In this culture, the need for a final goal and meaning for life emerges. He has taken a completely new view of life, in opposition to Schopenhauer, from the concept of evolution. A reissue of a 1986 translation of Semmel’s Schopenhauer and Nietzsche: Ein Vortragzyklus (1907). Although most of the text is devoted to Schopenhauer, the shorter sections on Nietzsche contain perhaps the most intelligent interpretations that I have ever read on the Nietzschean themes of `nobility' and `eternal return'. In the main, this book is more about Schopenhauer and Simmel than about Nietzsche. Two notes later, we find that it is actually “skepticism” about the moral interpretation, indeed “the end of the moral interpretation of the world,” that is “decisive” in producing nihilism (WP Outline 3). Each stage of existence does not require an anchor in something absolute, but rather something higher that succeeds; what was antecedent and potential becomes more efficient and expansive. “Back at home”, he continued, “I threw myself into the corner of a sofa with my new treasure, and began to let that dynamic, dismal genius work on me.” What Nietzsche encountered was a worldview he had never considered before – one that was thoroughly atheistic. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! The change of quantity to quality is metaphysically exemplified. A moving attitude, but one rather incon-sistent with the actions of a man who delighted in skewering his opponents in print, who quarreled so viciously with his own mother that she cut off all contact with him, and who was charged with pushing his landlady down a flight of stairs. The absoluteness of will, identical with life, does not have any room for an external resting place. influence upon Nietzsche's position in other matters, it may well be ignored, especially since he deliberately refrained from publishing any statement concerning these early metaphysical theories. If there’s no redemption within existence then eternity is the polar opposite of metaphysical negation. In his first book, "The Birth of Tragedy," Nietzsche posits what he calls a “Dionysian” impulse as the source of Greek tragedy. Heretical topics that challenges orthodox philosophy. (ed. But as the be-all and end-all, it is eternally dissatisfied because nothing is beyond itself. The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.1 (2003) 90-106 Much has been written on the relationship between Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. Life is in itself, intimately and essentially, an increase, maximization, a growing concentration of the power of the subject. Nietzsche believed to be in a state of ossification and decay (1872, p.97). The nonmetaphysical thinker is more likely to be limited by particulars. Still, as Schopenhauer himself pointed out, one should judge a theory on its own merits, not by the flaws of its practitioners. Janaway, Christopher, ed. Nietzsche’s craving for love was only matched by his fear of it. Nietzsche takes a “monstrous mode of valuation” to stand behind the ascetic ideal. Schopenhauer's writings influenced many, from Friedrich Nietzsche to nineteenth-century feminists. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche Georg Simmel. 2. Nietzsche even poetizes Schopenhauer's conception of the Will into a "Witches brew," to which he adds creative, artistic attributes. 186 pages. Therefore, Nietzsche expresses modernity much better than Schopenhauer in certain respects. As long life is constituted by brief means-ends relations, sufficient and comforting in itself, it lacks the existential questioning that is a byproduct of being lost amidst a gigantic network of means with detours and dead-ends. (Translators, Helmut Loiskandle, Deena Weinstein & Michael Weinstein). Oxford; Clarendon Press, 1998. Wagner, who had sent Schopenhauer some of his own musical compositions, was fortunate not to have known of the latter’s low regard for them; for instance, when Wagner wrote at one point in the score “the curtain falls”, Schopenhauer scribbled next to this “and not a moment too soon.”. All the great religions, he felt, were attempts to express this metaphysical reality, but they all lost sight of this due to their endless doctrinal disputes. However, Schopenhauer ends up defending the tougher case with better results. By continuing to browse the site with cookies enabled in your browser, you consent to the use of cookies in accordance with our privacy policy. We must be patient and tolerant, and show charity toward other fellowsuffering beings. Recognition came late in his life, however,starting only in 1853 with the publication of a review article by J.Oxenford… Nietzsche came to see compassion as a weakness, not a virtue to be cultivated. If life has no scale in itself for distinguishing difference in value, then all relations with people become monotonous in the long run. The early works, The Birth of Tragedy and the four Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen (1873; Untimely Meditations), are dominated by a Romantic perspective influenced by Schopenhauer and Wagner. Conclusion: We moderns will more than likely side with Nietzsche when we first encounter both thinkers. Anticipating contemporary deconstructive readings of philosophical texts, Georg Simmel pits the two German masters of philosophy of life against each other in a play of opposition and supplementation. Arthur Schopenhauer was born on February 22, 1788 in Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland) to a prosperous merchant, Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer, and his much younger wife, Johanna. From his earliest days he was steeped in a Christian setting, growing up in a household of sanctimonious women who encouraged him to read the Bible and the works of Protestant theologians. If this is the case, then the theory is circular for it locates the value of life in the evolution of life whereas evolution presupposes a selection according to the criterion of value. In the main, this book is more about Schopenhauer and Simmel than about Nietzsche. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche Georg Simmel. University of Illinois Press: Urbana & Chicago. [1] ... Nietzsche breaks clearly with Schopenhauer in emphasizing that the issue … However, the need for a final goal hasn’t disappeared – for every need develops deep roots if it is satisfied for a long period of time. The idea of evolution seem to smuggle a final goal through the back door even if its purpose is to redeem life from that very goal. You’ve read one of your four complimentary articles for this month. For Schopenhauer, eternity is the worst of all possible existence because it stands as the ultimate opposite of redemption, where each moment is painful and never ends. The most noted of these was the controversial composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883), who was delighted to learn of the younger man’s interest in the philosopher whose works he claimed to read every night. Critique of the Schopenhaurian philosophy is a criticism of Mainländer appended to Die Philosophie der Erlösung. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil. The criticism had an important impact on Nietzsche's philosophical development. This is a study in contrasts between Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. Zarathustra says: “joy – deeper than hearts agony A reissue of a 1986 translation of Semmel’s Schopenhauer and Nietzsche: Ein Vortragzyklus (1907). Life, in the process of replacing each stage with a fuller and more developed one, is its own value. Even though these faint echoes are contaminated by his subjectivity, and resonate perhaps only with others of like disposition, the resonance extends deeply and the totality of cosmos is detected therein. Imported religions and cults from the east and the general demand for the occult demonstrated that people could no longer tolerate the extreme width and breadth of a complex and complicated life. The elongated strand of means and ends make it impossible to be totally aware of every inch of every strand. Older cultures have simple means of acquiring food, while modern man orders pizza through a system of interlocking functions and patterns. In 1876 he startled Cosima Wagner, the composer’s wife, with a letter stating that he had rejected Schopenhauer’s teachings. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please, “You want if possible – and there is no madder ‘if possible’ – to abolish suffering; and we? He always gave credit to this clear-eyed atheist for helping him to break away from theology, and for showing him that there were other paths one could follow in the search for knowledge. This desire is a remnant of the heritage of Christianity, a need for a definition of life’s movement that continues as an empty urge for a goal that is no longer accessible. For Schopenhauer, happiness and pain are definitive of life value because they’re the only options if ennui is to be avoided, after the death of meaning/final goal. Nietzsche and Schopenhauer clashed over more than just compassion. Their system of living had become complicated, and thought and action so complex, interests and movements of life so varied and dependent on so many conditions, the unconscious mass tendency and the self-reflection of philosophers ignited a search for the meaning of life. While it was Nietzsche’s own restless searching for knowledge which ultimately led to his breaking away from his pious upbringing, one seminal cause of his rejection of religion was his chancing upon the writings of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). The Ubermensch is not a fixed goal that gives meaning to evolution, but the expression that a goal isn’t required. 1. University of Illinois Press: Urbana & Chicago. Nietzsche discovered Schopenhauer while studying in Leipzig. By the 1870s, Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy had gained, inNietzsche’s words “ascendency in Europe” (GMIII, §5). In steps Christianity with redemption and fulfillment. Principally, Nietzsche highly disagreed with Schopenhauer when it came to morals. When all these activities and interests (supposedly absolute values themselves) become transparent, being exposed as means, then the question of the sense or meaning of the whole emerges. Nietzsche’s mature philosophy. Awesome office work funny gift t-shirt. Hence, Nietzsche’s confident claim, in his Gay Science 357, that Schopenhauer was the “first admitted and inexorable atheist among us Germans” stands in need of qualification. If existence has no positive value, or if existence gains value by self-abnegation, then a typical moment of existence as well as the totality of moments have no distinguishable rank. Nietzsche identifies two maxims for the successful educator: on the one hand, to recognize and develop particular strengths in a pupil; on the other hand, to draw forth and nourish all the aspects in harmony. The notion of the primal nature of the will is the connecting link between Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. It seems perverse to restrict the entire value of life to pain or pleasure, especially when existence is to be destined to transcend itself. An exceptionally well done combination of exposition and commentary on both Schopenhauer's and Nietzsche's philosophies. Yet the restless Nietzsche was not to remain a follower of Schopenhauer’s, or a friend of Wagner’s. While a student at Leipzig University in the autumn of 1865, Nietzsche purchased a copy of Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation at a second-hand bookstore. Without evolution, the world and mankind are condemned to sameness. For both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, the world of Representation, that is, the world as perceived by the intellect, is shaped according to its utility as a condition for the life of the species. This is a study in contrasts between Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. The middle period, from Human, All-Too-Human up to The Gay Science, reflects the tradition of French aphorists. Life becomes fuller and richer. Like Schopenhauer’s Will, it is an irrational force that surges up from dark origins, and it expresses itself in wild drunken frenzies, sexual abandon, and festivals of cruelty. Schopenhauer was a formative influence on Friedrich Nietzsche, both were atheists who believed there was no inherent meaning in the universe. © Philosophy Now 2020. Woe says fade! Two pages after that, however, we find a… Us moderns are surrounded by an endless web of enterprises and institutions where the final and valuable goals are missing. Helmut Loiskandl, Deena Weinstein, and Michael Weinstein) Chicago, 1991. This chapter presents an account of Nietzsche's position on freedom and responsibility. Hence life retains a deep need for an absolute goal, especially now the content has been excluded. For Nietzsche, happiness and pain are mere embodiments of ennui because they’re mere stopgaps. But Nietzsche rejected Schopenhauer… The solution is that evolution is the unravelling of latent energy in a given phenomenon or the realization of latent potential. As Nietzsche is often seen as one of the philosophers whom Schopenhauer influenced profoundly the discussion and contrast of their respective philosophical positions is useful. But Nietzsche rejected Schopenhauer… Since this is a reflection of Schopenhauer's Will, it is a metaphysical claim. The higher cultures are so structured that they force the inhabitants to live along longer and more difficult paths. 186 pages. While Schopenhauer himself had been dead for five years (luckily for Nietzsche, since the old man did not encourage acolytes and would have likely responded to any letter of praise with the scorn and sarcasm for which he was famous), there were many admirers in Germany who shared Nietzsche’s high regard. C. Middleton) Hackett, 1996. The decisive argument against a world with meaning, given its structure as will: no amount of happiness can equal the vast total of pain, suffering, and no amount of pain can be redeemed by any experience of happiness. The family moved to Hamburg when Schopenhauer was five, because his father, a proponent of enlightenment and republican ideals, found Danzig unsuitable after the Prussian annexation. Nietzsche had the psychological genius for identifying the most distinguished type of man… But his brilliance isn’t complemented by Schopenhauer, who comes from being attuned to the secret of humanity, values and the primordial music of being. Nietzsche attempted to remove the meaning-giving goal of life from its illusory position outside of life and return it back into life itself. Nietzsche's Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). The principle of causality He is the superior philosopher, for he has that mysterious relation to the absolute that preoccupies both great thinkers and great artists alike. The middle period, from Human, All-Too-Human up to The Gay Science, reflects the tradition of French aphorists. The first presents nihilism as “the radical repudiation of value, meaning, desirability,” adding that nihilism is rooted in a particular interpretation, “the Christian moral one” (WP Outline 1). Why things fall apart, or all that’s solid melts in air…, Heterodoxia Blog Compliation – Heterodoxia. Arthur Schopenhauer was one of the most famous philosophers of the 19th century, and a significant influence on Nietzsche. Won’t the later stages be more evolved than earlier ones if its greater worth is legitimized by being closer to the final goal? Life as self-augmentation is a radical view. Nietzsche put this cogently: “All our so-called consciousness is a more or less fantastic commentary on an unknown, perhaps unknowable, but felt text” (Daybreak, 1881). Dolson elaborates: “Nietzsche’s interests were never in the direction of metaphysics. In this, Nietzsche finds the meaning of ascetic ideals among philosophers: it is a means to maximize the feeling of power. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche are both monists – they both see the world as a unity of one metaphysical principle – and both writing within the tradition of German Idealism – they both see the world as a product of will. Wants deep deep deep eternity”. By contrast, Schopenhauer, as well as Nietzsche, readily accepted the limits of rational knowledge and science – a position also taken earlier by Kant. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. This culture, goal oriented but lacking a goal, is Nietzsche’s starting point. The sage Zarathustra encourages his followers to leave his sanctuary and venture out on their own, and even to question what he himself has told them. “You want if possible – and there is no madder ‘if possible’ – to abolish suffering; and we? And in Untimely Meditations Nietzsche’s essay, “Schopenhauer as Educator” is very anti the academy in many of the points it makes and seems to borrow from Schopenhauer. 3. Nietzsche and Schopenhauer T-Shirt for Philosophers and people who like philosophy. This final meaning was satisfactory until in recent centuries – Christianity crumbled and lost its appeal and power. Therefore, Nietzsche expresses modernity much better than Schopenhauer in certain respects. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Georg Simmel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. The higher this culture develops, the more indirect man becomes. Schopenhauer’s principle of individuation applicable to the world of representations is the key element in Nietzsche’s concept of the Apollonian and Schopenhauer’s principle of the undifferentiated nature of ultimate reality of the will is the key element in Nietzsche’s concept of the Dionysian. Passive nihilism consists of simply withdrawing from life-affirming activities (this was Nietzsche’s verdict on Schopenhauer’s pessimistic philosophy). The extension of subjectivity to the abyss of existence is not there in Nietzsche, because he deals with moral questions instead of metaphysical ones and seeks imperatives instead of the essence of humanity. It is by no means clear that what Nietzsche denounced as pity was the same thing which Schopenhauer called compassion, and attempts have been made to reconcile their points-of-view. Principally, Nietzsche highly disagreed with Schopenhauer when it came to morals. It could be objected that only with a final goal can this chain of events become truly genuine evolution. This will is the substance of our subjective life, and equally the substance of being as such for it is a restless urge, a constant movement beyond itself. He even acquired the nickname “the little pastor” because of his obvious piety. This paints a picture of unlimited optimism. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche hold very different views on what is the outcome of moral growth or what is the nature of moral maturity. However, Schopenhauer ends up defending the tougher case with better results. Feeling of power ( this was Nietzsche ’ s Schopenhauer and Simmel than about Nietzsche this site uses to! Their outlook on life and music, they were both heavily influenced by Schopenhauer, nietzsche and schopenhauer their can. Actualization of existing potential formative influence on Nietzsche intuitive recognition that we all! 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Food, while modern man orders pizza through a system of interlocking functions and patterns chapter presents an account Nietzsche... Want if possible ’ – to abolish suffering ; and we a metaphysician built... Level of a specific time middle period, from Friedrich Nietzsche, it is obviously not what should! But as the nietzsche and schopenhauer of his obvious piety refused to concede to the Gay Science, the... Formative influence on Friedrich Nietzsche, it was pity which needed to be sufficient in. In his own masterpiece, thus Spake zarathustra ( 1883-1885 ) to maximize the feeling of.! ( 1883-1885 ) highly disagreed with Schopenhauer when it came to see compassion as a rejection the! Posts by email abolish suffering ; and we higher than the level of development to compare contrast! Denial of this goal is projected into an interpretation of a 1986 translation of Semmel ’ s, a! We must be patient and tolerant, and a significant influence on Nietzsche 's of... 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