Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom
GA 5
Part II. The Psychology of Friedrich Nietzsche as a Psychopathological Problem
From the Wiener Klinische Rundschau, 14th Year, No. 30, 1900
[ 1 ] These lines have not been written to add to the statements of the opponents of Friedrich Nietzsche, but with the intention to offer a contribution to the understanding of this man from a point of view which, no doubt, comes into consideration in passing judgment on his strange ways of thought. The thorough student of the world conception of Friedrich Nietzsche will come upon innumerable problems which can only be clarified through psychopathology. On the other hand, it should be of the greatest importance for psychiatry for students to occupy themselves with an important personality who has had an immeasurably great influence upon the culture of the age. In addition, this influence has an essentially different character from the effects philosophers usually have upon their pupils. For Nietzsche does not work upon his contemporaries through the logical power of his arguments on the contrary, the wide dissemination of his concepts is to be traced to the same reasons which make it possible for zealots and fanatics to play their role in the world at all times.
[ 2 ] A full clarification of the state of Friedrich Nietzsche's mind from the psychiatric point of view is not to be given here. Such an explanation is not possible today because a complete and true clinical picture of his sickness does not yet exist. Everything that has been presented concerning the history of his sickness, has the character of something fragmentary and contradictory. But the observation of Nietzsche's philosophy under the eye of psychopathology is entirely possible today. The real work of the psychiatrist would perhaps begin exactly where that of the psychologist, which is presented here, ceases. But this work is absolutely necessary for the complete solution of “the problem of Nietzsche.” Only on the basis of such a psychopathological symptomatology will the psychiatrist be able to accomplish his task.
[ 3 ] One quality which penetrates the entire creative activity of Nietzsche is the lack of a sense of objective truth. What science strove after as truth was fundamentally nonexistent for him. During the period shortly before his complete collapse into insanity, this lack increased to a formidable hatred of everything called logical reasoning. “Honest things, like honest people, do not carry their reasons in their hand. It is indecent to show all five fingers. What has to be proved first is worth little,” he says in 1888, shortly before the Götzendämmerung, Twilight of Idols, was written, just before his illness (Volume VIII of the complete German edition of Nietzsche's Works, p. 71). Because he lacked this sense of truth, he never fought through the battle which so many have to experience when, in their development they are forced to give up an acquired opinion. At his confirmation, when he was 17, he was completely a believer in God. Indeed, over three years later, as he left the Gymnasium in Schulpforta, he wrote, “To Him to Whom I owe most, I bring the first fruits of my gratitude. What more can I sacrifice to Him than the warm feelings of my heart, which perceives His love more actively than ever: His love, which has allowed me to experience this most beautiful hour of my existence? May He, the true God, guard me henceforth!” (E. Foerster-Nietzsche, Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches, The Life of Friedrich Nietzsche, Vol. I, p. 194). Within a short time, a complete atheist developed out of this faithful believer in God, without an inner struggle. In his memoirs which he sketched in 1888, under the title Ecce Homo, he speaks about his inner struggles. “Religious difficulties,” he says, “I do not know from experience ... God, immortality of the soul, salvation, life beyond, are pure concepts to which I have paid no attention, to which I have devoted no time, not even as a child; was I, perhaps, never sufficiently child-like for this? I absolutely do not know atheism as a result, still less as an event; it is understood by me only as instinct.” (M. G. Conrad, Ketzerblut, p. 182) It is indicative of Nietzsche's spiritual constitution that he asserts here that even as a child he had not given attention to the religious imaginations or ideas he mentions. From his biography which his sister has given us, we know that his classmates called him “the little pastor” because of his religious expressions. All this shows that he had overcome the religious convictions of his youth with greatest ease.
[ 4 ] The psychological process by which Nietzsche comes to the content of his conceptions is not that through which a human being passes who strives toward objective truth. One can already observe this in the way in which he arrives at his fundamental ideas in his first work, Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik, The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music. Nietzsche assumes that two impulses lie at the basis of ancient Greek Art: the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Through the Apollonian impulse, the human being produces a beautiful image of the world, a task of peaceful observation. Through the Dionysian impulse the human being transfers himself into a condition of intoxication; he observes not only the world, but he permeates himself with the eternal forces of existence, and brings these to expression in his art. The epic style and sculpture are the results of Apollonian art. The lyric style, the musical work of art, are derived from the Dionysian impulse. The human being inclined to the latter impulse permeates himself with the world spirit, and brings its essence to manifestation in his artistic expressions. He himself becomes a work of art. “In song and in dance man expresses himself as a member of a higher community; he has forgotten how to walk and speak; he is about to take a dancing flight into the air. His very gestures bespeak enchantment.” (Geburt der Tragödie, Birth of Tragedy, ¶ 1) In this Dionysian state the human being forgets himself; he feels that he no longer is an individuum, but rather an organ of the universal world will. In the festival games which were held in honor of the god Dionysus, Nietzsche sees the Dionysian expressions of the human spirit. He now imagines that the dramatic an of the Greeks arose from such games: that a higher union of the Dionysian with the Apollonian took place. In the oldest drama was created an Apollonian image of the human beings, aroused by the Dionysian impulse.
[ 5 ] Nietzsche came to such ideas through Schopenhauer's philosophy. He simply translated the Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, World as Will and Idea, into the artistic. The world of reflection is not the real world; it is only a subjective image which our soul creates of things. According to Schopenhauer's opinion, through observation the human being absolutely does not arrive at the real essence of the world. The latter unveils itself to him in his willing. The art of reflection is the Apollonian, that of willing, the Dionysian. Nietzsche needed to go but one little step beyond Schopenhauer in order to arrive where he stood in the Geburt der Tragödie, The Birth of Tragedy. Schopenhauer himself had already assigned music to an exceptional position among the arts. He calls all other arts mere images of the will; he calls music a direct expression of the archetypal Will itself.
[ 6 ] Now Schopenhauer never worked upon Nietzsche in such a way that one could say that the latter had become a dependent. In the book, Schopenhauer als Erzieher, Schopenhauer as Educator, Nietzsche describes the impression which he had received from the teaching of the pessimistic philosopher: “Schopenhauer talks with himself, or, if one absolutely must imagine a listener, then one imagines a son whom the father instructs. It is an honest, strong, kindly expression, before one who listens with love. We lack such writers. The powerful feeling of well-being of the speaker surrounds us at the first sound of his voice. It is an experience similar to entering a large forest; we breathe deeply, and suddenly feel ourselves exceptionally well. Here is an even, harmonious, strengthening air: this is what we feel. Here is a certain inimitable openness and naturalness, such as those people have who are at home in themselves; indeed, who are at home in a very rich house.” This aesthetic impression is decisive in Nietzsche in relation to Schopenhauer. He was not at all concerned with the teaching itself. Among the notes which he had made at the time he had composed the pean of praise, Schopenhauer als Erzieher, Schopenhauer as Educator, one finds the following: “I am far from believing that I have rightly understood Schopenhauer, but rather, I have learned to understand myself a little better through Schopenhauer; this is why I owe him the greatest gratitude. But, all in all, it does not seem important to me that one goes to the depths of a philosopher and brings to light exactly what he has taught in the fullest sense of the word, and so on; such an understanding is least of all suited to human beings who are looking for a philosophy of life, not for a new scholastic aptitude for their memory, and in the end it remains improbable that such knowledge really can be found.” (Nietzsche's Works, German Edition, 1896, Volume X, p. 285)
[ 7 ] Nietzsche, therefore, builds his ideas concerning the birth of tragedy upon the foundation of a philosophical structure of learning which he presents, whether or not he has rightly understood it. He does not search for logical, but mainly for aesthetic satisfaction.
[ 8 ] A further evidence of his lack of a sense for truth is shown in his behavior during the composing of the book, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, in the year 1876. At this time he not only wrote everything he could in praise of Wagner, but also many of the ideas against Wagner which he produced later in the Fall Wagner, The Case of Wagner. In Richard Wagner in Bayreuth he took only what could serve for the glorification of Richard Wagner and of his art; meanwhile, he kept the negative heretic judgment in his desk. Of course, no one would act in this manner who had a sense for objective truth. Nietzsche did not want to offer a true character sketch of Wagner, but rather to sing a song of praise for the master.
[ 10 ] During this time, Nietzsche made a statement by which he placed himself in conscious opposition to the points of view which natural science represents. This statement is his often-cited teaching about the “eternal return” of things. In Duhring's Kursus der Philosophie, Course of Philosophy, he found an argument which was to prove that an eternal repetition of the same world events is not compatible with the fundamental principles of mechanics. It was exactly this that led him to accept such an eternal, periodic repetition of the same world events. All that happens today has already occurred innumerable times, and is to recur innumerable times. During this period he also speaks about the pleasure it gave him to set up counter-arguments against universally accepted truths. “What is the reaction of opinions? When one opinion ceases to be interesting, one tries to give it new attractiveness by encouraging its counter-argument. But, usually the counter-argument misleads, and makes new advocates; meanwhile it has become more interesting.” (Nietzsche's Works, German Edition, 1897, Volume XI, P. 65) And because he understands that his counter-opinion does not suit the old natural scientific truths, he makes the statement that these truths are not truths in themselves, but are errors which human beings have only accepted because they have proved useful in life. The fundamental truths of mechanics and natural science are really errors: this he wanted to emphasize in a work for which he sketched the outline in 1881. He tried all this only for the sake of the idea of the “eternal return.” The logically compulsive force of truth was to be denied in order to be able to set up a counter-argument which runs Contrary to the essence of this truth.
[ 11 ] Nietzsche's struggle against truth gradually assumed still greater proportions. In his Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, already in 1885 he asks whether or not truth has any value at all. “The will to truth which is to tempt us to many a hazardous enterprise, this famous truthfulness of which hitherto all philosophers have spoken with respect, what questions has this will to truth not laid before us? What strange, perplexing, questionable questions! It is already a long story, yet it seems as if it were hardly begun ... Granted that we want this truth, why not rather untruth?”
[ 12 ] Such questions, of course, can also enter the most logical brain. The theory of knowledge must occupy itself with these questions. But for a real thinker, the natural. consequence of the appearance of such questions is the search for the sources of human knowledge. A world of the most subtle philosophical problems begins for him. None of this is the case with Nietzsche. He enters into absolutely no relationship with those questions which have to do with logic. “I am still waiting for a philosophical doctor in the most exceptional sense of the word; one who pursues the problems of the entire health of a people, of a time, a race of humanity; such a doctor will have the courage to bring my suspicion to a head, and will dare to express the sentence, ‘With all philosophers until now it is not at all a question of truth, but it is a question of something else, let us say, of health, future growth, power, life ...!’” Thus Nietzsche wrote in the autumn of 1886 in the Preface to the second edition of Fröhliche Wissenschaft, Joyful Wisdom. One can observe that the inclination is present in Nietzsche to feel a contradiction between life-usefulness, health, power, etc., and truth. Here, natural feelings would not find an antithesis, but a harmony. In Nietzsche, the question of the value of truth does not appear as a need for theoretical knowledge, but rather as an outlet for his lack of objective sense for truth. This is shown grotesquely in a sentence which also appears in the Preface quoted above: “And in regard to our future, one will hardly find us again on the paths of those Egyptian youths who made the temples unsafe at night, embraced columns, and unveiled everything which for good reason had been kept hidden. They unveiled it, uncovered it, and wanted to bring it into bright light. No, this bad taste, this will for truth, for truth at any price, this madness of youth in their love for truth, is offensive to us.” From this revulsion against truth stems Nietzsche's hatred for Socrates. The drive for objectivity of this latter thinker was something absolutely repulsive to him. This comes to expression in the strongest way in his Götzendämmerung, Twilight of Idols, 1888: “On the basis of his origin, Socrates belongs to the lowest people. Socrates was the mob. One knows, one can see for oneself, how ugly he was. ... Socrates was a misunderstanding.”
[ 13 ] Let us compare the philosophical scepticism of other personalities with the struggle Nietzsche wages against truth. Ordinarily, at the bottom of this scepticism a sense for truth is really expressed. The drive for truth impels the philosophers to search for its value, its sources, its limits. In Nietzsche this drive does not exist, and the way he approaches these problems of knowledge is but the result of his erroneous sense of truth. It is understandable that in a talented personality such a lack comes to expression otherwise than in a subordinated way. However great the distance between Nietzsche and the psychopathically inferior people who lack a sense of truth in everyday life, qualitatively speaking, in him as in them one has to deal with the same psychological peculiarity which at least borders upon the pathological.
II
[ 14 ] In Nietzsche's world of ideas is revealed an impulse to destruction, which in his judgment of certain points of view and convictions, allowed him to go far beyond what appears psychologically comprehensible in a critic. It is indicative that by far the greatest part of all Nietzsche has written is the result of this drive for destruction. In the Geburt der Tragödie, Birth of Tragedy, the entire Western cultural development from Socrates and Euripides to Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner, is presented as a path of error. The Unzeitgemässen Betrachtungen, Untimely Observations, on which he began work in 1873, was started with the decided intention “to sing off the entire scale” of his “enmities.” Of the twenty observations planned, four were completed. Two of these are warlike writings which, in the most cruel manner, ferret out the weaknesses of the opponent Nietzsche attacks, or of the opinions unsympathetic to him, without bothering in the least about the relative justification of the one assailed. Of course, the other two are hymns of praise of two personalities; nevertheless, in 1888 Nietzsche not only retracted everything (in the Fall Wagner, Case of Wagner) he had said in glorification of Wagner in 1876, but Wagner's art, which he first praised as the salvation and rebirth of the entire Western culture, he later represented as the greatest danger for this culture. And he also writes about Schopenhauer in 1888, “In this sequence he has interpreted art, heroism, genius, beauty, the will for truth, the tragedy, as consequential appearance of negation or the need for negation of the ‘will,’ and this, with the exception of Christianity, is the greatest psychological forgery in history. More carefully considered, in this he is merely the heir to Christian interpretation, only that he still knew how to sanction what was rejected by Christianity and the great cultural facts of humanity in a Christian, that is, in a nihilistic sense.” Therefore, even in face of things he once had admired, Nietzsche's sense of destruction, or drive toward destruction, does not rest. In the four writings which appeared from 1878 to 1882, the tendency to destroy established points of view outweighs all that Nietzsche himself brings forth as positive. For him it is of absolutely no consequence to search for new insights; he would much rather shake up those already existing. In 1888, he writes in his Ecce Homo about the work of destruction which he began in 1876 with his Menschliches Allzumenschliches Human, All Too Human, “One error after another is calmly laid upon ice; the ideal is not refuted—it freezes to death. Here, for example, freezes the genius; in another corner further on, freezes ‘the saint;’ under a thick icicle freezes ‘the hero;’ at the end freezes ‘the faith,’ the so-called conviction; sympathy also cools off considerably. Almost everywhere freezes the ‘thing in itself’ ...” “... Human, All Too Human, with which I prepared for myself a very quick, sudden end to all dragged-in, higher, cheating, ‘idealism,’ ‘beautiful feeling,’ and other womanlinesses ...” This drive for destruction incites Nietzsche to pursue with almost blind anger the victims upon whom he has thrown himself. He brings out judgments against an idea, against a personality whom he believes he must reject judgments which are not at all in relation to the reasons he offers for his rejection. The way he pursues opposing opinions does not differ in degree, but merely in manner from that in which typically argumentative people pursue their opponents. It is less a matter of the content of the judgment which Nietzsche brings forth. Often one can justify the content. But in those cases where doubtless he was justified to a certain degree, one will have to admit that the way he reached his judgments represents a distortion in a psychological sense. Only the fascination of his form of expression, only the artistic treatment of language can cast a veil of deception over the facts. But Nietzsche's intellectual lust for destruction becomes especially clear when one considers how few positive ideas he is able to bring against the points of view which he attacks. He makes the assumption that all of culture up to the present has brought about a completely false ideal of humanity; to this objectionable type of human being, he opposes his idea of the “superman.” As an example of a superman there floats before him a real destroyer, Cesare Borgia. To imagine such a destroyer in an important historical role gave him real, spiritual pleasure. “I see before me the possibility of a perfect super-earthly magic and charm of color; it appears to me that it shines in all its dreadfulness of refined beauty, that an art is at work, so divine, so divinely devilish, that one would search in vain for thousands upon thousands of years for a second such possibility. I see a drama so rich in sensuality, and at the same time so marvelously paradox, that all the deities in Olympus would have had occasion for immortal laughter—Cesare Borgia as Pope ... Does anyone understand me? Well, that would have been the victory for which I long today; with that Christianity was done away with.” (Nietzsche's Works, German Edition, Volume VIII, p. 311) How Nietzsche's sense for destruction outweighs his constructiveness shows itself in the disposition of his last work, in his Umwertung aller Werte, Transvaluation of All Values. Three-quarters of it were to be purely negative work, He offers a destruction of Christianity under the title Der Antichrist, The Antichrist; an annihilation of all present philosophies which he called a “nihilistic movement,” under the title, Der freie Geist, The Free Spirit; and an annihilation of all previous moral concepts, in The Immoralist. He called these moral concepts “the most fateful form of ignorance.” Only the last chapter announces something positive: Dionysus, PhilosoPhie der Ewigen Wiederkunft, Philosophy of the Eternal Return (Nietzsche's Works, German Edition, 1897, Volume VIII, Appendix, p. 3). He has been able to fill only this positive part of his philosophy with any substantial content.
[ 15 ] Nietzsche does not shy away from the worst contradictions, if it is a question of destroying the arrangement of ideas of any cultural phenomena. When in 1888 in his Antichrist he is occupied with representing the harm of Christianity, he contrasts this with the older cultural manifestations: “The entire labor of the ancient culture is in vain; I have no words to express my feelings about something so monstrous ... Why Greeks? Why Romans? All assumptions of a learned culture, all scientific methods, were already there; the great, the incomparable art of reading had already been established. This assumption of the tradition of culture, of the unity of knowledge, natural science in union with mathematics and mechanics, was already on the very best path; the sense for the factual, the ultimate and most valuable of all senses, had its schools; its old tradition had been established for hundreds of years! ... and was not buried overnight by an event of nature ...! But it was brought to shame by clever, secretive, invisible anemic vampires! ... One should just read any Christian agitator—St. Augustine, for example—to understand, to smell out, what unclean fellows have come to the surface.” (Nietzsche's Works, Volume VIII, p. 308). Nietzsche thoroughly despised the art of reading until the moment when he defended it in order to fight Christianity. Let us quote but one of his sentences about art: “I am thoroughly convinced that to have written one single line which deserves to be commented on by scholars, compensates for the service of the greatest critics. There is a deep modesty in the philologist. To correct texts is an entertaining task for scholars; it is a picture puzzle, but one should not regard it as something too important. It is too bad when antiquity speaks to us less clearly because a million words stand in the way!” (Nietzsche's Works, Volume X, page 341) And in 1882 Nietzsche's comments about the union of the factual sense with mathematics and mechanics, in his Fröhliche Wissenschaft, Joyful Wisdom: “That only that world interpretation is right which allows counting, calculating, weighing, seeing, touching, and nothing further, this alone is stupidity and naivete, provided it is not insanity, or idiocy.” “Shall we really allow our existence to be degraded to a slavish exercise in arithmetic, and a parlor game for mathematicians?” (Nietzsche's Works, Volume V, p. 330)
III
[ 16 ] We can clearly observe a certain incoherence in. Nietzsche's ideas. Where only logical association of ideas would be in order, thought connections appear in him which rest merely upon external, accidental signs, for example, sound similarity in words, or metaphorical relationships which are completely inconsequential at a point where concepts are used. In one place in Also Sprach Zarathustra, Thus spake Zarathustra, where the man of the future is contrasted with the man of the present, we find this digression of fantasy: “Do like the wind when it rushes forth from its mountain caves: to its own piping will it dance; the seas tremble and leap under its footsteps ... That which giveth wings to asses, that which milketh those lionesses: praise be to that good, unruly spirit, which cometh like a hurricane unto all present and to all the populace ... which is hostile to thistle-heads and puzzle-heads, and to all withered leaves and weeds: praised be this good, free spirit of the storm, which danceth upon fens and afflictions as upon meadows: which hateth the consumptive populace-dogs, and all the ill-constituted, sullen brood: praised be this spirit of all free spirits, the laughing storms, which bloweth dust into the eyes of these melanotic and melancholic ones!” (Nietzsche's Works, Volume VI, p. 429) In the Antichrist is the following thought, in which the word “truth” in a quite external sense gives occasion for an idea-association at a most important point: “Must I still say that in the entire New Testament there is but one single figure which one must revere? Pilate, the Roman Governor. He does not convince himself into taking a Jewish affair seriously. One Jew more or less—what does it matter? ... The noble scorn of a Roman, before whom a disgraceful misuse of the word ‘truth’ has occurred, has enriched the New Testament with the single word which is of value ... which is his criticism, his annihilation itself, ‘What is truth?’ ...” (Nietzsche's Works, Volume VIII, p. 280). It is absolutely a part of this class of incoherent association of ideas when, in Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, at the end of a discussion on the value of German culture, the following sentence which should have more value than a matter of style, appears: “It is artful of a people to make themselves be evaluated as deep, awkward, good-natured, honest, lacking in cleverness, or to let themselves be considered so, or, indeed it could be that they are deep! Finally, one should honor one's name; not for nothing is one called the deceiving nation. ...”
[ 17 ] The more intimately one occupies oneself with Nietzsche's thought development, the more one comes to the conviction that everywhere there are digressions from that which is still explainable through psychology. The impulse to isolate himself, to separate himself from the outer world, lies deeply rooted in his spiritual organization. He expresses himself characteristically enough in his Ecce Homo: “I am gifted with an utterly uncanny instinct of cleanliness, so that I can ascertain physiologically, that is to say, that I can smell the proximity of, I may say, the innermost entrails of every human soul. ... This sensitiveness has psychological antennae, with which I feel and handle every secret; the hidden filth at the root of many a human character, which may be the result of base blood, but which may be superficially overlaid by education, is revealed to me at first glance. If my observation has been correct, such people, unbearable to my sense of cleanliness, also become conscious on their part of the cautiousness resulting from my loathing; and this does not make them any more fragrant. ... This is why social intercourse is no small trial to my patience; my humanity does not consist in the fact that I sympathize with the feelings of my fellows, but that I can endure that very sympathy. My humanity is a continual self-mastery. But I need solitude, that is to say, recovery, return to myself, the breathing of free, light, bracing air. ... The loathing of mankind, of the ‘rabble,’ was always my greatest danger.” (M. G. Conrad, Ketzerblut, p. 183) Such impulses are fundamental in his teaching in Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, and in quite a number of his other ideas. He wants to educate a caste of prominent people who establish their life aims outside the realm of their complete arbitrariness. And the whole of history is only a means of training a few master natures, who make use of the remaining mass of humanity for their own personal purposes. “One completely misunderstands the predatory animal and the predatory human being (for example, Cesare Borgia), one misunderstands nature so long as one looks for something abnormal at the root of these healthiest of all tropical monsters and growths, or, indeed, searches for an inborn ‘hell,’ as almost all moralists have done up to now.” (Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, p. 197) Nietzsche regards it as essential that a real artistocracy accept “with good conscience the sacrifice of innumerable human beings, who for their sakes had to be reduced to incomplete human beings, to slaves, to tools, and even had to be degraded.” (Ibid, p. 258). From this comes Nietzsche's criticism of the social question, a criticism bordering upon narrow-mindedness. According to him, workers must remain cattle; they may not be trained to regard themselves as having any purpose. “In the most, irresponsible: and thoughtless way, one has destroyed the instincts which made It possible to be a worker, and to be one's self. One has made the worker militaristically efficient, one has given him the coalition right, the political vote; is it any wonder that today the worker fears his existence as a critical situation (morally expressed as injustice)? But what does one want? is asked again. If one wants a purpose, then one must also want the means; one wants slaves, then one is a fool if one educates them to be masters.” (Nietzsche's Works, Volume VIII, Page 153)
[ 18 ] During the last phase of his creative activity, he placed the true personality in the very center of world events. “This book belongs to the very few; perhaps none of these is yet living. There may be those who understand my Zarathustra; how could I confuse myself with those for whom ears are growing already today? Only the day after tomorrow belongs to me. Some of my readers will be born posthumously ... the conditions under which one understands me, and understands out of necessity, I know only too well. ... New ears for new music. New eyes for the most distant. A new conscience for truths silent until now ... Well These alone are my readers, my true readers, my readers intended for me; what does the rest matter? The rest are mere humanity. One must surpass humanity in strength, in elevation of soul-through contempt. ...” (Nietzsche's Works, Volume VIII, p. 213) It is only an intensification of such ideas when Nietzsche finally identifies himself with Dionysus.
[ 19 ] Nietzsche could think only in this way because in his isolation he lacked all reflection; for this reason his ideas were only nuances of what had worked itself to mastery of the spiritual life of the nineteenth century. He also lacked any understanding for the connections between his ideas and those of the scientific outlook of his age. What for others is the result of certain assumptions stands isolated in his system of ideas, and in this isolation grows to an intensity which gives entirely the character of forced ideas to his favorite points of view. His completely biological understanding of moral concepts bears this character. The ethical concepts should be nothing but expressions of physiological processes. “What is morality? A human being, a nation which has suffered a physiological change, senses this in a community feeling, and interprets it in the language of effects and according to the degree of their knowledge, without noticing that the seat of the change lies in the physical. It is as if someone were hungry and thought that he could satisfy his hunger with concepts and customs, with praise and with blame!” (Nietzsche's Works, German Edition, 1897, Volume XII, p. 35) Such concepts, firmly established as the natural scientific world conception, work upon Nietzsche as forced ideas, and he does not speak about them with the security of the knower who is in the position to measure the extent of his ideas, but rather with the passion of the fanatic and the zealot. The idea of the survival of the fittest in the human “struggle for existence,” quite familiar in the Darwinian literature of the last century, appears in Nietzsche as the idea of the “superman.” The struggle against “the belief in the other world” which Nietzsche wages so passionately in his Zarathustra, is only another form of the struggle which the materialistic and monastic study of nature wages. What is fundamentally new in Nietzsche's ideas is only the tone of feeling in him, which is linked with his reflections. And the intensity of this tone of feeling is to be understood only when one agrees that these ideas, tom, from their systematic connection, work upon him as forced ideas. Thus the frequent repetition of these reflections, the unmotivated manner in which certain thoughts make their appearance, are also to be explained. We can observe this complete lack of motivation particularly in his idea of the “eternal return” of all things and events. Like a comet this idea appears ever and again in his works during the period between 1882 and 1888. Nowhere does it appear in an inner connection with that which he brings forth otherwise. Little or nothing is produced to give it foundation. Nevertheless, it is held up everywhere like a gospel to call forth the deepest emotions of the whole human culture.
[ 20 ] One cannot understand Nietzsche's spiritual constitution with the concepts of psychology; one must call upon psychopathology for help. With this assertion one does not wish to say anything against the quality of his creative genius. Least of all is a decision to be made concerning truth or error in his ideas themselves. Nietzsche's genius has absolutely nothing to do with this examination. The quality of genius appears in him through a pathological medium.
[ 21 ] The genius of Friedrich Nietzsche is not to be explained from his sick constitution; Nietzsche was a genius in spite of the fact that he was ill. It is one thing to explain genius itself as a condition of a sick spirit, still another to understand the entire personality of a man of genius in relation to the morbid in his being. One can be a follower of Nietzsche's ideas and yet be of the opinion that the way Nietzsche discovers these ideas, brings them together, evaluates them, and presents them, is to be understood only through psychopathological concepts. One can admire his beautiful, great character, the strange Physiognomy of his thinking, and yet admit that morbid factors enter into this character, into this physiognomy. The problem of Nietzsche is of particularly great interest, for the reason that a man of talent struggled for years with morbid elements, and because he was able to bring forth great ideas in a connection which is explainable through psychopathology alone. The expression of genius, not the genius itself, is to be explained in this way. Medicine will have much of importance to contribute to the understanding of the spiritual picture of Nietzsche. A light will also fall on the psychopathology of the masses when Nietzsche's spiritual nature is first understood. Of course, it is clear that it is not the content of Nietzsche's teachings that has brought him so many followers, but frequently the effect of his teaching is based precisely upon the unsound, unhealthy way he has presented his ideas. Nietzsche's ideas, first of all, were not a means whereby he understood the world and humanity, but rather a psychic discharge through which he wished to intoxicate himself; this is also true in many of his followers. Let us see how he himself describes the relationship of his ideas and his feelings, in his Fröhliche Wissenschaft, Joyous Wisdom. “Joyous Wisdom means the Saturnalia of a spirit who has patiently, strongly, coldly withstood frightful, long pressure, without being subservient, but without hope, and who is suddenly attacked by hope, the hope for health, the intoxication of convalescence. It is no wonder that much foolishness and nonsense comes to light thereby; that much arbitrary tenderness is wasted even upon problems which have a prickly hide and are no adapted to fondling and teasing. The entire book is really nothing but joyfulness after long denial and impotence; the rejoicing in a returning power, in a newly awakened faith ...” (Nietzsche's Works, Volume V, p. 3). It is not a question of truth in this book, but the discovery of thoughts which a sick spirit could find to be a healing remedy, a means of diversion for himself.
[ 22 ] An intellect who wishes to grasp the evolution of the world and of humanity through his thoughts, needs the gift of imagination, which brings him to these thoughts, as well as self-discipline, self-criticism, through which these thoughts attain their meaning, their importance, their connection. This self-discipline does not exist to any great extent in Nietzsche. The ideas storm in upon him, without being kept in check by his self-criticism. There is no reciprocal relationship between his productivity and logic. No corresponding degree of critical thoughtfulness stands side by side with his intuition.
[ 23 ] Just as it is justified to indicate the psychopathic origin of certain religious ideas and sects, it is also justified to test the personality of a human being on a basis which is not to be explained by the laws of psychology.
4. Die Philosophie Nietzsches als psycho-pathologisches Problem
[ 1 ] Nicht um die Behauptungen der Gegner Friedrich Nietzsches zu vermehren, ist das Folgende geschrieben, sondern in der Absicht, einen Beitrag zur Erkenntnis dieses Mannes von einem Gesichtspunkte aus zu liefern, der zweifellos bei der Beurteilung seiner merkwürdigen Gedankengänge in Betracht kommt. Wer sich in die Weltanschauung Friedrich Nietzsches vertieft, wird auf zahlreiche Probleme stoßen, die nur vom Standpunkte der Psycho-Pathologie einer Aufhellung fähig sind. Andererseits dürfte es gerade für die Psychiatrie von Wichtigkeit sein, sich mit einer bedeutenden Persönlichkeit zu beschäftigen, die einen unermesslich großen Einfluss auf die Zeitkultur gewonnen hat. Auch trägt dieser Einfluss ein wesentlich anderes Gepräge als die Wirkungen, die sonst von Philosophen auf ihre Schüler ausgegangen sind. Denn Nietzsche wirkt auf seine Zeitgenossen nicht durch die logische Kraft seiner Argumente. Die Ausbreitung seiner Anschauungen ist vielmehr auf dieselben Gründe zurückzuführen, die es Schwärmern und Fanatikern aller Zeiten möglich machen, ihreRollen in der Welt zu spielen.
[ 2 ] Was hier geboten werden soll, ist nicht etwa eine vollständige Erklärung des Geisteszustandes Friedrich Nietzsches vom psychiatrischen Gesichtspunkt aus. Eine solche Erklärung ist heute noch nicht möglich, weil ein vollständiges und treues klinisches Krankheitsbild noch nicht vorliegt. Alles, was von seiner Krankheitsgeschichte bisher in die Öffentlichkeit gedrungen ist, trägt den Charakter des Lückenhaften und Widerspruchsvollen. Was aber heute durchaus möglich ist, das ist die Betrachtung der Philosophie Nietzsches unter dem Gesichtswinkel der Psycho-Pathologie. Die eigentliche Arbeit des Psychiaters wird vielleicht gerade da einsetzen, wo diejenige des Psychologen, die hier geliefert werden soll, aufhört. Diese Arbeit ist aber zu der vollkommenen Lösung des "Problems Nietzsche" durchaus notwendig. Nur auf Grund einer solchen psycho-pathologischen Symptomatologie wird der Psychiater seine Aufgabe lösen können.1Der Autor dieses Aufsatzes glaubt sich berufen, Nietzsches Anschauungen von diesem Standpunkte aus zu betrachten, denn er hat bereits vor längerer Zeit ein Bild dieser Anschauungen in seiner Schrift "Friedrich Nietzsche, ein Kämpfer gegen seine Zeit" geliefert, das diesem Geiste objektiv gerecht zu werden suchte, und in dem er sich von jedem Seitenblick auf eine psycho-pathologische Erklärung fern hielt. Der Verfasser will sich von seinen früher ausgesprochenen Überzeugungen nicht etwa trennen, sondern nur das Problem von einer anderen Seite erfassen.
[ 3 ] Eine Eigenschaft, die sich durch Nietzsches ganzes Wirken hindurchzieht, ist der Mangel des Sinnes für objektive Wahrheit. Was die Wissenschaft als Wahrheit anstrebt, das war für ihn im Grunde nie vorhanden. In der Zeit, die kurz vor dem Ausbruche des völligen Wahnsinnes liegt, steigerte sich dieser Mangel zu einem förmlichen Hass auf alles, was man logische Begründung nennt. «Honette Dinge tragen wie honette Menschen ihre Gründe nicht so in der Hand. Es ist unanständig, alle fünf Finger zu zeigen. Was sich erst beweisen lassen muss, ist wenig wert», sagt er in der 1888, kurz vor der Erkrankung geschriebenen «Götzen-Dämmerung» (Band VIII der Gesamtausgabe, 5.7'). Weil ihm dieser Wahrheitssinn fehlte, hat er nie den Kampf durchgemacht, den so viele durchzumachen haben, die durch ihre Entwicklung zum Aufgeben anerzogener Meinungen gezwungen sind. Als er mit siebzehn Jahren konfirmiert wird, ist er vollkommen gottgläubig. Ja, noch drei Jahre später, als er das Gymnasium in Schulpforta verlässt, schreibt er: «Ihm, dem ich das Meiste verdanke, bringe ich die Erstlinge meines Dankes; was kann ich ihm anderes opfern als die warme Empfindung meines Herzens, das lebhafter als je seine Liebe wahrnimmt, seine Liebe, die mich diese schönste Stunde meines Daseins erleben ließ? Behüte er mich auch fernerhin, der treue Gott!» (E. Förster-Nietzsche: «Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches», I. S. 194.) In kurzer Zeit wird aus dem Gottgläubigen ein vollkommener Atheist, ohne inneren Kampf. In den Lebenserinnerungen, die er 1888 unter dem Titel «Ecce homo» aufzeichnet, spricht er von seinen inneren Kämpfen. «Religiöse Schwierigkeiten», sagt er da, «kenne ich nicht aus Erfahrung...» «‹Gott›, ‹Unsterblichkeit der Seele›, ‹Erlösung›, ‹Jenseits›, lauter Begriffe, denen ich keine Aufmerksamkeit, auch keine Zeit geschenkt habe, selbst als Kind nicht,— ich war vielleicht nie kindlich genug dazu? — Ich kenne den Atheismus durchaus nicht als Ergebnis, noch weniger als Ereignis: er versteht sich bei mir aus Instinkt.» (M. G. Conrad: «Ketzerblut», S. 182.) Es ist bezeichnend für Nietzsches Geisteskonstitution, dass er hier behauptet, er habe selbst als Kind den angeführten religiösen Vorstellungen keine Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt. Aus der Biographie, die seine Schwester geliefert hat, wissen wir, dass ihn seine Klassenkameraden wegen seiner religiösen Äußerungen den «kleinen Pastor» genannt haben. Aus alledem geht hervor, dass er die religiösen Überzeugungen seiner Jugend mit großer Leichtigkeit überwunden hat.
[ 4 ] Der psychologische Prozess, durch den Nietzsche zu dem Inhalte seiner Anschauungen kommt, ist nicht derjenige, den ein Mensch durchmacht, der auf objektive Wahrheit ausgeht. Man kann das bereits an der Art beobachten, wie er zu den grundlegenden Ideen seines ersten Werkes «Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik» kommt. Nietzsche nimmt an, dass der alten griechischen Kunst zwei Triebe zugrunde liegen: Der apollonische und der dionysische. Durch den apollonischen Trieb liefert der Mensch ein schönes Abbild der Welt, ein Werk der ruhigen Betrachtung. Durch den dionysischen Trieb versetzt sich der Mensch in einen Rauschzustand; er betrachtet nicht allein die Welt; er durchdringt sich mit den ewigen Mächten des Seins und bringt diese selbst in seiner Kunst zum Ausdrucke. Das Epos, das plastische Bildwerk, sind Erzeugnisse der apollinischen Kunst. Das lyrische, das musikalische Kunstwerk entspringen dem dionysischen Triebe. Der dionysisch gestimmte Mensch durchdringt sich mit dem Weltgeiste und bringt dessen Wesen durch seine eigenen Äußerungen zum Vorschein. Er wird selbst Kunstwerk. «Singend und tanzend äußert sich der Mensch als Mitglied einer höheren Gemeinsamkeit: Er hat das Gehen und Sprechen verlernt und ist auf dem Wege, tanzend in die Lüfte emporzufliegen. Aus seinen Gebärden spricht die Verzauberung». («Geburt der Tragödie», §I..) In diesem dionysischen Zustande vergisst der Mensch sich selbst, er fühlt sich nicht mehr als Individuum, sondern als ein Organ des allgemeinen Weltwillens. In den Festspielen, die zu Ehren des Gottes Dionysus veranstaltet wurden, sieht Nietzsche dionysische Äußerungen des menschlichen Geistes. Er stellt sich nun vor, dass die dramatische Kunst bei den Griechen aus solchen Spielen entstanden ist. Eine höhere Vereinigung des Dionysischen mit dem Apollinischen habe sich vollzogen. Im ältesten Drama wurde ein apollinisches Abbild des dionysisch erregten Menschen geschaffen.
[ 5 ] Zu solchen Vorstellungen ist Nietzsche durch die Schopenhauersche Philosophie gekommen. Er hat einfach die «Welt als Wille und Vorstellung» in das Künstlerische umgesetzt. Die Welt der Vorstellung ist nicht die wirkliche; sie ist nur ein subjektives Abbild, das unsere Seele von den Dingen erschafft. Durch Betrachtung kommt der Mensch nach Schopenhauers Meinung überhaupt nicht zu dem eigentlichen Wesen der Welt. Dieses enthüllt sich ihm in seinem Willen. Die Kunst der Vorstellung ist die apollinische; die des Willens die dionysische. Nietzsche brauchte nur einen kleinen Schritt über Schopenhauer hinauszugehen, und er war dort angelangt, wo er in der «Geburt der Tragödie» steht. Schopenhauer selbst hat der Musik schon eine Ausnahmestellung unter den Künsten angewiesen. Er nennt alle anderen Künste bloße Abbilder des Willens; die Musik nennt er eine unmittelbare Äußerung des Urwillens selbst.
[ 6 ] Nun hat Schopenhauer niemals auf Nietzsche so gewirkt, dass man sagen könnte, dieser wurde sein Anhänger. In der Schrift «Schopenhauer als Erzieher» schildert Nietzsche den Eindruck, den er von der Lehre des pessimistischen Philosophen erhalten hat: «Schopenhauer redet mit sich, oder wenn man sich durchaus einen Zuhörer denken will, so denke man sich den Sohn, welchen der Vater unterweist. Es ist ein redliches, derbes, gutmütiges Aussprechen, vor einem Hörer, der mit Liebe hört. Solche Schriftsteller fehlen uns. Das kräftige Wohlgefühl des Sprechenden umfängt uns beim ersten Tone seiner Stimme; es geht uns ähnlich wie beim Eintritt in den Hochwald, wir atmen tief und fühlen uns auf einmal wiederum wohl. Hier ist eine immer gleichartige, stärkende Luft, so fühlen wir; hier ist eine gewisse unnachahmliche Unbefangenheit und Natürlichkeit, wie sie Menschen haben, die in sich zu Hause, und zwar in einem sehr reichen Hause Herren sind.» Dieser ästhetische Eindruck ist ausschlaggebend für Nietzsches Stellung zu Schopenhauer. Um die Lehre war es ihm gar nicht zu tun. Unter den Aufzeichnungen, die er sich zu derselben Zeit gemacht hat, als er die hymnusartige Schrift «Schopenhauer als Erzieher» verfasste, findet man die folgende: «Ich bin ferne davon zu glauben, dass ich Schopenhauer richtig verstanden habe, sondern nur mich selber habe ich durch Schopenhauer ein weniges besser verstehen gelernt; das ist es, weshalb ich ihm die größte Dankbarkeit schuldig bin. Aber überhaupt scheint es mir nicht so wichtig zu sein, wie man es jetzt nimmt, dass bei irgend einem Philosophen genau ergründet und ans Licht gebracht werde, was er eigentlich im strengsten Wortverstande gelehrt habe, was nicht: eine solche Erkenntnis ist wenigstens nicht für Menschen geeignet, welche eine Philosophie für ihr Leben, nicht eine neue Gelehrsamkeit für ihr Gedächtnis suchen: und zuletzt bleibt es mir unwahrscheinlich, dass so etwas wirklich ergründet werden kann.» (Nietzsches Werke, Band X, S. 285f.)
[ 7 ] Nietzsche baut also seine Ideen über die «Geburt der Tragödie» auf der Grundlage eines philosophischen Lehrgebäudes auf, von dem er es dahingestellt sein lässt, ob er es richtig verstanden hat. Er sucht nicht nach logischer, sondern lediglich nach ästhetischer Befriedigung.
[ 8 ] Ein weiterer Beleg für seinen Mangel an Wahrheitssinn liefert sein Verhalten während der Abfassung der Schrift «Richard Wagner in Bayreuth» im Jahre 1876. Er schrieb in dieser Zeit nicht nur alles nieder, was er zum Lobe Wagners vorzubringen hatte, sondern manche der Ideen, die er dann später im «Fall Wagner» gegen Wagner vorbrachte. In die Schrift «Richard Wagner in Bayreuth» nahm er nur dasjenige auf, was zur Verherrlichung Richard Wagners und seiner Kunst dienen konnte; die argen, ketzerischen Urteile hielt er zunächst in seinem Pulte zurück. So verfährt natürlich nicht jemand, der Sinn für objektive Wahrheit hat. Nicht eine wahre Charakteristik Wagners wollte Nietzsche liefern, sondern ein Loblied wollte er dem Meister singen.
[ 9 ] Höchst bezeichnend ist, wie Nietzsche sich verhält, als ihm 1876 in Paul Ree eine Persönlichkeit entgegentritt, die eine Reihe derjenigen Probleme, welche wie namentlich die ethischen auch im sich im Leben nützlich erwiesen. Die Grundwahrheiten der Mechanik und Naturwissenschaft seien eigentlich Irrtümer; dies wollte er in einem Werke ausführen, zu dem er 1881 den Plan entwarf. Das alles Interessenkreise Nietzsches lagen, ganz im Geiste streng objektiver Wissenschaftlichkeit betrachtete. Diese Art, die Dinge anzusehen, wirkte auf Nietzsche wie eine neue Offenbarung.2Damit soll durchaus nicht zugleich behauptet werden, daß P. Rée auf den Inhalt der Weltanschauung Nietzsches einen erheblichen Einfluß gehabt hat. Er bewundert diese reine Wahrheitsforschung, die frei von allem Romantizismus ist. Fräulein Malwida von Meysenbug, die geistvolle Verfasserin der «Memoiren einer Idealistin», erzählt in ihrem vor kurzem erschienenen Buche: «Der Lebensabend einer Idealistin» von Nietzsches Stellung zu Rées Betrachtungsweise im Jahre 1876. Sie gehörte damals zu dem Kreise von Menschen in Sorrent, innerhalb dessen sich Nietzsche und Rées näher traten. «Wie sehr seine (Rées) Art, die philosophischen Probleme zu erklären, auf Nietzsche Eindruck machte, ersah ich aus manchen Gesprächen.» Sie teilt eine Stelle aus einem solchen Gespräche mit: «Es sei — sagte Nietzsche — der Irrtum aller Religionen, eine transzendentale Einheit hinter der Erscheinung zu suchen, und das sei auch der Irrtum der Philosophie und des Schopenhauerschen Gedankens von der Einheit des Willens zum Leben. Die Philosophie sei ein ebenso ungeheurer Irrtum wie die Religion. Das allein Wertvolle und Gültige sei die Wissenschaft, welche allmählich Stein an Stein füge, um ein sicheres Gebäude aufzuführen.» Dies spricht eine deutliche Sprache. Nietzsche, dem selbst der Sinn für objektive Wahrheit mangelte, vergötterte ihn geradezu, als er ihm bei jemand anderem entgegentritt. Als Folge tritt aber bei ihm nun nicht etwa selbst die Hinwendung zur objektiven Wissenschaftlichkeit auf. Die Art seines eigenen Produzierens bleibt dieselbe, die sie vorher war. Auch jetzt wirkt also die Wahrheit nicht durch ihre logische Natur auf ihn, sondern sie macht ihm einen ästhetisch wohlgefälligen Eindruck. Er singt in seinen beiden Bänden «Menschliches, Allzumenschliches» (1878) der objektiven Wissenschaftlichkeit ein Loblied nach dem andern; er selbst aber wendet die Methode dieser Wissenschaftlichkeit durchaus nicht an. Ja, er schreitet auf seiner Bahn in der Weise fort, dass er 1881 auf dem Standpunkte anlangte, aller Wahrheit den Krieg zu erklären.
[ 10 ] Nietzsche stellt nämlich in dieser Zeit eine Behauptung auf, durch die er sich in bewussten Gegensatz stellt zu den Anschauungen, welche die Naturwissenschaft vertritt. Diese Behauptung ist seine vielbesprochene Lehre von der «Ewigen Wiederkunft» aller Dinge. Er fand in Dührings «Kursus der Philosophie» eine Ausführung, die den Beweis liefern sollte, dass eine ewige Wiederholung gleicher Weltereignisse mit den Grundsätzen der Mechanik nicht vereinbar sei. Gerade dies reizte ihn, eine solche ewige, periodische Wiederholung gleicher Weltereignisse anzunehmen. Alles, was heute geschieht, soll schon unzählige Male dagewesen sein, und soll sich unzählige Male wiederholen. Er spricht in dieser Zeit auch aus, welchen Reiz es für ihn hat, zu allgemein anerkannten Wahrheiten die Gegenmeinungen aufzustellen. «Was ist die Reaktion der Meinungen? Wenn eine Meinung aufhört, interessant zu sein, so sucht man ihr einen Reiz zu verleihen, indem man sie an ihre Gegenmeinung hält. Gewöhnlich aber verführt die Gegenmeinung und macht nun neue Bekenner: sie ist inzwischen interessanter geworden.» (Nietzsches Werke, Band XI, S.65.) Und weil er einsieht, dass seine Gegenmeinung zu den alten naturwissenschaftlichen Wahrheiten nicht stimmt, stellt er die Behauptung auf, dass diese Wahrheiten selbst nicht Wahrheiten, sondern Irrtümer seien, welche die Menschen nur angenommen hätten, weil sie versuchte er nur um der Idee von der «Ewigen Wiederkehr» willen. Die logisch zwingende Kraft der Wahrheit sollte geleugnet werden, um eine dem Wesen dieser Wahrheit zuwiderlaufende Gegenmeinung aufstellen zu können.
[ 11 ] Allmählich nahm Nietzsches Kampf gegen die Wahrheit noch stärkere Dimensionen an. In der Schrift «Jenseits von Gut und Böse» fragt er 1885 bereits, ob denn die Wahrheit überhaupt irgend einen Wert habe. «Der Wille zur Wahrheit, der uns noch zu manchem Wagnisse verführen wird, jene berühmte Wahrhaftigkeit, von der alle Philosophen bisher mit Ehrerbietung geredet haben, was für Fragen hat dieser Wille zur Wahrheit uns schon vorgelegt? Welche wunderlichen, schlimmen, fragwürdigen Fragen? Das ist bereits eine lange Geschichte — und doch scheint es, dass sie kaum eben angefangen hat ... Gesetzt, wir wollen Wahrheit, warum nicht lieber Unwahrheit?»
[ 12 ] Solche Fragen können selbstverständlich auch bei einem durchaus logischen Kopfe auftreten. Die Erkenntnistheorie hat sich mit diesen Fragen zu beschäftigen. Bei einem wirklichen Denker tritt aber als natürliche Folge des Auftauchens solcher Fragen die Untersuchung nach den Quellen des menschlichen Erkennens ein. Für ihn beginnt eine Welt subtilster, philosophischer Probleme. Das alles ist bei Nietzsche nicht der Fall. Er tritt überhaupt in kein Verhältnis zu diesen Fragen, das mit Logik etwas zu tun hat. «Ich erwarte immer noch, dass ein philosophischer Arzt im ausnahmsweisen Sinne des Wortes — ein solcher, der dem Probleme der Gesamt-Gesundheit von Volk, Zeit, Rasse, Menschheit nachzugehn hat — einmal den Mut haben wird, meinen Verdacht auf die Spitze zu bringen und den Satz zu wagen: Bei allem Philosophieren handelte es sich bisher gar nicht um 9Wahrheit:, sondern um etwas anderes, sagen wir um Gesundheit, Zukunft, Wachstum Macht, Leben ...» So schrieb Nietzsche im Herbste 1886. (In der Vorrede zur zweiten Auflage der «Fröhlichen Wissenschaft».) Man sieht, in Nietzsche ist die Neigung vorhanden, einen Gegensatz von Lebensnützlichkeit, Gesundheit, Macht und so weiter und Wahrheit zu empfinden. Dem natürlichen Empfinden entspricht es, hier nicht einen Gegensatz, sondern eine Harmonie anzunehmen. Es erscheint bei Nietzsche die Frage nach dem Werte der Wahrheit nicht als ein erkenntnistheoretisches Bedürfnis, sondern eben als ein Ausfluss seines Mangels an objektivem Wahrheitssinn überhaupt. Grotesk tritt das zutage in einem Satze, der auch in der eben genannten Vorrede steht: «Und was unsre Zukunft betrifft: man wird uns schwerlich wieder auf den Pfaden jener ägyptischen Jünglinge finden, welche nachts Tempel unsicher machen, Bildsäulen umarmen und durchaus alles, was mit guten Gründen verdeckt gehalten wird, entschleiern, aufdecken, in helles Licht stellen wollen. Nein, dieser schlechte Geschmack, dieser Wille zur Wahrheit, zur 9Wahrheit um jeden Preis:, dieser Jünglings-Wahnsinn in der Liebe zur Wahrheit — ist uns verleidet.» Aus dieser seiner Abneigung gegen die Wahrheit entsprang Nietzsches Hass gegen Sokrates. Der Trieb nach Objektivität in diesem Geiste hatte für ihn etwas geradezu Abstoßendes. In seiner «Götzen-Dämmerung» (1888) kommt das in der schärfsten Weise zum Ausdrucke: «Sokrates gehörte seiner Herkunft nach zum niedersten Volk: Sokrates war Pöbel. Man weiß, man sieht es selbst noch, wie hässlich er war ... Sokrates war ein Missverständnis.»
[ 13 ] Man vergleiche die philosophische Skepsis anderer Persönlichkeiten mit dem Kampfe gegen die Wahrheit, den Nietzsche führt. Gewöhnlich liegt dieser Skepsis gerade ein ausgesprochener Sinn für die Wahrheit zugrunde. Der Trieb nach Wahrheit treibt den Philosophen, ihren Wert, ihre Quellen, ihre Grenzen zu erforschen. Bei Nietzsche ist dieser Trieb nicht vorhanden. Und die Art, wie er den Erkenntnisproblemen zu Leibe geht, ist nur ein Erzeugnis seines fehlerhaften Wahrheitssinnes. Dass ein solcher Mangel in einer genialen Persönlichkeit in anderer Weise zum Vorschein kommt, als in einer untergeordneten, ist begreiflich. So groß auch der Abstand ist zwischen Nietzsche und dem psychopathisch Minderwertigen, dem im alltäglichen Leben der Sinn für Wahrheit fehlt, qualitativ hat man es hier wie dort mit derselben ans Pathologische mindestens grenzenden psychologischen Eigentümlichkeit zu tun.
II.
[ 14 ] In Nietzsches Gedankenwelt offenbart sich ein Zerstörungstrieb, der ihn in der Beurteilung gewisser Anschauungen und Überzeugungen weit über das hinausgehen ließ, was als Kritik psychologisch begreiflich erscheint. Es ist bezeichnend, dass sich der weitaus größte Teil alles dessen, was Nietzsche geschrieben hat, als Ergebnis dieses zerstörenden Triebes darstellt. In der «Geburt der Tragödie» wird die ganze abendländische Kulturentwicklung von Sokrates und Euripides bis zu Schopenhauer und Richard Wagner als ein Irrweg hingestellt. Die «Unzeitgemäßen Betrachtungen», an denen er 1873 zu arbeiten begann, werden mit der entschiedenen Absicht begonnen, «die ganze Tonleiter» seiner «Feindseligkeiten abzusingen». Von den zwanzig projektierten sind vier dieser Betrachtungen fertig geworden. Zwei davon sind Kampfschriften, die in grausamster Weise die Schwächen des angegriffenen Gegners oder der Nietzsche unsympathischen Anschauung aufspüren, ohne sich im Geringsten um die relative Berechtigung des Bekämpften zu kümmern. Die beiden anderen sind zwar Lobeshymnen auf zwei Persönlichkeiten; doch hat Nietzsche im Jahre 1888 (im «Fall Wagner») nicht nur alles zurückgenommen, was er zur Verherrlichung Wagners 1876 gesagt hat, sondern er hat das Erscheinen der Wagnerschen Kunst, die er zuerst als Rettung und Wiedergeburt der ganzen abendländischen Kultur pries, später als die größte Gefahr für diese Kultur hingestellt. Und auch über Schopenhauer schreibt er 1888: «Er hat, der Reihe nach, die Kunst, den Heroismus, das Genie, die Schönheit, ... den Willen zur Wahrheit, die Tragödie als Folgeerscheinung der 9Verneinung: oder der Verneinungs-Bedürftigkeit des 9Willens: interpretiert — die größte psychologische Falschmünzerei, die es, das Christentum abgerechnet, in der Geschichte gibt. Genauer zugesehn ist er darin bloß der Erbe der christlichen Interpretation: nur dass er auch das vom Christentum Abgelehnte, die großen Kultur-Tatsachen der Menschheit noch in einem christlichen, das heißt nihilistischen Sinne gutzuheißen wusste.» Also selbst Erscheinungen gegenüber, die Nietzsche einmal bewundert hat, ruht sein Zerstörungstrieb nicht. Auch in den vier Schriften, die von 1878 bis 1882 erscheinen, überwiegt die Tendenz, anerkannte Richtungen zu zerstören, wesentlich dasjenige, was Nietzsche selbst Positives vorbringt. Es kommt ihm fast gar nicht darauf an, nach neuen Einsichten zu suchen, als vielmehr darauf, die bestehenden zu erschüttern. Er schreibt 1888 im «Ecce homo» über das Zerstörungswerk, das er 1876 mit «Menschliches, Allzumenschliches» begann: «Ein Irrtum nach dem andern wird gelassen aufs Eis gelegt, das Ideal wird nicht widerlegt — es erfriert ... Hier zum Beispiel erfriert 9das Genie:; eine Ecke weiter erfriert 9der Heilige:; unter einem dicken Eiszapfen erfriert 9der Held:; am Schlusse erfriert 9der Glaube:, die sogenannte 9Überzeugung:, auch das 9Mitleiden: kühlt sich bedeutend ab — fast überall erfriert das 9Ding an sich ...»: «Menschliches, Allzumenschliches ..., mit dem ich bei mir allem eingeschleppten 9höheren Schwindel:, 9Idealismus:, 9schönem Gefühl: und andren Weiblichkeiten ein jähes Ende bereitete ...» Diese Zerstörungssucht treibt Nietzsche dazu, die Opfer, auf die er verfallen ist, mit geradezu blinder Wut zu verfolgen. Er bringt für eine Idee, für eine Persönlichkeit, die er ablehnen zu müssen glaubt, Urteile auf, die in gar keinem Verhältnisse zu den Gründen stehen, die er für seine Ablehnung anzuführen hat. Die Art, wie er gegnerische Meinungen verfolgt, ist nicht dem Grade, sondern nur der Art nach verschieden von derjenigen, wie typische Querulanten ihre Gegner verfolgen. Es kommt dabei weniger auf den Inhalt der Urteile an, die Nietzsche vorbringt. Man kann ihm bezüglich dieses Inhaltes oftmals Recht geben. Aber man wird selbst in Fällen, wo er zweifellos bis zu einem gewissen Grade im Recht ist, zugeben müssen, dass der Weg, auf dem er zu seinen Urteilen gelangt, eine Verzerrung im psychologischen Sinne darstellt. Nur das Faszinierende seiner Ausdrucksform, nur die künstlerische Behandlung der Sprache kann bei Nietzsche über diese Tatsache hinwegtäuschen. Die intellektuelle Zerstörungslust Nietzsches wird aber besonders klar, wenn man bedenkt, wie wenig positive Ideen er den Anschauungen entgegenzusetzen vermag, die er angreift. Er behauptet von der ganzen bisherigen Kultur, sie habe ein ganz falsches Menschenideal verwirklicht; er setzt diesem verwerflichen Typus Mensch seine Vorstellung des «Übermenschen» entgegen. Als Beispiel eines Übermenschen schwebt ihm ein echter Zerstörer vor: Cesare Borgia. Sich einen solchen Zerstörer in einer wichtigen historischen Rolle vorzustellen, bereitet ihm eine wahre geistige Wollust. «Ich sehe die Möglichkeit vor mir, von einem vollkommen überirdischen Zauber und Farbenreiz — es scheint mir, dass sie in allen Schaudern raffinierter Schönheit erglänzt, dass eine Kunst in ihr am Werke ist, so göttlich, so teufelsmäßig-göttlich, dass man Jahrtausende umsonst nach einer zweiten solchen Möglichkeit durchsucht; ich sehe ein Schauspiel, so sinnreich, so wunderbar paradox zugleich, dass alle Gottheiten des Olymps einen Anlas zu einem unsterblichen Gelächter gehabt hätten — Cesare Borgia als Papst ... Versteht man mich? Wohlan, das wäre der Sieg gewesen, nach dem ich heute verlange — damit war das Christentum abgeschafft!» (Nietzsches Werke, Band VIII, 5.3".) Wie bei Nietzsche der Sinn für Zerstörung den für Aufbau überwiegt, das geht aus der Disposition seines letzten Werkes hervor, seiner «Umwertung aller Werte». Drei Viertel davon sollen rein negative Arbeit leisten. Er will bieten eine Vernichtung des Christentums unter dem Titel «Der Antichrist», eine Vernichtung aller bisherigen Philosophie, die er eine «nihilistische Bewegung» nannte, unter der Überschrift: «Der freie Geist», und eine Vernichtung aller bisherigen Moralbegriffe: «Der Immoralist». Er nannte diese Moralbegriffe die «verhängnisvollste Art von Unwissenheit». Erst das letzte Kapitel kündet etwas Positives an: «Dionysos, Philosophie der ewigen Wiederkunft.» (Nietzsches Werke, Band VIII, S. III, Anhang.) Für diesen positiven Teil seiner Philosophie hat er aber nie einen erheblichen Inhalt gewinnen können.
[ 15 ] Nietzsche schreckt nicht vor den ärgsten Widersprüchen zurück, wenn es sich darum handelt, irgend eine Vorstellungsrichtung, eine Kulturerscheinung zu zerstören. Als es ihm 1888 im «Antichrist» darum zu tun ist, die Schädlichkeit des Christentums darzustellen, setzt er dieses mit folgenden Worten in Gegensatz zu den älteren Kulturerscheinungen: «Die ganze Arbeit der antiken Kultur umsonst: ich habe kein Wort dafür, das mein Gefühl über etwas so Ungeheures ausdrückt ... Wozu Griechen? Wozu Römer? — Alle Voraussetzungen zu einer gelehrten Kultur, alle wissenschaftlichen Methoden waren bereits da, man hatte die große, die unvergleichliche Kunst, gut zu lesen, bereits festgestellt — diese Voraussetzung zur Tradition der Kultur, zur Einheit der Wissenschaft; die Naturwissenschaft im Bunde mit der Mathematik und Mechanik war auf dem allerbesten Wege — der Tatsachensinn, der letzte und wertvollste aller Sinne, hatte seine Schulen, seine bereits Jahrhunderte alte Tradition! ... — Und nicht durch ein Natur-Ereignis über Nacht verschüttet! . .. Sondern von listigen, heimlichen, unsichtbaren, blutarmen Vampyren zuschanden gemacht!... — Man lese nur irgend einen christlichen Agitator, den heiligen Augustin zum Beispiel, um zu begreifen, um zu riechen, was für unsaubere Gesellen damit obenauf gekommen sind.» (Werke, Band VIII, S.307/308.) Die Kunst, zu lesen, hat Nietzsche gründlich verachtet bis zu dem Zeitpunkte, wo er sie verteidigte, um das Christentum zu bekämpfen. Es sei nur einer seiner Sätze über diese Kunst angeführt: «Mir steht nun einmal fest, dass eine einzige Zeile geschrieben zu haben, welche es verdient, von Gelehrten späterer Zeit kommentiert zu werden, das Verdienst des größten Kritikers aufwiegt. Es liegt eine tiefe Bescheidenheit im Philologen. Texte verbessern ist eine unterhaltende Arbeit für Gelehrte, es ist ein Rebusraten; aber man sollte es für keine zu wichtige Sache ansehen. Schlimm, wenn das Altertum weniger deutlich zu uns redete, weil eine Million Worte im Wege stünden!» (Werke, Band X, S.341.) Und über den Bund des Tatsachensinnes mit Mathematik und Mechanik bringt Nietzsche 1882 in seiner «Fröhlichen Wissenschaft» folgendes vor: «Dass allein eine Welt-Interpretation im Rechte sei ... die Zählen, Rechnen, Wägen, Sehen und Greifen und nichts weiter zulässt, das ist eine Plumpheit und Naivität, gesetzt, dass es keine Geisteskrankheit, kein Idiotismus ist.» «Wollen wir uns wirklich dergestalt das Dasein zu einer Rechenknechts-Übung und Stubenhockerei für Mathematiker herabwürdigen lassen?» (Werke, Band V, S. 330/331.)
III.
[ 16 ] In unverkennbarer Weise kann man bei Nietzsche eine gewisse Inkohärenz der Vorstellungen beobachten. Wo nur logische Vorstellungsassoziationen am Platze wären, treten bei ihm Gedankenzusammenhänge auf, die auf bloß äußerlichen, zufälligen Merkmalen, zum Beispiel Klangähnlichkeit der Worte, oder auf metaphorischen Beziehungen beruhen, die an der Stelle, wo die Begriffe gebraucht werden, gleichgültig sind. An einer Stelle in «Also sprach Zarathustra», wo die Zukunfts- den Gegenwartsmenschen gegenübergestellt werden, finden wir folgende Ausschweifung der Phantasie: «Dem Winde tut mir gleich, wenn er aus seinen Berghöhlen stürzt: nach seiner eigenen Pfeife will er tanzen, die Meere zittern und hüpfen unter seinen Fußstapfen. Der den Eseln Flügel gibt, der Löwinnen melkt, gelobt sei dieser gute unbändige Geist, der allem Heute und allem Pöbel wie ein Sturmwind kommt, — der Distel- und Tiftelköpfen feind ist und allen welken Blättern und Unkräutern: gelobt sei dieser wilde gute freie Sturmgeist, welcher auf Mooren und Trübsalen wie auf Wiesen tanzt! Der die Pöbel-Schwindhunde hasst und alles missratene düstere Gezücht: gelobt sei dieser Geist aller freien Geister, der lachende Sturm, welcher allen Schwarzsüchtigen, Schwärsüchtigen Staub in die Augen bläst!» (Werke, Band VI, S. 429 f) Im «Antichrist» findet sich folgender Gedanke, in dem das Wort «Wahrheit» in ganz äußerlichem Sinne den Anlas zu einer Ideenassoziation an einer wichtigen Stelle gibt: «Habe ich noch zu sagen, dass im ganzen Neuen Testament bloß eine einzige Figur vorkommt, die man ehren muss? Pilatus, der römische Statthalter. Einen Judenhandel ernst zu nehmen — dazu überredet er sich nicht. Ein Jude mehr oder weniger — was liegt daran?... Der vornehme Hohn eines Römers, vor dem ein unverschämter Missbrauch mit dem Worte «Wahrheit» getrieben wird, hat das Neue Testament mit dem einzigen Worte bereichert, das Wert hat ... das seine Kritik, seine Vernichtung selbst ist: 9Was ist Wahrheit!: ...» (Werke, Band VIII, S. 280 f) Es gehört durchaus in die Klasse inkohärenter Vorstellungsassoziationen, wenn in «Jenseits von Gut und Böse» am Schlusse einer Abhandlung über den Wert der deutschen Kultur folgender Satz steht, der hier mehr sein soll als eine stilistische Pointe: «Es ist für ein Volk klug, sich für tief, für ungeschickt, für gutmütig, für redlich, für unklug geltend zu machen, gelten zu lassen: es könnte sogar — tief sein! Zuletzt: man soll seinem Namen Ehre machen — man heißt nicht umsonst, das 9tiusche: Volk, das Täusche-Volk...»
[ 17 ] Je intimer man sich mit Nietzsches Gedankenentwicklung beschäftigt, desto mehr kommt man zu der Überzeugung, dass es hier überall Absprünge gibt von dem, was noch psychologisch erklärbar ist. Der Trieb, sich zu isolieren, sich von der Außenwelt abzuschließen, liegt tief in seiner geistigen Organisation begründet. Er spricht sich im «Ecce homo» selbst charakteristisch genug darüber aus: «Mir eignet eine vollkommen unheimliche Reizbarkeit des Reinlichkeits-Instinktes, so dass ich die Nähe oder — was sage ich? — das Innerlichste, die 9Eingeweide: jeder Seele physiologisch wahrnehme — rieche. Ich habe an dieser Reizbarkeit psychologische Fühlhörner, mit denen ich jedes Geheimnis betaste und in die Hand bekomme: der viele verborgene Schmutz auf dem Grunde mancher Natur, vielleicht in schlechtem Blut bedingt, aber durch Erziehung übertüncht, wird mir fast bei der ersten Berührung schon bewusst. Wenn ich recht beobachtet habe, empfinden solche meiner Reinlichkeit unzuträgliche Naturen die Vorsicht meines Ekels auch ihrerseits: sie werden damit nicht wohlriechender... Das macht mir aus dem Verkehr mit Menschen keine kleine Gedulds-Probe; meine Humanität besteht nicht darin, mitzufühlen, wie der Mensch ist, sondern es auszuhalten, dass ich ihn mitfühle... Meine Humanität ist eine beständige Selbstüberwindung. — Aber ich habe Einsamkeit nötig, will sagen, Genesung, Rückkehr zu mir, den Atem einer freien leichten spielenden Luft ... Der Ekel am Menschen, am 9Gesindel: war immer meine größte Gefahr.» — (M. G. Conrad: «Ketzerblut», S. 183f) Solche Triebe liegen seinen Lehren über «Jenseits von Gut und Böse» und einer ganzen Reihe seiner anderen Gedanken zugrunde. Er will eine Kaste vornehmer Menschen erziehen, die aus dem Bereiche ihrer völligen Willkür heraus sich ihre Lebensziele setzen. Und die ganze Geschichte ist ihm nur ein Mittel, solche wenigen Herrennaturen zu züchten, die sich der ganzen übrigen Menschenmasse als Mittel zu ihren persönlichen Zwecken bedienen. «Man missversteht das Raubtier und den Raubmenschen (zum Beispiele Cesare Borgia) gründlich, man missversteht die 9Natur:, so lange man noch nach einer 9Krankhaftigkeit: im Grunde dieser gesündesten aller tropischen Untiere und Gewächse sucht, oder gar nach einer eingeborenen 9Hölle: -: wie es bisher fast alle Moralisten getan haben», heißt es im § 197 von «Jenseits von Gut und Böse». Nietzsche sieht es als Wesentliches einer richtigen Aristokratie an, dass sie «mit gutem Wissen das Opfer einer Unzahl Menschen hinnimmt, welche um ihretwillen zu unvollständigen Menschen, zu Sklaven, zu Werkzeugen herabgedrückt und vermindert werden müssen». (§ 258 von «Jenseits von Gut und Böse».) Aus dieser Quelle stammt bei Nietzsche auch seine ans Engherzige grenzende Beurteilung der sozialen Frage. Die Arbeiter müssen nach seiner Meinung Herde bleiben, sie dürfen nicht dazu erzogen werden, sich als Zweck zu betrachten. «Man hat die Instinkte, vermöge deren ein Arbeiter als Stand möglich, sich selber möglich wird, durch die unverantwortlichste Gedankenlosigkeit in Grund und Boden zerstört. Man hat den Arbeiter militärtüchtig gemacht, man hat ihm das Koalitions-Recht, das politische Stimmrecht gegeben: was Wunder, wenn der Arbeiter seine Existenz heute bereits als Notstand (moralisch ausgedrückt als Unrecht -) empfindet? Aber was will man? nochmals gefragt. Will man einen Zweck, muss man auch die Mittel wollen: will man Sklaven, so ist man ein Narr, wenn man sie zu Herren erzieht.» (Werke, Band VIII, S.153.)
[ 18 ] In der letzten Phase seines Schaffens stellte er dann vollends die eigene Person in den Mittelpunkt des Weltgeschehens. «Dies Buch gehört den Wenigsten. Vielleicht lebt selbst noch keiner von ihnen. Es mögen die sein, welche meinen Zarathustra verstehen: wie dürfte ich mich mit denen verwechseln, für welche heute schon Ohren wachsen? — Erst das Übermorgen gehört mir. Einige werden posthum geboren. Die Bedingungen, unter denen man mich versteht und dann mit Notwendigkeit versteht — ich kenne sie nur zu genau ... Neue Ohren für neue Musik. Neue Augen für das Fernste. Ein neues Gewissen für bisher stumm gebliebene Wahrheiten ... Wohlan! Das allein sind meine Leser, meine rechten Leser, meine vorherbestimmten Leser: was liegt am Rest? — Der Rest ist bloß Menschheit. — Man muss der Menschheit überlegen sein durch Kraft, durch Höhe der Seele — durch Verachtung ... (Werke, Band VIII, S.215 f) Es bedeutet nur eine Steigerung solcher Vorstellungen, wenn Nietzsche sich zuletzt mit Dionysos identifiziert.
[ 19 ] So konnte Nietzsche nur denken, weil ihm in seiner Isolierung jede Vorstellung fehlte, inwiefern seine Anschauungen nur Nuancen dessen sind, was sich auch sonst im Geistesleben des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts zur Herrschaft heraufgearbeitet hat. Auch fehlte ihm jede Erkenntnis des Zusammenhanges seiner Ideen mit dem wissenschaftlichen Bestande seines Zeitalters. Was für andere sich als Konsequenz gewisser Voraussetzungen ergibt, steht in seinem Gedankensysteme isoliert da und wächst in dieser Isolierung zu einer Intensität an, die seinen Lieblingsansichten durchaus den Charakter von Zwangsvorstellungen verleiht. Seine ganze biologische Auffassung der Moralbegriffe trägt diesen Charakter. Die ethischen Begriffe sollen nichts anderes sein als Äußerungen physiologischer Prozesse. «Was ist Moralität! Ein Mensch, ein Volk hat eine physiologische Veränderung erlitten, empfindet diese im Gemeingefühl und deutet sie sich in der Sprache seiner Affekte und nach dem Grade seiner Kenntnisse aus, ohne zu merken, dass der Sitz der Veränderung in der Physis ist. Wie als ob einer Hunger hat und meint, mit Begriffen und Gebräuchen, mit Lob und Tadel ihn zu beschwichtigen!» (Werke, Band XII, S.35.) Solche für eine naturwissenschaftliche Weltanschauung feststehende Begriffe wirken auf Nietzsche als Zwangsvorstellungen, und er spricht von ihnen nicht mit der Ruhe des Erkennenden, der die Tragweite seiner Ideen zu bemessen in der Lage ist, sondern mit der Leidenschaft des Fanatikers und Schwärmers. Der Gedanke von der Auslese der Besten im menschlichen «Kampf ums Dasein», dieser in der Darwinistischen Literatur der letzten Jahrzehnte ganz heimische Gedanke, erscheint bei Nietzsche als die Idee des «Übermenschen». Der Kampf gegen den «Jenseitsglauben», den Nietzsche so leidenschaftlich in seinem «Zarathustra» führt: er ist nur eine andere Form des Kampfes, den die materialistische und monistische Naturlehre führt. Neu an Nietzsches Ideen ist im Grunde nur der Gefühlston, der sich bei ihm an die Vorstellungen knüpft. Und dieser Gefühlston ist in seiner Intensität nur zu begreifen, wenn man annimmt, dass diese Vorstellungen aus ihrem systematischen Zusammenhange gerissen, wie Zwangsideen auf ihn wirken. So auch ist nur die häufige Wiederholung derselben Vorstellung zu erklären, so der unmotivierte Charakter, mit dem gewisse Gedanken oft auftreten. Dieses völlig Unmotivierte können wir besonders an seiner Idee von der «Ewigen Wiederkunft» aller Dinge und Vorgänge bemerken. Wie ein Komet tritt diese Idee in seinen Werken aus der Zeit von 1882—1888 immer wieder auf. Nirgends erscheint sie in einem inneren Zusammenhange mit dem, was er sonst vorbringt. Zu ihrer Begründung wird so gut wie nichts vorgebracht. Überall aber wird sie wie eine Lehre vorgetragen, die geeignet ist, die allertiefsten Erschütterungen in der ganzen menschlichen Kultur hervorzurufen.
[ 20 ] Man kann Nietzsches Geisteskonstitution nicht mit den Begriffen der Psychologie verstehen; man muss die Psycho-Pathologie zu Hilfe rufen. Mit dieser Behauptung soll nichts gegen das Genialische seines Schaffens gesagt werden. Am wenigsten soll damit über Wahrheit oder Irrtum in seinen Ideen selbst etwas entschieden werden. Nietzsches Genie hat mit dieser Untersuchung überhaupt nichts zu tun. Das Genialische erscheint bei ihm durch ein pathologisches Medium hindurch.
[ 21 ] Nicht die Genialität Friedrich Nietzsches soll aus seiner kranken Konstitution erklärt werden. Nietzsche war Genie, trotzdem er krank war. Ein anderes ist es, die Genialität selbst als krankhaften Geisteszustand erklären; ein anderes die Gesamtpersönlichkeit eines Menschen von Genie unter Berücksichtigung des Morbiden in seinem Wesen begreifen. Man kann ein Anhänger der Ideen Nietzsches sein und doch der Meinung, dass die Art, wie er diese Ideen findet, miteinander verbindet, wie er sie bewertet und vertritt, nur durch psycho-pathologische Begriffe zu verstehen ist. Man kann seinen schönen, großen Charakter, seine merkwürdige Denkerphysiognomie bewundern und doch zugeben, dass in diesen Charakter, in diese Physiognomie morbide Faktoren eingreifen. Das Problem Nietzsche hat gerade dadurch sein großes Interesse, weil ein genialer Mensch Jahre hindurch mit morbiden Elementen kämpft, weil er große Gedanken nur in einem Zusammenhange vorzubringen vermag, der durch die Psycho-Pathologie erklärbar wird. Nicht das Genie selbst, nur die Äußerungsform des Genies soll auf diesem Wege erklärt werden. Die Medizin wird mit ihren Mitteln wichtiges beizutragen haben zur Erklärung des Geistesbildes Nietzsches. Auch auf die Psycho-Pathologie der Massen wird ein Licht fallen, wenn erst die Geistesart Nietzsches selbst verstanden wird. Es ist ja klar, dass nicht der Inhalt von Nietzsches Lehre dieser so viele Anhänger zugetragen hat, sondern dass ihre Wirkung vielfach gerade auf der ungesunden Art beruht, wie Nietzsche seine Ideen vertreten hat. Wie ihm seine Gedanken zumeist nicht ein Mittel waren, die Welt und den Menschen zu begreifen, sondern psychische Entladungen, durch die er sich berauschen wollte, so ist das auch bei vielen seiner Anhänger der Fall. Man sehe, wie er selbst das Verhältnis der in seiner «Fröhlichen Wissenschaft» zusammengestellten Gedanken zu seiner Empfindung schildert.«9 Fröhliche Wissenschaft:: das bedeutet die Saturnalien eines Geistes, der einem furchtbaren langen Drucke geduldig widerstanden hat -geduldig, streng, kalt, ohne sich zu unterwerfen, aber ohne Hoffnung -, und der jetzt mit einem Male von der Hoffnung angefallen wird, von der Hoffnung auf Gesundheit, von der Trunkenheit der Genesung. Was Wunder, dass dabei viel Unvernünftiges und Närrisches ans Licht kommt, viel mutwillige Zärtlichkeit, selbst auf Probleme verschwendet, die ein stachliches Fell haben und nicht danach angetan sind, geliebkost und gelockt zu werden. Dies ganze Buch ist eben nichts als eine Lustbarkeit nach langer Entbehrung und Ohnmacht, das Frohlocken der wiederkehrenden Kraft, des neu erwachten Glaubens ...» (Nietzsches Werke, Band V, S. 3f) Nicht um Wahrheit handelt es sich in diesem Buche, sondern um Auffindung von Gedanken, an denen ein kranker Geist ein Heilmittel für sich, ein Erheiterungsmittel haben kann.
[ 22 ] Ein Geist, der durch seine Gedanken die Welt- und Menschenentwicklung begreifen will, braucht neben der Gabe der Phantasie, die ihn auf diese Gedanken bringt, auch die Selbstzucht, die Selbstkritik, durch die den Gedanken ihre Bedeutung, ihre Tragweite, ihr Zusammenhang angewiesen wird. Diese Selbstzucht ist bei Nietzsche nicht in großem Maße vorhanden. Die Ideen stürmen bei ihm darauf los, ohne durch Selbstkritik in Schranken gewiesen zu werden. Zwischen der Produktivität und der Logik besteht bei ihm kein Wechselverhältnis. Der Intuition steht nicht ein entsprechendes Maß von kritischer Besonnenheit zur Seite.
[ 23 ] So berechtigt es ist, den psychopathischen Ursprung gewisser religiöser Vorstellungen und Sekten aufzuweisen, so berechtigt ist es auch, die Persönlichkeit eines Menschen auf einen solchen Ursprung hin zu prüfen, der aus den in der Psychologie in Betracht kommenden Gesetzen nicht zu erklären ist.
4. Nietzsche's philosophy as a psycho-pathological problem
[ 1 ] The following is not written to multiply the claims of Friedrich Nietzsche's opponents, but with the intention of making a contribution to the knowledge of this man from a point of view that undoubtedly comes into consideration when assessing his strange trains of thought. Anyone who delves into Friedrich Nietzsche's world view will come across numerous problems that can only be elucidated from the standpoint of psycho-pathology. On the other hand, it should be particularly important for psychiatry to deal with an important personality who has had an immeasurably great influence on contemporary culture. This influence also has a significantly different character than the effects that philosophers have otherwise had on their students. For Nietzsche does not influence his contemporaries through the logical force of his arguments. The spread of his views is rather due to the same reasons that make it possible for enthusiasts and fanatics of all times to play their roles in the world.
[ 2 ] What is offered here is not a complete explanation of Friedrich Nietzsche's mental state from a psychiatric point of view. Such an explanation is not yet possible today because a complete and accurate clinical picture of his illness is not yet available. Everything that has come to the public's attention about the history of his illness is incomplete and contradictory. What is quite possible today, however, is to look at Nietzsche's philosophy from the perspective of psycho-pathology. The actual work of the psychiatrist will perhaps begin precisely where that of the psychologist, which is to be presented here, ends. However, this work is absolutely necessary for the complete solution of the "Nietzsche problem". Only on the basis of such a psycho-pathological symptomatology will the psychiatrist be able to solve his task. 1The author of this essay believes himself called upon to view Nietzsche's views from this standpoint, for he already provided a picture of these views some time ago in his essay "Friedrich Nietzsche, a Fighter against his Time", which sought to do objective justice to this spirit, and in which he refrained from any sideways glance at a psycho-pathological explanation. The author does not want to separate himself from his previously expressed convictions, but only to grasp the problem from a different perspective.
[ 3 ] One characteristic that runs through Nietzsche's entire work is the lack of a sense of objective truth. What science strives for as truth was basically never there for him. In the period shortly before the outbreak of complete madness, this lack grew into a formal hatred of everything that is called logical reasoning. "Honest things, like honest people, do not carry their reasons in their hands. It is indecent to point all five fingers. What must first be proven is worth little," he says in "Götzen-Dämmerung", written in 1888, shortly before his illness (Volume VIII of the Complete Edition, 5.7'). Because he lacked this sense of truth, he never went through the struggle that so many have to go through who are forced by their development to give up their acquired opinions. When he was confirmed at the age of seventeen, he was a complete believer in God. Indeed, three years later, when he left the grammar school in Schulpforta, he wrote: "To him, to whom I owe the most, I bring the first fruits of my gratitude; what else can I offer him but the warm feeling of my heart, which perceives his love more vividly than ever, his love, which let me experience this most beautiful hour of my existence? May he continue to protect me, the faithful God!" (E. Förster-Nietzsche: "The Life of Friedrich Nietzsche", I. p. 194.) In a short time, the believer in God becomes a complete atheist, without any inner struggle. In his memoirs, which he wrote down in 1888 under the title "Ecce homo", he spoke of his inner struggles. "Religious difficulties," he says there, "I do not know from experience..." "'God', 'immortality of the soul', 'salvation', 'afterlife', all concepts to which I paid no attention, no time, not even as a child - perhaps I was never childlike enough to do so? - I do not know atheism as a result, still less as an event: it comes to me by instinct." (M. G. Conrad: "Ketzerblut", p. 182.) It is characteristic of Nietzsche's mental constitution that he claims here that he himself paid no attention to the religious ideas mentioned as a child. From the biography provided by his sister, we know that his classmates called him the "little pastor" because of his religious statements. From all of this, it is clear that he overcame the religious beliefs of his youth with great ease.
[ 4 ] The psychological process through which Nietzsche arrives at the content of his views is not the one that a person who sets out for objective truth goes through. This can already be observed in the way he arrives at the fundamental ideas of his first work "The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music". Nietzsche assumes that ancient Greek art is based on two drives: The Apollonian and the Dionysian. Through the Apollonian drive, man creates a beautiful image of the world, a work of calm contemplation. Through the Dionysian drive, man places himself in a state of intoxication; he does not merely contemplate the world; he permeates himself with the eternal powers of being and expresses them in his art. The epic, the sculptural pictorial work, are products of Apollonian art. The lyrical, the musical work of art spring from the Dionysian impulse. The Dionysian-minded person interpenetrates himself with the spirit of the world and brings its essence to light through his own expressions. He himself becomes a work of art. "Singing and dancing, man expresses himself as a member of a higher community: he has forgotten how to walk and speak and is on the way to flying up into the air, dancing. Enchantment speaks from his gestures". ("Birth of Tragedy", §I..) In this Dionysian state, man forgets himself, he no longer feels himself as an individual, but as an organ of the general will of the world. Nietzsche sees Dionysian expressions of the human spirit in the festivals held in honor of the god Dionysus. He now imagines that the dramatic art of the Greeks originated from such games. A higher union of the Dionysian with the Apollonian had taken place. In the oldest drama, an Apollonian image of the Dionysian excited human being was created.
[ 5 ] Nietzsche arrived at such ideas through the Schopenhauerian philosophy. He simply translated the "world as will and imagination" into the artistic. The world of the imagination is not the real one; it is only a subjective image that our soul creates of things. In Schopenhauer's opinion, observation does not lead man to the actual essence of the world. This reveals itself to him in his will. The art of the imagination is Apollonian; that of the will is Dionysian. Nietzsche only needed to take a small step beyond Schopenhauer and he had arrived where he stands in the "Birth of Tragedy". Schopenhauer himself has already assigned music an exceptional position among the arts. He calls all other arts mere images of the will; he calls music a direct expression of the primal will itself.
[ 6 ] Now Schopenhauer never had such an effect on Nietzsche that one could say he became his follower. In the essay "Schopenhauer as Educator", Nietzsche describes the impression he received from the teachings of the pessimistic philosopher: "Schopenhauer talks to himself, or if you want to imagine a listener, think of the son whom the father instructs. It is an honest, coarse, good-natured utterance to a listener who hears with love. We lack such writers. The strong sense of well-being of the speaker envelops us at the first sound of his voice; we feel as if we were entering a high forest, we breathe deeply and suddenly feel good again. Here is an air that is always the same, invigorating, we feel; here is a certain inimitable impartiality and naturalness, such as people have who are at home in themselves, and indeed in a very rich home." This aesthetic impression is decisive for Nietzsche's position on Schopenhauer. He was not at all concerned with doctrine. Among the notes he made at the same time as he wrote the hymn-like essay "Schopenhauer as Educator", we find the following: "I am far from believing that I have understood Schopenhauer correctly, I have only learned to understand myself a little better through Schopenhauer; that is why I owe him the greatest gratitude. But in general it does not seem to me to be as important as it is now taken to be, that with any philosopher it should be exactly fathomed and brought to light what he actually taught in the strictest sense of the word, and what not: such an insight is at least not suitable for people who seek a philosophy for their life, not a new scholarship for their memory: and finally it remains improbable to me that such a thing can really be fathomed." (Nietzsche's Works, Volume X, p. 285f.)
[ 7 ] Nietzsche thus builds his ideas about the "birth of tragedy" on the basis of a philosophical doctrine, which he leaves open as to whether he has understood it correctly. He is not looking for logical, but merely aesthetic satisfaction.
[ 8 ] Further evidence of his lack of a sense of truth is provided by his behavior during the writing of "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth" in 1876. During this time, he not only wrote down everything he had to say in praise of Wagner, but also some of the ideas that he later put forward against Wagner in the "Wagner case". In "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth", he only included what could be used to glorify Richard Wagner and his art; he initially held back the more serious, heretical judgments in his desk. Of course, this is not the approach of someone who has a sense of objective truth. Nietzsche did not want to provide a true characterization of Wagner, but rather to sing the master's praises.
[ 9 ] It is highly significant how Nietzsche behaves when he encounters a personality in Paul Ree in 1876, who presents a series of those problems which, like the ethical ones in particular, also proved useful in life. The basic truths of mechanics and natural science were actually errors; he wanted to elaborate on this in a work for which he drew up the plan in 1881. This was all within Nietzsche's sphere of interest, viewed entirely in the spirit of strictly objective science. This way of looking at things had the effect of a new revelation on Nietzsche.2This is not to say that P. Rée had a considerable influence on the content of Nietzsche's world view. He admires this pure research into truth, which is free of all romanticism. Miss Malwida von Meysenbug, the intellectual author of the "Memoirs of an Idealist", tells in her recently published book: "The Evening of an Idealist" of Nietzsche's position on Rées' way of looking at things in 1876. At that time, she belonged to the circle of people in Sorrento within which Nietzsche and Rées became closer. "How much his (Rées') way of explaining philosophical problems made an impression on Nietzsche, I saw from many conversations." She shares a passage from one such conversation: "It is - said Nietzsche - the error of all religions to seek a transcendental unity behind appearance, and this is also the error of philosophy and of Schopenhauer's idea of the unity of the will to life. Philosophy is just as monstrous an error as religion. The only thing of value and validity is science, which gradually adds stone to stone in order to build a secure edifice." This speaks a clear language. Nietzsche, who himself lacked a sense of objective truth, virtually idolized him when he confronted him with someone else. As a result, however, he himself does not turn towards objective scientificity. The nature of his own production remains the same as it was before. So even now the truth does not affect him through its logical nature, but makes an aesthetically pleasing impression on him. In his two volumes "Menschliches, Allzumenschliches" (1878), he sings the praises of objective scientificity one after the other; but he himself does not apply the method of this scientificity at all. Indeed, he continued on his path in such a way that in 1881 he arrived at the position of declaring war on all truth.
[ 10 ] Nietzsche makes an assertion at this time by which he consciously sets himself in opposition to the views represented by natural science. This assertion is his much-discussed doctrine of the "eternal return" of all things. In Dühring's "Kursus der Philosophie", he found a statement that was intended to prove that an eternal repetition of the same world events was incompatible with the principles of mechanics. It was precisely this that inspired him to assume such an eternal, periodic repetition of the same world events. Everything that happens today is said to have happened countless times and is said to repeat itself countless times. At this time, he also expresses how appealing it is for him to put forward counter-opinions to generally accepted truths. "What is the reaction of opinions? When an opinion ceases to be interesting, one seeks to give it an attraction by holding it to its counter-opinion. Usually, however, the counter-opinion seduces and now makes new supporters: it has become more interesting in the meantime." (Nietzsche's Works, Volume XI, p.65.) And because he realizes that his counter-opinion to the old scientific truths is not correct, he makes the claim that these truths themselves are not truths, but errors, which people have only accepted because they tried to do so for the sake of the idea of the "eternal return". The logically compelling force of truth was to be denied in order to be able to put forward a counter-opinion contrary to the essence of this truth.
[ 11 ] Nietzsche's fight against the truth gradually took on even greater dimensions. In 1885, in his essay "Beyond Good and Evil", he asked whether truth had any value at all. "The will to truth, which will still tempt us to many a venture, that famous truthfulness of which all philosophers have spoken with reverence up to now, what questions has this will to truth already put before us? What strange, bad, questionable questions? This is already a long story - and yet it seems that it has barely just begun ... Assuming we want truth, why not rather untruth?"
[ 12 ] Such questions can of course also arise in a perfectly logical mind. Epistemology has to deal with these questions. For a real thinker, however, the natural consequence of the emergence of such questions is the investigation into the sources of human cognition. For him, a world of the most subtle philosophical problems begins. None of this is the case with Nietzsche. He does not enter into any relationship with these questions that has anything to do with logic. "I still expect that a philosophical doctor in the exceptional sense of the word - one who has to pursue the problem of the overall health of people, time, race, humanity - will one day have the courage to take my suspicions to the extreme and dare to say: All philosophizing up to now has not been about truth at all, but about something else, let us say about health, future, growth, power, life ..." So wrote Nietzsche in the autumn of 1886 (in the preface to the second edition of "Fröhliche Wissenschaft"). You can see that Nietzsche has a tendency to perceive a contrast between the usefulness of life, health, power and so on and truth. It corresponds to natural feeling to assume here not a contrast but a harmony. In Nietzsche, the question of the value of truth does not appear as an epistemological need, but rather as an outflow of his lack of an objective sense of truth in general. This becomes grotesquely apparent in a sentence that also appears in the aforementioned preface: "And as far as our future is concerned: we will hardly be found again on the paths of those Egyptian youths who make temples unsafe at night, hug pillars of images and want to unveil, uncover and put into bright light everything that is kept hidden for good reasons. No, this bad taste, this will to truth, to truth at any price, this young man's madness in the love of truth - is disgusting to us." Nietzsche's hatred of Socrates arose from this aversion to the truth. The drive for objectivity in this spirit had something downright repulsive for him. In his "Götzen-Dämmerung" (1888), this is expressed in the sharpest possible way: "Socrates belonged to the lowest people by origin: Socrates was rabble. One knows, one can still see it oneself, how ugly he was ... Socrates was a misunderstanding."
[ 13 ] Compare the philosophical skepticism of other personalities with the battle against truth waged by Nietzsche. Usually this skepticism is based precisely on a pronounced sense of truth. The drive for truth drives the philosopher to investigate its value, its sources, its limits. Nietzsche does not have this drive. And the way in which he tackles the problems of knowledge is merely a product of his flawed sense of truth. It is understandable that such a deficiency manifests itself in a different way in a genius than in a subordinate personality. As great as the distance is between Nietzsche and the psychopathic inferior, who lacks a sense of truth in everyday life, qualitatively we are dealing here and there with the same psychological peculiarity that at least borders on the pathological.
II
[ 14 ] In Nietzsche's world of thought, a destructive instinct is revealed, which in his assessment of certain views and convictions allowed him to go far beyond what appears psychologically comprehensible as criticism. It is significant that the vast majority of everything Nietzsche wrote is the result of this destructive instinct. In the "Birth of Tragedy", the entire Western cultural development from Socrates and Euripides to Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner is presented as an aberration. The "Unzeitgemäßen Betrachtungen", which he began working on in 1873, were begun with the resolute intention of "singing the whole scale" of his "hostilities". Four of the twenty projected contemplations were completed. Two of them are combat pamphlets that ferociously ferret out the weaknesses of the opponent under attack or of Nietzsche's unsympathetic viewpoint, without the slightest concern for the relative justification of the opponent. The other two are indeed hymns of praise to two personalities; however, in 1888 (in the "Wagner case") Nietzsche not only retracted everything he had said in 1876 in glorification of Wagner, but he later portrayed the appearance of Wagner's art, which he initially praised as the salvation and rebirth of the entire Western culture, as the greatest danger to this culture. And he also wrote about Schopenhauer in 1888: "He interpreted, one after the other, art, heroism, genius, beauty, ... the will to truth, tragedy as a consequence of the denial: or the need for denial of the 9will: - the greatest psychological falsification that exists in history, apart from Christianity. To be more precise, in this he is merely the heir to Christian interpretation: only that he also knew how to approve the great cultural facts of humanity in a Christian, i.e. nihilistic, sense." So even towards phenomena that Nietzsche once admired, his destructive instinct does not rest. Even in the four writings that appear from 1878 to 1882, the tendency to destroy recognized trends essentially outweighs what Nietzsche himself puts forward as positive. It is almost not at all important to him to search for new insights, but rather to shake the existing ones. In 1888 he writes in "Ecce homo" about the work of destruction that he began in 1876 with "Menschliches, Allzumenschliches": "One error after another is calmly put on ice, the ideal is not refuted - it freezes to death ... Here, for example, 9the genius: freezes to death; one corner further on 9the saint: freezes to death; under a thick icicle 9the hero: freezes to death; at the end 9faith: freezes to death, the so-called 9conviction:, even 9pity: cools down considerably - almost everywhere the 9thing in itself freezes to death .... ...": "The human, the all-too-human ... with which I put an abrupt end to all the 9higher dizziness:, 9idealism:, 9beautiful feeling: and other femininities that I had introduced ..." This desire for destruction drives Nietzsche to pursue the victims he has fallen for with almost blind rage. For an idea, for a personality that he believes he must reject, he makes judgments that bear no relation at all to the reasons he has to cite for his rejection. The way in which he persecutes opposing opinions is not different in degree, but only in kind, from the way in which typical querulants persecute their opponents. The content of Nietzsche's judgments is less important. One can often agree with him about this content. But even in cases where he is undoubtedly right to a certain extent, one will have to admit that the way in which he arrives at his judgments represents a distortion in the psychological sense. Only the fascination of his form of expression, only the artistic treatment of language can disguise this fact in Nietzsche. Nietzsche's intellectual destructiveness becomes particularly clear, however, when one considers how few positive ideas he is able to oppose to the views he attacks. He claims of the entire culture to date that it has realized a completely false ideal of man; he opposes this reprehensible type of man with his idea of the "superman". As an example of a superman, he has a real destroyer in mind: Cesare Borgia. Imagining such a destroyer in an important historical role gives him a true spiritual lust. "I see the possibility before me, of a completely supernatural magic and colorful charm - it seems to me that it shines in all the shudders of refined beauty, that an art is at work in it, so divine, so devilishly divine, that one searches millennia in vain for a second such possibility; I see a spectacle so full of meaning, so wonderfully paradoxical at the same time, that all the deities of Olympus would have had cause for immortal laughter - Cesare Borgia as Pope . .. Do you understand me? Well, that would have been the victory that I long for today - Christianity was abolished!" (Nietzsche's Works, Volume VIII, 5.3".) The way in which Nietzsche's sense of destruction outweighs that of construction can be seen in the disposition of his last work, his "Umwertung aller Werte". Three quarters of it is purely negative work. He wants to offer an annihilation of Christianity under the title "The Antichrist", an annihilation of all previous philosophy, which he called a "nihilistic movement", under the heading "The Free Spirit", and an annihilation of all previous moral concepts: "The Immoralist". He called these moral concepts the "most disastrous kind of ignorance". Only the last chapter heralds something positive: "Dionysus, philosophy of the eternal return." (Nietzsche's Works, Volume VIII, p. III, Appendix.) However, he was never able to gain any significant content for this positive part of his philosophy.
[ 15 ] Nietzsche did not shy away from the worst contradictions when it came to destroying a particular school of thought, a cultural phenomenon. In 1888, when his aim in "Antichrist" was to portray the harmfulness of Christianity, he contrasted it with the older cultural phenomena with the following words: "The whole work of ancient culture is in vain: I have no word for it that expresses my feeling about something so monstrous ... Why the Greeks? Why the Romans? - All the prerequisites for an erudite culture, all the scientific methods were already there, the great, incomparable art of reading well had already been established - this prerequisite for the tradition of culture, for the unity of science; natural science in alliance with mathematics and mechanics was on the very best path - the sense of fact, the last and most valuable of all senses, had its schools, its centuries-old tradition! ... - And not buried overnight by a natural event! . .. ... But destroyed by cunning, secret, invisible, bloodless vampires!... - One need only read any Christian agitator, St. Augustine, for example, to understand, to smell what unclean fellows have come up with it." (Werke, Vol. VIII, p.307/308.) Nietzsche thoroughly despised the art of reading up to the point where he defended it in order to fight Christianity. Let us cite just one of his sentences on this art: "It is now certain to me that to have written a single line which deserves to be commented on by scholars of later times outweighs the merit of the greatest critic. There is a deep modesty in the philologist. Improving texts is an entertaining work for scholars, it is a rebus guess; but it should not be considered too important a thing. It would be bad if antiquity spoke less clearly to us because a million words would stand in the way!" (Werke, Vol. X, p.341.) And in 1882 Nietzsche made the following statement about the alliance of the sense of fact with mathematics and mechanics in his "Fröhliche Wissenschaft": "That only an interpretation of the world is right ... which allows counting, calculating, weighing, seeing and grasping and nothing else, that is a clumsiness and naivety, provided that it is not mental illness, not idiocy." "Do we really want to allow our existence to be degraded in this way to an arithmetic exercise and parlor squatting for mathematicians?" (Works, Volume V, p. 330/331.)
III.
[ 16 ] In an unmistakable way, one can observe a certain coherence of ideas in Nietzsche. Where only logical associations of ideas would be appropriate, he makes connections of thought that are based on merely external, coincidental characteristics, for example the similarity in sound of the words, or on metaphorical relationships that are indifferent at the point where the terms are used. In a passage in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where the future-men are contrasted with the present-men, we find the following excess of the imagination: “Like the wind when it rushes out of its mountain caves: it wants to dance to its own tune, the seas tremble and leap under its footsteps. He who gives wings to asses, who milks lionesses, praise be to this good unrestrained spirit, who comes like a storm wind to all today and all mob, - who is hostile to thistle and thistle heads and all withered leaves and weeds: praise be to this wild good free storm spirit, who dances on moors and mists as on meadows! Who hates the rabble-rousing giddy-dogs and all misguided dark breeding: praised be this spirit of all free spirits, the laughing storm, which blows dust into the eyes of all black-addicted, blackish-addicted people!” (Werke, Vol. VI, p. 429 f) In Antichrist there is the following thought, in which the word “truth” in a very external sense gives rise to an association of ideas at an important point: “Do I still have to say that in the whole New Testament there is only one single figure who must be honored? Pilate, the Roman governor. He doesn't persuade himself to take a Jewish trade seriously. One Jew more or less - what's the point? The noble scorn of a Roman, before whom an impudent abuse is made of the word "truth", has enriched the New Testament with the only word that has value ... which is its criticism, its destruction itself: ‘What is truth!’ ...” (Werke, Vol. VIII, p. 280 f) It certainly belongs in the class of incoherent associations of ideas when the following sentence appears at the end of a treatise on the value of German culture in Beyond Good and Evil, which is intended here to be more than a stylistic punch line: “It is wise for a people to assert that they are deep, clumsy, good-natured, honest, unwise, to let them be: they could even be - deep! Finally: one should do honor to one's name - it is not for nothing that one is called the 9tiusche: people, the deceptive people...”
[ 17 ] The more intimately one studies Nietzsche's development of thought, the more one becomes convinced that there are departures everywhere from what can still be explained psychologically. The drive to isolate himself, to shut himself off from the outside world, is deeply rooted in his mental organization. In "Ecce homo", he expresses this characteristically enough: "I have a completely uncanny irritability of the purity instinct, so that I physiologically perceive - smell - the closeness or - what am I saying? - the innermost, the 9pasture: of every soul. In this irritability I have psychological feelers with which I can touch and get hold of every secret: I become aware of the many hidden dirt at the bottom of some natures, perhaps caused by bad blood but covered over by education, almost at the first touch. If I have observed rightly, such natures, which are inimical to my cleanliness, feel the caution of my disgust in their turn: they do not become more fragrant as a result... This does not make my intercourse with people a small test of patience; my humanity does not consist in sympathizing with how people are, but in enduring that I sympathize with them... My humanity is a constant self-conquest. - But I need solitude, in other words, recovery, a return to myself, the breath of a free, light, playful air ... The disgust of people, of the riff-raff: has always been my greatest danger." - (M. G. Conrad: "Ketzerblut", p. 183f) Such instincts underlie his teachings on "Beyond Good and Evil" and a whole series of his other thoughts. He wants to educate a caste of noble people who set their goals in life from the realm of their complete arbitrariness. And the whole of history is for him only a means of breeding such a few masterly natures who use the whole of the rest of the human masses as a means to their personal ends. "One thoroughly misunderstands the predatory animal and the predatory man (for example Cesare Borgia), one misunderstands 9nature: as long as one is still looking for a 9disease: at the bottom of this healthiest of all tropical beasts and plants, or even for an innate 9hell: -: as almost all moralists have done up to now", it says in § 197 of "Beyond Good and Evil". Nietzsche sees it as essential to a true aristocracy that it "accepts with good knowledge the sacrifice of a myriad of people who, for their own sake, must be pressed down and diminished to incomplete human beings, to slaves, to tools". (§ 258 of "Beyond Good and Evil".) Nietzsche's assessment of the social question, which borders on the narrow-minded, also stems from this source. In his opinion, the workers must remain herds, they must not be educated to regard themselves as a purpose. "The instincts which make it possible for a worker to become himself have been destroyed by the most irresponsible thoughtlessness. The worker has been made fit for military service, he has been given the right of coalition, the political vote: what wonder if the worker today already feels his existence to be a state of emergency (morally expressed as injustice)? But what do we want? I ask again. If one wants an end, one must also want the means: if one wants slaves, one is a fool if one educates them to be masters." (Works, Volume VIII, p.153.)
[ 18 ] In the last phase of his work, he then placed his own person at the center of world events. "This book belongs to the very few. Perhaps none of them are alive yet. They may be those who understand my Zarathustra: how could I confuse myself with those for whom ears are already growing today? - Only the day after tomorrow belongs to me. Some are born posthumously. The conditions under which I am understood and then understood with necessity - I know them only too well ... New ears for new music. New eyes for the distant. A new conscience for previously silent truths ... Well done! These alone are my readers, my right readers, my predestined readers: what lies in the rest? - The rest is merely humanity. - One must be superior to humanity through strength, through height of soul - through contempt ... (Werke, Vol. VIII, p.215 f) It is only an intensification of such ideas when Nietzsche finally identifies himself with Dionysus.
[ 19 ] Nietzsche could only think in this way because, in his isolation, he lacked any idea of the extent to which his views were only nuances of what had otherwise worked its way up to dominance in the intellectual life of the nineteenth century. He also lacked any realization of the connection between his ideas and the scientific state of his age. What for others is the consequence of certain presuppositions stands isolated in his system of thought and in this isolation grows to an intensity that gives his favorite views the character of compulsory ideas. His entire biological conception of moral concepts has this character. Ethical concepts are supposed to be nothing other than expressions of physiological processes. "What is morality! A man, a people, has undergone a physiological change, feels it in the common feeling and interprets it in the language of his affects and according to the degree of his knowledge, without realizing that the seat of the change is in the physique. As if one were hungry and thought to appease it with concepts and customs, with praise and blame!" (Werke, Vol. XII, p.35.) Such concepts, which are fixed for a scientific world view, have an effect on Nietzsche as obsessions, and he does not speak of them with the calmness of the cognizer, who is able to measure the scope of his ideas, but with the passion of the fanatic and enthusiast. The idea of the selection of the best in the human "struggle for existence", an idea that is very much at home in the Darwinian literature of recent decades, appears in Nietzsche as the idea of the "superman". The struggle against the "belief in the hereafter", which Nietzsche wages so passionately in his "Zarathustra", is just another form of the struggle waged by the materialistic and monistic theory of nature. What is new about Nietzsche's ideas is basically only the emotional tone that he attaches to the ideas. And this emotional tone can only be understood in its intensity if one assumes that these ideas, torn from their systematic context, have an effect on him like compulsive ideas. This is the only way to explain the frequent repetition of the same idea, the unmotivated character with which certain thoughts often occur. We can particularly notice this completely unmotivated character in his idea of the "eternal return" of all things and processes. This idea appears again and again like a comet in his works from the period 1882-1888. Nowhere does it appear in any inner connection with what he otherwise puts forward. Virtually nothing is said to substantiate it. Everywhere, however, it is presented as a doctrine that is capable of causing the most profound upheavals in all of human culture.
[ 20 ] Nietzsche's mental constitution cannot be understood with the concepts of psychology; one must call upon psycho-pathology for help. This assertion is not intended to say anything against the genius of his work. Least of all is it intended to decide anything about truth or error in his ideas themselves. Nietzsche's genius has nothing at all to do with this investigation. In his work, genius appears through a pathological medium.
[ 21 ] The genius of Friedrich Nietzsche should not be explained by his sick constitution. Nietzsche was a genius, despite his illness. Another is to explain genius itself as a morbid mental state; another is to understand the overall personality of a man of genius by taking into account the morbid in his nature. One can be a follower of Nietzsche's ideas and still be of the opinion that the way he finds these ideas, connects them with each other, how he evaluates and represents them, can only be understood through psycho-pathological concepts. One can admire his beautiful, great character, his strange thinker's physiognomy and yet admit that morbid factors intervene in this character, in this physiognomy. Nietzsche's problem is of great interest precisely because a man of genius struggles for years with morbid elements, because he is only able to put forward great thoughts in a context that can be explained by psycho-pathology. Not the genius itself, only the form of expression of genius is to be explained in this way. Medicine will have an important contribution to make to the explanation of Nietzsche's mental image. Light will also be shed on the psycho-pathology of the masses once Nietzsche's way of thinking itself is understood. It is clear that it was not the content of Nietzsche's teachings that brought them so many followers, but that their effect was often based on the unhealthy way in which Nietzsche presented his ideas. Just as his thoughts were mostly not a means for him to understand the world and man, but psychological discharges through which he wanted to intoxicate himself, this is also the case with many of his followers. See how he himself describes the relationship between the thoughts compiled in his "Joyful Science" and his feelings. "9 Joyful Science: that means the Saturnalia of a mind that has patiently withstood a terrible long pressure - patiently, severely, coldly, without submitting, but without hope - and is now suddenly assailed by hope, by the hope of health, by the drunkenness of recovery. It is no wonder that a lot of unreasonable and foolish things come to light, a lot of wanton tenderness, even wasted on problems that have a prickly skin and do not want to be caressed and lured. This whole book is nothing but a delight after long privation and impotence, the rejoicing of returning strength, of newly awakened faith ..." (Nietzsche's Works, Volume V, p. 3f) This book is not about truth, but about finding thoughts that can provide a sick mind with a cure for itself, a means of exhilaration.
[ 22 ] A mind that wants to understand the development of the world and humanity through its thoughts needs not only the gift of imagination, which brings it to these thoughts, but also self-discipline, self-criticism, through which the thoughts are given their meaning, their scope, their context. This self-discipline is not present in Nietzsche to any great extent. For him, ideas rush forth without being put in their place by self-criticism. For him, there is no correlation between productivity and logic. Intuition is not accompanied by a corresponding degree of critical prudence.
[ 23 ] As justified as it is to point out the psychopathic origin of certain religious ideas and sects, it is also justified to examine the personality of a person for such an origin, which cannot be explained by the laws considered in psychology.