From 31 Decembers 2000 to this address Friedrich Nietzsche the first Italian mailing-list is on-linens dedicated to Nietzsche; to my warning an optimal meeting for gets passionate to it to you. Honestly it does not import to me null that enrolls 1000 persons but that they do not have nothing to say or to learn. .. therefore, it is opened to all those that want to grow, to discuss, to learn and still to exchange opinions, to ignited times also sure, but animated from wants TO KNOW ulteriorly this man, its thought and its works.
Thomas Calmasini
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"Although perhaps it does not exist other thinker the episodes of the whose biography, also those more closely personal ones, have been sceverati with much curiosity and analyze to you from the points of view more disparati (edificazione, search of the" scandal ", the episode key "detector"), the budget that can be drawn, after nearly ninety years from the apparition of the first biographical profile of Nietzsche [. ..] it is not encouraging: this life more is hidden that never and introduces in every its phase an amount of interrogated to you without sure answer, and that quite how much the more is imposing the mass of the particular that on they they have been collected ".
(Mazzino Montinari, Than what it has truly said Nietzsche, Astrolabio-Ubaldini Publisher, Rome 1975, p. 11)
In this page:
Friedrich Nietzsche is born to Röcken, in Sassonia, 15 October 1844, son of the shepherdesses of the village. Its father died to trentasei years, in the July of 1849, for one not very defined cerebral disease; the successive year died also the fratellino of Nietzsche? it had only two years? Joseph. The mother moved itself in same year (1850) to Naumburg with all the two sons (Friedrich and its Elisabeth sister). To Naumburg Friedrich it carried out its first studies, that it continued in the college of Door, where met Paul Deussen, with to which it began, in 1864, the university studies of theology to Bonn. It followed also the lessons of classic filologia of Friedrich Ritschl and, the following year, decided to move itself to Lipsia, where also Ritschl had been moved, in order to dedicate itself to the study of this discipline.
In 1869, to venticinque years, just thanks to the support of Ritschl, Nietzsche obtain the chair of language and Greek literature to the university of Basel. It must admit that to those times the university of Basel (one of the most ancient university of Europe, founded in 1460) poured in serious difficulties financial institutions and the students enrolled were little more than a hundred and it was not rare that in those times the university made confidence, for its chairs, on value young people which Nietzsche.
The tie more important than those times was without doubt that one with Richard and Cosima Wagner (than Nietzsche it met for before the time, still student, in the November of 1868 to Lipsia).
In those years it published a written series of, that they so to speak marked its passage from the philology to the philosophy: above all birth of the tragedy from the spirit of music (1872) and the four Considerations inattuali (1873? 1876). To Basel the physical suffering for an evil not very characterized were aggravated also that it was manifested already from 1865: strong headaches, vomito, it disturbs alla.vista. (attention because in sure biographies he writes himself here that in the same Nietzsche year it had been cured to Lipsia for sifilide, I am not absolutely of agreement with this affirmation! !!). The health of Nietzsche in this period had become truly critical; attacks of headaches that lasted also thirty hours consecutive, the sight that by now did not allow not even more than to read etc independently it? In 1876 for getting worse itself of the health it takes a year of dismissal from the University. And in that year of dismissal the first peregrinations of Nietzsche between Italy, France, Switzerland and Germany begin. Expired the year of Nietzsche dismissal it tries to resume the 19 lessons but March 1879 after "a FRIGHTFUL attack" it is forced to place the crews and to say goodbye to the university definitively one week before the closing of the winter semestre. In all year 1879 it very had 118 days of violent attacks, as it called them, in practical a day on three.
In 1878 exits first part of Human, too much human. One book for the free spiritswhile for the second part it will have to wait for the successive year, 1879.
1881 are the time of Dawnthe following year knew to Rome Lou Andreas Salomč and published Gaia science (1882). Between 1883 and 1885 exited what from many its is considered capolavoro: Therefore Zarathustra spoke, to which they make followed Al.di.lą.del God and of the evil (1886), Genealogia of the moral (1887) and, between the 88 and the 89, The Antichrist Twilight of the idol, Ecce homo. In you open them of the 1888 Nietzsche went to live slowly to the last one of via Carl Alberto n. 6 to Turin. Turin is a city of which Nietzsche was declared enthusiastic and in which it began to give, in January of the 89, serious signs of mental imbalance. The friend Overbeck went it to take and it brought back it to Basel, where it came interned in one clinical for nervous diseases; then he will be transferred to clinical the university one of Jena, that lascerą in March of 1890, in order to move itself from the mother to Jena. Between ' the 91 and ' 97 conditions of Nietzsche got worse radically (did not recognize more the friends, had attend approached of ira, were forced on a wheelchair, it did not speak more and urlava). In you open them of the ' 97, to the dead women of the mother, the Elisabeth sister carried Nietzsche with himself to Weimar. It died towards noon of 25 August 1900. Little, too many little lines in order to delineate the life, the work, the thought of Nietzsche? and I anticipatamente ask excuse the reader if I have omitted many, too many important aspects of the life of this man, in my salvation run all the biographies, the written works of contour in more than a century from its dead women.
The first period
The first phase of the thought of Nietzsche is characterized from the filologici studies and the passion for Greek world, from the infuence of the reflection of Schopenhauer and from the sconfinata admiration for the work of Wagner: The birth of the tragedy new vision of the Greek civilization re-unites such influences in order to generate one.
According to Nietzsche the Greek spirit of the origins is dominated from the impulse dionisiaco, that is from the feeling of the fundamental caoticitą of the being: it is the triumph of Dioniso, God of the drunkness, the orgia and the passion, that it finds its better expression in music. The apollineo impulse, that limpid harmony of shapes corresponds to the traditional image of the which serene classicitą and, it is for the philosopher only reaction of one decadent morbosa sensibility and of the irrazionalitą and the excess of the existence: its completed expression more is the sculpture. I two impulses are made up in tragedyof Aeschylus and Sofocle. Already Euripide, but, ideal disciple of Socrate, announce the dead women of the tragedy. Socrate is the symbolic figure of one vision of the razionalistica and optimistic world, of the philosophy of the division of subject and object, of the supremacy of the intelletto on the instinct and the passion and of the depreciation for the free and innocent creativity dionisiaca. With Socrate the ideal is prevailed to the man of science and of mediocrity, of one only theoretical life: the feeling prevails of emergency, data from the pretension existence of a true ordering of the world. In Inattuali considerations Nietzsche approaches in the Socrate controversy to Strauss, Feuerbach and Comte: the idea of a world that carries out an objective and conoscibile order second, but not modifiable, renders the historical action foolish. The man, submergeeed from the own storiografica conscience, he is incapable to create new history: lo stoicism it is only an other aspect of rationalism, inspired from the faith riposta in science from the positivismo. To such signs of forfeiture of the Nietzsche man contrappone the return to the culture dionisiaca and the rebirth of German spirit, preannounced in the philosophy of Schopenhauer and music of Wagner.
The second period
In Human too much human it inaugurates the second phase of the thought of Nietzsche, in which the philosopher radical critic of the culture puts into effect one, in particular of the metaphysics and the Christian religion. The antiscientific and antipositivistica controversy is attenuated in sight of a riavvicinamento to the scientific knowledge, conceived disinterested and free hour like from metaphysical worries. At the same time the philosopher abandons the estetismo and the blind admiration for Wagner ( Parsifal it comes defined hour the apex of the European forfeiture), in order to exalt "Mediterranean" music of Rossini and Bizet. Mature he moreover the decision to leave "the scholarly and insipid" studies filologici. It plans therefore to construct one chemistry of the ideas and the moral feelings that monster as every spiritual production has one material base: all truth they are historically situabili and the evidence of a proposizione is not sign of its truth, but of the fact that it corresponds better than others to the psychological and social conditionings.
The third period
The third phase is opened with Therefore Zarathustra spoke: the work, of difficult interpretation, is one requisitoria against the ideal of the mediocrity and the several shapes of moral of the renunciation, between which Nietzsche it now numbers also the philosophy of Schopenhauer, cause its pessimism and its rassegnato asceticism.
The Christianity, in particular, it is characterized from resentment spirit of the weak people towards strongest, from a moral of slaves that denies all that that it is different from himself. To the moral of the Nietzsche renunciation contrappone the aristocratic moral of the total affirmation of himself, of the acceptance of all that that is land and corporeo, of trasmutazione of all the values: it is died of God, the end of every trascendenza, religion or metaphysics, of the truth immutable and the systems of absolute values (nichilismo nietzschiano). The new virtues, the fierezza, the joy, the health, the love, the inimicizia, the war, the amoralism of power politics and the sense of fullness of the art.
The superman (or oltreuomo) it is the man totally independent from the traditional values, the man who places itself al.di.lą.del well and of the evil: the advanced man chip ax with joy the life as he is, and follows voluntarily the way that the men of the flock have followed blind. In a world dominated from the case and the irrazionalitą, the single necessity is that one of the will that it wants to reaffirm if same; the superman has known to identify the own will with that one of the world, to accept the land grandmother who resists it: it is power will incarnated. The doctrines of the superman and the will of power more find their completed sense in relation to the topic of the eternal return. Against the tradition giudaico-Christian who attributes to the time a linear direction and a structure articulated in past, present and future, Nietzsche denies the existence of a aim of the historical course that extends the single moments. It means to you and directions are only perspective inner to the game of forces of the power will: every moment, and ciascuna existence in every moment, has all the its sense in himself. The superman, thanks to the amor it makes you, to the joyful acceptance of the life therefore as it is - in the past, the present and the eternity - must construct an existence in which every moment it has all the entire its sense: the eternal present of the life.
Critic to the subdivision of the nietzscheano thought:
Personally I do not find corrected this "subdivision" of the nietzscheano thought, like already pointed out from professor the George Penzo ( An invite to the thought of Nietzsche and. MURSIA pag. 44 1990) "... in every work of Nietzsche the unit of its filosofare can be picked. And who is just the problem of the unit us door not to be of agreement on that subdivision of the works of Nietzsche in three periods, that she comes for the most shared in the within of the nietzscheana literature " and still: "To our warning, this distinction also does not respect the unit of nietzscheano philosphear, that exactly present in every it is not only written, but in every page and indeed in every aforisma" .
Therefore we can continue saying that, for a first approach to Nietzsche and comfort, we divide its thought in three periods while deepening its works, reading them and examining in depth we find them to you a thread continuous conductor.
The same Nietzsche in the period in which writes first part of Zarathustra it has a singular exchange to epistolare with Peter Gast. When it receives the book Peter Gast does not understand to us granché; but in some way the style it turns out familiar and therefore expresses its perplexity in the shape of a praise, without to renounce to a hint a po' malignant: "To this book of it must augur the spread of the Bible, its canonical prestige, all its series of comments, on which I found in part its prestige". Nietzsche lets to flatter - "then my life would not be failed? " -, in order to discover later on that Gast, with its "series of comments", has touched just the nevralgico point: although the cordial auguries of a wide spread, are not understood. THE NEW BIBLE NEEDS OF EXPLANATIONS. Hurriedly the author supplies to them, in more than one version. To the beginning of you open them, Overbeck learns that to the author of Zarathustra something of decisive has come in mind "reading for entire Dawn and Gaia science : "E' a fact that I have prepared the comment before the text". In its books not there is nearly a line that cannot serve from explanation of the Zarathustra. In incomprehension case there is therefore a single remedy: to read Nietzsche. It tries to shock Malwida suggesting that with this book "it has defied all the religions" - it has been one "bravura piece" and one "madness" al same time "to write the comment before the text". To Gast it makes to know - "it is curious" - than it would have to be returned straight until Schopenhauer like educator in order to find explanations on the Zarathustra. It must have suspected now, to latest, that that declared the successive year: its sacred book was "dark, inaccessible and risibile for all " . They were not understood, neither he neither the book. It had given to the humanity conceived and an aesthetically written book under divine inspiration - and this not wanted it. The publisher of it published three parts and then he said enough; the quarter if it published same Nietzsche to it, the elefantessa, to own expenses: edition outside commerce for the friends who scuotevano the head.
You see, I I teach the superman to you! superman is sense of the earth. Your will says to you: it is the superman the sense of the earth! I ask for to you, siblings you remain faithful to earth and you do not believe to those that they speak you about ultramundane hopes! They are of the poisoners, than they know it or not. They are spregiatori of the life, moribondi and same they poison to you, of which the earth are tired: if they go some also! Once the sacrilegio against God it were the sacrilegio larger, but God is dead man, and is died with God also those sacrileghi. To commit sacrilegio against the earth are hour the more frightful thing, and to make of viscere of the imperscrutabile greater account that of the sense of the earth!
(they give Therefore Zarathustra spoke)
Nietzsche is a writer to systematic and extremely it originates them, whose production stands out solitary in the panorama of the history of the modern and contemporary philosophy. The works of the maturity, in particular, are written with one aforistico and poetico style: lirismo, profetico tone and philosophy are stirred in inestricabile way, often rendering the interpretation difficult and reductive. To that it must add the problem of the posthumous written ones: the operated systematic reconstruction from the Elisabeth sister and one of the disciples of Nietzsche, beyond to being ideologically debatable and widely responsible of the nazi interpretations of the thought of the philosopher, will go clearly against its refusal of every philosophical system and against the alive fascination for the shape of the fragment and the aforisma. The critical edition of all the written ones of Nietzsche, edited by two Italians, G. Necks and M. Montinari, will second give back to integrity of fragments a chronological order, demonstrating like The power will published in 1906 it is a manipulated and tamed work.
The aphorism: Nietzsche adores the aforisma, it considers the aforisma like contestazione to the thought that nutra expected systematic and, moreover, he is convinced therefore to express in coincided way that that is essential in its thought; of other part the same Nietzsche admits in order to read and to understand a aforisma is need of the art of heat (das Wiederkäuen). Nietzsche it wrote in all more than 5000 aphorisms and unfortunately it is just in this immensest forest of aphorisms that we find the greater insidie of the Nicciano thought; if we take a aforisma for time we can "make to say" to Nietzsche what we want, and is this the greater error that can be committed. An other splendid vision of why Nietzsche wrote in aphorisms ce donates it an other time Maximum Fine in its book Nietzsche the stateless person of the existence bringing back testualmente: "Sure to the choice of this shape it contributed also the reading of the French moralisti that it had been advised from Rče, but decisive - beyond, of course, to the intimate nature of its thought that of for himself is asistematic - it was its method of job determinato in its turn from the disease and the conditions of its sight (Fine it writes that Nietzsche had an autonomy in order to read and to write of one score of minuteren to the day): during its longest Nietzsche walks a series of thoughts could concatenare all in order to throw them already quickly to re-enters, taking advantage of those little of autonomy that it had in order to write, but could not elaborate an entire work organic.
Nietzsche is perhaps the better interpreter of the end of a world and the need of renewal of all an age: prophet with of the forfeiture and the rebirth, will give origin to the interpretations more disagrees, than they will translate themselves in the more various infuences. Time to materialista or antipositivista, esistenzialista time or prophet of nazism, the philosopher shares all the ambiguities of the intellectual vanguards and artistic bourgeois of first the nine hundred.
The nazi instrumentalization of Nietzsche, tied to the manipulation of the posthumous written ones, will be met on the slight knowledge of superman, will of power, aristocratic moral, and will make lever also on the objective ambiguous indications that the topic of the eternal return alloy to the renewal of the culture and the society. Not nazi readings of Nietzsche will appear already in years Thirty: - Jaspers will be inspired to the amor it makes you for a notion of the freedom as acceptance of just the destiny; - Heidegger will exalt Nietzsche like the philosopher of the end of the metaphysical tradition. To the extreme interpretations, nationalists and racists, Contrappone that one that a representative of the revolutionary wing of the European thought will see in Nietzsche, a demistificatore of "the bourgeois" culture, above all in order to have emphasized, like - Marx and Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) the material bases (economic or psychological) of the spiritual productions. The aspects to eversi you of its reflection will come evidence to you in the tied French culture above all to surrealism, that it will draw inspiration from the reflections of the philosopher on the irrazionalitą and caoticitą of the existence, on the lack of a aim in the history and on the relativity of all the values and of all the truth. During the first half of the 1900's and still in the last decade of the 1800's the extraordinary predominion of Nietzsche in the European intellectual life was, essentially, literary and debtor, in wide measure, of the poetica imagination of the philosopher. Gabriel Of notice discovered Nietzsche in 1892 through an article on the Zarathustra appeared in?Revue the Blanche. From this and other second hand readings it reached the conviction of to have been nietzscheano anchor before having read Nietzsche, and its ideas on Nietzsche? often developed with reference to Wagner? you appeared in some articles of the?Tribuna? and then they were deepened and rielaborate aesthetically in Triumph of the dead women and in Vergini of cliffs. The French simbolisti and Stefan Gorge they elevated Nietzsche to the prophet rank, and noticed in its thought the mythical advance of a new one to be human. Andrč Gide deeply ambiguous figure taken between the traboccante and immortale of the life saw in Nietzsche one and nausea disillusa and decadent celebration of the existence. Thomas Mann it interpreted Nietzsche recalling itself to the irony, to the intellectual radicalization, psychological and literary of our intellectual and artistic life, Gottfried Benn the expressionist poet, past the quintessence of Nietzsche in?spegnere the substance to favor of the expression? which, second the same Benn, lead to a language incapable to wish and to realize other that flashing, demonizzazione and anesthesia. The impact of Nietzsche on the European literature and the other limbs wide and was diffused, and influenced, between the others, the Russian simbolisti? between which Vyacheslav Ivanov, I would go Belyi and Valeri Brysov -, But also various authors which August Strindberg, Georg Branes, William Butler Yeats, Walt Whitman, Robert Musil and Hermann Hesse. Gustav Mahler, Frederk Delius and Richard Strass they constituted the answer of music to the philosophy of Nietzsche and Gorge Bernard Shaw it already carried the Ubermensch on the London scene in 1903.
In contrast with the articulate character of the artistic reception of N. the reaction of the philosophical disciplines in the first half of XX the century was amazingly limited and provincial. The developed interpretations of Nietzsche give Max Scheler and Karl Jaspers they not only constituted without some doubt great philosophical works in relation to the analysis of the thought of Nietzsche but also in the perspective wider than an increase of the same concept of philosophy. And Heidegger it began its lessons on Nietzsche in 1936, continuing them until the end of the war, in 1945. But it of it did not publish the text until 1961 and they divennero therefore, clearly, a work of according to post-war period. The comparison with the interpretations of Scheler and Jaspers moreover was decidedly hindered during the nazi period and written theirs were not totally fruibili before the aim of the second world war. We can therefore say that, while the interest for Nietzsche during the first half of our century was peculiar to the literary and artistic culture, it placed after the 1945 issues and essentially philosophical problems. It must also to add that during the second world war, and especially after it, the interest for Nietzsche decreased strongly and around to its work spread a veil of Hush. The impulse to one resumption of the studies came from the United States thanks to the translations and the esegesi of Walter Kaufmannthat he reconsidered Nietzsche like?filosofo, psychologist, Antichrist, influencing soon the search in Italy, France and, finally, Germany. Although the emphasis came hour mails on teoretiche issues and philosophical very difficultly the new attention for Nietzsche like philosophical worry or like riscoperta of a N philosopher in traditional sense could be defined. The atmosphere intellectual in which the resumption of the studies on N taken shape was such to render the distinction of kind between philosophy and literature ininfluente or insignificant. More important appears instead the fact that Nietzsche came considered like the initiator of this trasgressione: a trasgressione to leave from which the carried out one has been produced towards the postmodern one.
To origins of this process are two profiles of Nietzsche that, although they are not sure first in chronological terms, enunciate for their pregnante character, anticipating? in their contrapporsi? a peculiar tension to the interpretation that of Nietzsche will offer XX the century. They find themselves in the books of Lou Salomč Friedrich Nietzsche: one intellectual biography of 1894, and in that one of the sister of the philosopher, Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche, Life of Friedrich Nietzscheappeared in two volumes (the second of which divided in two volumes) between 1895 and 1904. Both the authors possessed one deep acquaintance of the Nietzsche philosopher and man. Lou Salomč had already published parts of its book on some reviews and Nietzsche, come to acquaintance of its intention to write on he, supplied them news on the own life and just the thought that it used wide. Erwin Rohdeone of the most intimate friends than Nietzsche, observed that null and than better richer than deep acquaintances and acumen never had been written until then on the philosopher.
Elisabeth Nietzsche instead, that the life had followed the brother for all, divenne also heir of its literary patrimony in quality of organizzatrice of the Nietzsche Archives to Weimar and had approached the immense material constituted from its unknown philosophical fragments and its correspondence.
These two women probably had one acquaintance of advanced Nietzsche to that one of anyone other in their age and theirs written posseggono without some doubt one special meant for emerging of one first image of Nietzsche.
Bibliographical references
Friedrich Nietzsche Epistolario 1875-1879 Volume III (ed. it. Adelphi, Milano)
Friedrich Nietzche, Samtliche Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe, hg. von Giorgio Colli un Mazzino Montinari, Munchen/Berlin 1980 (ed. it. Adelphi, Milano)
Friedrich Nietzsche, Werke in 3 Banden, hg. von Karl Schelechta, Munchen 1956
Curt Paul Janz, Friedrich Nietzsche, Biographie in 3 Banden, Munchen 1978 (trad. it. cit.)
Joachim Köhler, Nietzsche (ed. it. Rusconi)
Giorgio Penzo, Invito al pensiero di Nietzsche (ed. Mursia1990)
Massimo Fini, Nietzsche L'apolide dell'esistenza (ed. Marsilio Editori 2002)
© Copyright 1997-2002 Thomas Calmasini.
