick DeliusA Mass of LifeZarathustra's Roundelay

Questions 1.Why, do you think, of all philosophers, I chose Nietzsche to exemplify to you what a philosopher might be? 2.Do you think that the fact that Nietzsche lived and worked out of the institutions of his time has anything to do with the originality and radical creativity of his work? In other work, did Nietzsche gain in creative freedom by working from the margins of the intellectual society? 3.If Nietzsche was born today, what would he point out as ‘miserable well being’ and mainstream inauthentic culture?