Nietzsche’s Life, Influences, and Philosophy

Posted on Feb 6, 2025 in Philosophy and ethics

Historical, Philosophical, and Cultural Context

Nietzsche was born in 1844 in Röcken, Saxony. The son of a Lutheran pastor, he received a solid liberal education at a famous school. His love of music and his illnesses (headaches and eye problems) began at this time. He started studying classical philology at Bonn and continued the next year in Leipzig, where he encountered the philosophy of Schopenhauer and the music of Wagner, both very influential on him.

Later, he was appointed extraordinary professor of classical philology at the University of Basel (Switzerland). He broke his friendship with Wagner, and the following year, illness forced him to leave his chair in Basel. He began his life of wandering, always traveling, continuously tormented by his ailments. He met Lou Andreas-Salomé; the relationship lasted only a few months, harassed by his sister Elisabeth, who disapproved of the relationship. Nietzsche soon returned to his tireless, solitary walking in the wide open spaces.

He collapsed in Turin and was placed in a psychiatric clinic. Thereafter, in an enigmatic state of madness, his mother and sister looked after him. He died in 1900 in Weimar.

Periods in Nietzsche’s Thought

Generally, four periods are distinguished in Nietzsche’s thought:

  • Previous Romantic or Philosophy of the Night: Draws on the Presocratics, Schopenhauer, and the music of Wagner. Makes a novel interpretation of Greek culture as opposed to the Apollonian and the Dionysian.
  • Illustrated Period or Philosophy of the Morning: Based on Voltaire and the Enlightenment philosophers. The figure now is not the tragic artist but the free spirit. He denounces all ideals of Western culture.
  • The Message of Zarathustra or Philosophy of Noon: He arrived at full intellectual stature and wrote his seminal work, *Thus Spoke Zarathustra*.
  • Critical Period or Philosophy of the Evening: Denounces Western culture in all its facets: it is a culture that has reached its end. A very important work by Nietzsche, autobiographical and philosophical, *Ecce Homo*, was published after his death.

Nietzsche’s sister falsified or caused the disappearance of numerous passages from her brother’s work.

Philosophical Influences

Nietzsche admired the free spirit of Voltaire and criticized the idealism of Kant. He admitted that Kant’s critique dealt a blow to the absolutist pretensions of the metaphysical, dogmatic rationalists, but it did not touch religion and morality. Against Kant and other idealist philosophers, he opted for Goethe, according to Nietzsche, the only post-Enlightenment pagan thinker.

The influence of Heine is evident in his ironic and humorous style, his critique of the Enlightenment and Kant, and the state of conservatism, his nostalgia for the old gods of paganism, and the idea of the death of God.

The two most direct influences on Nietzsche are Schopenhauer and Wagner. The former considered himself the only follower of Kant, yet he criticized him. Nietzsche rejected Schopenhauer’s pessimism but acknowledged his contributions to the importance of art in understanding reality. He admired Wagner passionately in his youth, then hated him for seeing how the revolutionary artist had put his music at the service of the deceit of the Christian *Parsifal*.

Finally, it’s important to mention the great impression that Dostoyevsky’s works caused Nietzsche.

Historical-Cultural Context

The great bourgeois revolutions concluded, and the major European nation-states were created. In addition, the labor movement expanded. Nietzsche witnessed the creation of the German Empire with William I and William II. From then until World War I, the German population increased greatly, and the Second Industrial Revolution consolidated, with Germany ultimately becoming the leading European power. In the cultural sphere, many trends coexisted (realism, impressionism, etc.).