Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom
GA 5
Part III. Friedrich Nietzsche's Personality and Psychotherapy
From the Wiener Klinische Rundschau, 14th Year, No. I, 1900
[ 1 ] As the psychic processes act parallel with the brain stimulae, so physiological psychology goes side by side with brain physiology. Where the latter does not as yet offer sufficient knowledge, physiological psychology may make purely provisional investigation into psychic appearances, but always accompanied by the thought that for these psychic appearances the possibility of a parallelism with cerebral processes must also be proved.” Even if one does not fully endorse this statement of Theodor Ziehen, (compare his Leitfaden der Physiologischen Psychologie, Guide to Physiological Psychology, p. 2) one will have to admit that it has proved itself exceptionally fruitful for the methods of psychology. Under the influence of his point of view which he expresses, this science has attained truly scientific knowledge. But one must be quite clear about the significant light which the observation of the pathological soul appearances throws upon the connection between psychic appearances and the corresponding physiological processes. Pathological experimentation has rendered great service to psychology as well as to physiology. The abnormal facts of the soul life clarify the normal ones for us. But it must be especially important to follow abnormal manifestations into those realms where the soul activity intensifies to the point of the highest spiritual achievements.
[ 2 ] A personality like Nietzsche offers special points of interest for such observation. A morbid kernel in his personality gave him occasion to return to the physiological groundwork of his reflections. He alternately sounded all notes from poetic diction to the highest points of conceptional abstraction. He expressed himself very sharply over the connection of his ideas with his physical condition. “In the year 1879 I completed my professorship in Basle, during the summer lived like a shadow in St. Moritz, and the next winter, the most sunless of my whole life, I existed like a shadow in Naumburg. This was my minimum. I reached the lowest point of vitality in my thirty-sixth year; I still lived, but without seeing three steps ahead of me. Der Wanderer und sein Schatten, The Wanderer and his Shadow, came to existence during this time. Without doubt, I then had an understanding for shadows; ... The following winter, my first winter in Genoa, brought about that sweetening and spiritualization which is conditioned by an extreme poverty of blood and muscle; the Morgenröte, Dawn; the perfect clarity and joyousness, even exuberance of spirit, which the latter work reflects, is compatible with me, not only with the deepest physiological weakness, but also with an excess of painfulness. In the midst of my torment, which an uninterrupted three-day headache, together with the most wretched vomiting of slime brings with it, I possessed a dialectic clarity par excellence, and thought through things very cold-bloodedly, for which, in a more healthy condition, I was not sufficiently a climber nor sufficiently crafty, nor sufficiently cold. My readers know perhaps to what extent I consider dialectic as a symptom of decadence, for example, in the most famous instance: in the case of Socrates” (Compare M. G. Conrad, Ketzerblut, page 186, and Elizabeth Foerster-Nietzsche, The Life of Friedrich Nietzsche, Volume II, page 328). (See also Nietzsche's Works, German Edition, 1911, Vol. XV. p. 9-12)
[ 3 ] Nietzsche considered the change of his ways of thinking to be absolutely the result of the changeability of his physical condition. “A philosopher who has passed through many states of health, and will do so again and again, has also passed through many philosophies; he simply cannot do otherwise each time than to transpose his condition into a spiritual form and, perspective; this art of transfiguration is his philosophy.” (Nietzsche's Works, Volume V, page 8) In his recollections written in 1888, his Ecce Homo, Nietzsche tells how from his sickness he received the impulse to develop within himself an optimistic world conception: “For once, pay attention to this: the years of my lowest vitality were those when I ceased to be a pessimist; the instinct for self-reconstruction forbade me a philosophy of poverty and discouragement.” (Elizabeth Foerster-Nietzsche, The Life of Friedrich Nietzsche, Volume II, page 338)
[ 4 ] The contradictory in Nietzsche's world of ideas is understandable from this point of view. His physical nature moved in contrasts. “Provided one is a person, by necessity one also has the philosophy of a person; yet there is a substantial difference. In the one instance there are his deficiencies, which philosophize; in the other, his riches and his strength.” (Nietzsche's Works, Volume V, page 5) In Nietzsche himself the two conditions alternated: one time the one, one time the other was dominant. As long as he was in full possession of his youthful forces, he considered the “pessimism of the nineteenth century as a symptom of a higher power of thought, a victorious fullness of life;” he considered the tragic knowledge, which he found in Schopenhauer, to be “the most beautiful luxury of our culture, its most costly, most aristocratic, most dangerous kind of waste, but always on the basis of its over-richness, as its permitted luxury.” He could no longer see such a permitted luxury in the tragic knowledge, when the morbid in his life held the upper hand. For that reason, from now on, he creates for himself a philosophy of the greatest possible life-affirmation. Now he needed a world conception of “ego affirmation, ego glorification,” a master morality; he needed the philosophy; of “eternal return.” “I shall return again with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this serpent—not to a new life, or to a better life, or to a similar life: I shall come back eternally to this identical, this self-same life in the greatest and also in the smallest.” “For the earth is a god's table, trembling with new, creative work and divine plans; Oh, how ardently I long for eternity and for the marriage ring of rings, the ring of the return!” (Zarathustra, Third Part)
The uncertain information we possess about Nietzsche's ancestry unfortunately makes it impossible to judge properly how much of Nietzsche's spiritual peculiarity is to be traced to inheritance. It is often incorrectly stated that his father died of a brain sickness. The latter contracted this illness through an accident only after Nietzsche's birth. However, it does not seem unimportant that Nietzsche himself points to a morbid element in his father. “My father died at thirty-six years; he was delicate, gracious and morbid, like a being destined only for a moment, or like a kind of recollection of life, rather than life itself.” (M. G. Conrad, Ketzerblut, p. 179) When Nietzsche speaks of the fact that within himself lived something decadent next to something healthy; he apparently considers that the former is derived from his father, the latter from his mother, who was a thoroughly sound woman.
[ 5 ] We find in Nietzsche's soul life a series of traits bordering on the pathological, which remind one of Heinrich Heine and of Leopardi, who also are similar to him in other respects. Heine was tortured by gloomy melancholia from his youth, and suffered from dream-like conditions; later, out of the most pitiful physical constitution and increasing ill-health he knew how to create ideas which were not far removed from those of Nietzsche. Indeed, in Heine one finds almost a predecessor of Nietzsche, in the sense of the contrast between the Apollonian, or quietly observing attitude toward life, and the Dionysian, the dithyrambic life-affirmation. Heine's spiritual life also remains inexplicable from the psychological point of view if one does not take into consideration the pathological essence of his nature which he had inherited from his father, who was a weak personality, creeping through life like a shadow.
[ 6 ] The similarities in the physiological characteristics of Leopardi and Nietzsche are especially remarkable. The same sensitivity toward weather and seasons, toward place and environment, are found in both. Leopardi feels the slightest change in the thermometer and barometer. He could create only during the summer; he traveled about, always looking for the most suitable location for his creative activity. Nietzsche expresses himself about such peculiarities of his nature in the following manner: “Now after long practice, when I observe the effects of climatic and meteorological nature upon myself, as upon a very delicate and reliable instrument, and after a short journey, perhaps from Turin to Milan, calculate the change in the degree of humidity calculated physiologically in myself, then I look with horror at the sinister fact that my life until the last ten years, the most dangerous years, has always been spent in locations treacherous and absolutely forbidden to me. Naumburg, Schulpforta, Thuringia, in fact, Bonn, Liepzig, Basel, Venice,—all of them places of misfortune for my physiology. ...” Connected with this unusual sensitivity in Leopardi as well as in Nietzsche, is a contempt for all altruistic feelings. Both of them had to overcome this in order to be able to tolerate mankind. From Nietzsche's own words one can see that his shyness in presence of strong impressions, of attractions which demand too much of his sensitivity, fill him with suspicion toward selfless impulses. He says: “I accuse those sympathetic people in that it is easy for them to lose the modesty, the awe, the delicate feeling for distances.” For Leopardi also, it was certain that a bearable human being was very seldom found; he encountered misery with irony and bitterness, just as Nietzsche had adopted as one of his principles: “As first tenet of our love for mankind, the weak and misformed shall be destroyed. And one should even assist them in this.” (Nietzsche's Works, Volume VIII, page 218) About life, Nietzsche said that it is “Essentially appropriation, injury, overwhelming of strangers and weaker ones, suppression, hardness, forcing upon others one's own forms, incorporation, and, in its least and mildest form, exploitation.” (Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, p. 259) For Leopardi also, life is an unfeasible, frightful struggle, in which some trample others.
[ 7 ] The extent to which both these thoughts play over into the pathological is shown in the completely rational way these men arrive at their ideas. They were not impelled to thoughts about the struggle for existence through logical reflection, as, for example, the national economist, Malthus, and the philosopher, Hobbes, or through careful observation as with Darwin, but through the high-strung sensitivity already mentioned, with the result that every external stimulus is regarded as a hostile attack, and is answered with violent rejection. One can prove this quite clearly in Nietzsche. In Darwin he finds the thought about the struggle for existence. He does not reject it, but he re-interprets it in such a way that it accords with his enhanced sensitivity: “But provided there is this struggle—and, in effect, it does happen—it comes about unfortunately in reverse from the way the Darwinian school wants it, as with them one may perhaps wish, namely, to the disadvantage of the strong, the privileged, the fortunate exceptions. The species does not grow in perfection; ever and again the weak become masters over the strong because they are in the majority, and because they are also cleverer. ... Darwin has forgotten the spirit (that is English!) the weak have more spirit ... the strong sacrifice the spirit” (Nietzsche's Works, Volume VIII, p. 128).
[ 8 ] Without, doubt his heightened sensitivity and impulses impel him to a certain extent to direct his observations by choice upon his own personality. Entirely sound and harmonious natures, like Goethe, for example, find something questionable in far-reaching self-observation. In complete contrast to Nietzsche's way of reflection stands Goethe's point of view: “We must not interpret the significant saying, Know thou thyself, in an ascetic sense. With this by no means is meant the auto-gnosis of our modern hypochondriacs, humorists, and self-tormentors, but it means quite simply, take heed of yourself to a certain extent, observe yourself so that you become aware how you; stand in relation to others like yourself, and in relation to the world. No psychological torments are necessary for this; every capable human being knows and experiences what this should mean; it is good advice, which is of the greatest practical advantage to everyone. ... How can one learn to know oneself? We can never get to know each other through observations, but through action. Try to do your duty, and immediately you will know how things are with you.” Now we know that Goethe also possessed a fine sensibility. But at the same time he possessed the necessary counter-balance, the capacity which, in regard to others, he himself described in the most direct way, in a conversation with Eckermann on the 20th of December, 1829: “The extraordinary” things that exceptional talents have achieved, “presupposes a very delicate organization, which makes them capable of rarer feelings. ... Now such an organization, in conflict with the world and with the elements, is easily disturbed and injured: and the one who, like Voltaire, does not possess an extraordinary toughness, is easily subject to constant sickliness.” This toughness is lacking in natures like Nietzsche and Leopardi. They would lose themselves completely in their impressions, in irritations, if they could not shut themselves off artistically against the outer world; indeed, if they could not oppose themselves to it in a hostile way. One compares this overcoming which Nietzsche required in his intercourse with mankind, with Goethe's pleasure in this intercourse, which he describes in these words: “Sociability was in my nature; thus I won co-workers for myself in my manifold undertakings, educated myself to be a co-worker with them, and so attained the good fortune to see myself live on, I in them and they in me.”
II
[ 9 ] The most noticeable phenomenon in Nietzsche's spiritual life is the always latent, but at times clearly evident, schizophrenic quality of his ego-consciousness. That “two souls live, Alas, within my breast,” bordered upon the pathological in him. He could not bring about the reconciliation between the “two souls.” His polemics are hardly, to be understood except from this point of view. He hardly ever really hits his opponent with his judgments. He first arranges what he wants to attack in the strangest way, and then struggles with the illusion, which is quite remote from reality. One understands this only when one considers that fundamentally he never fights against an external enemy, but against himself. And he fights in a more violent way when at another time he himself has stood at the point which he now regards with antagonism, or when at least this point of view played a definite role in his soul life. His campaign against Wagner is only a campaign against himself. He had half inadvertently united himself with Wagner at a time when he was thrown back and forth between contrary paths of ideas. He became the personal friend of Wagner. In his eyes Wagner grew to the immeasurable. He called him his “Jupiter,” with whom from time to time he breathes, “a fruitful, rich, stirring life, quite different from and unheard of in mediocre mortals! Therefore he stands there, deeply rooted in his own strength, his glance always over and above the ephemeral; eternal in the most beautiful sense.” (E. Foerster-Nietzsche, Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches, The Life of Friedrich Nietzsche, Volume II, page 16) Nietzsche was now developing a philosophy within himself, about which he could say to himself that it was entirely identical with Wagner's artistic tendencies and conception of life. He identifies himself completely with Wagner. He regards him as the first great renewer of the tragic culture which had experienced an important beginning in ancient Greece, but which was subordinated through the sophisticated, intellectual wisdom of Socrates, and through the one-sidedness of Plato, and in the age of the Renaissance had experienced a brief rejuvenation. Out of what he believed he recognized as Wagner's mission, Nietzsche formed the content of his own creating. But in his posthumous writings one can now see how he completely subordinates his second ego under the influence of Wagner. Among these writings are found dissertations from the time before and during his Wagner enthusiasm, which moved in directions completely opposite to his feelings and thinking. In spite of this he forms for himself an ideal picture of Wagner, which does not live in reality at all, but only in his fantasy. And in this ideal picture, his own ego vanishes completely. Later, in this ego appears a way of reflection which is the opposite of Wagner's method of conception. Now, in the true sense of the word, he becomes the most violent opponent of his own thought world. For he does not attack the Wagner of reality; he attacks the picture of Wagner which previously he had made for himself. His passion, his injustice, is only understandable when one realizes that he became so violent because he fought against something which had ruined him, according to his opinion, and which had taken him away from his own true path. If, like another contemporary of Wagner's, he had faced this objectively, perhaps he also might have become Wagner's opponent. But he would have faced the whole situation in a more quiet, calm attitude. It also comes to his consciousness that he does not wish to be freed from Wagner, but rather from his own “I” as it had developed itself at a certain time. He says: “To turn my back to Wagner was a tribulation for me; to like something again later was a victory for me. No one perhaps was more dangerously ingrown with this Wagner business, no one rebelled against it more strongly, no one rejoiced more to be free of it; it is a long story! Does one want a word for it? Were I a moralist, who knows what I should call it! Perhaps a self-conquering. What is it that a philosopher asks of himself at the beginning and at the end? To overcome his age in himself, to become ‘timeless.’ Against what does he have to wage his hardest struggle? With that in which he is exactly the child of his age. Well I like Wagner as a child of this age; that is to say, a decadent: only that I comprehended it, only that I rebelled against it. The philosopher in me defended himself against it.” (Nietzsche's Works, Volume VIII, page 1)
[ 10 ] In the following words he more clearly describes his inner experience of the dividing of his ego and the immediate contrast of his world of thoughts: “He who attacks his time can only attack himself; what can he see otherwise, if not himself? So in another, one can glorify only one's self. Self-destruction, self-deification, self-contempt: that is our judging, our loving, our hating.” (Nietzsche's Works, German Edition, 1897, Volume XI, page 92)
[ 11 ] In the autumn of 1888, Nietzsche cannot come to any agreement at all with himself about the content of his book, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, other than that he tries to justify himself in that he did not mean Wagner at all, but himself. “A psychologist might add that what I had heard in Wagner's music in my youth had absolutely nothing to do with Wagner; that when I described the Dionysian music, I described that which I had heard; that instinctively I had to translate and transfigure everything into the new spirit which I bore within me. The proof for it, as strong as proof can be, is my book, Wagner in Bayreuth; in all psychologically decisive places the question is only about me; at will, one may put my name, or the name ‘Zarathustra,’ wherever the text mentions the name Wagner. The whole picture of the dithyrambic artist is the picture of the pre-existentialist poet of Zarathustra, drawn with profound depth and without touching the reality of Wagner for a single moment. Wagner himself had an idea of this, for he did not recognize himself in the book.” (E. Foerster-Nietzsche, Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches, The Life of Friedrich Nietzsche, Volume II, page 259)
[ 12 ] Whenever Nietzsche fights, he almost always fights against himself. When, during the first period of his creative writing, he entered into active warfare against philology, it was the philologist in himself against whom he fought, this outstanding philologist, who, even before completing his doctorate, had already been appointed a Professor at the University. When, from 1876 onward, he began his struggle against ideals, he had his own idealism in view. And, at the end of his writing career, when he wrote his Antichrist, again unparalleled in violence, this was nothing but the secret Christian element in himself through which he was challenged. It had not been necessary for him to wage a special battle in himself in order to free himself from Christianity. But he was freed only in the intellect, in one side of his being; in his heart, in his world of emotions, he remained faithful to the Christian ideals in his practical life. He acted as the passionate opponent of one side of his own being. “One must have seen this doom near by; one must have been almost destroyed with it to understand that here is no joke. The skepticism of our natural scientists and physiologists is a joke in my eyes; they are lacking in passion for these things, in suffering for them.” The extent to which Nietzsche felt the conflict within himself, and the extent to which he recognized himself as powerless to bring the different forces within him into a unity of consciousness, is shown at the end of a poem in the summer of 1888, that is, from the period shortly before the catastrophe. “Now, incarcerated between two nothingnesses, a question mark, a tired riddle, a riddle for predatory birds ... they will ‘free’ you, they are already longing for your ‘freeing,’ they are already fluttering about you, you riddles, about you, the hanged one! ... Oh Zarathustra! ... self-knower! ... self-executioner!” (Nietzsche's Works, Volume VIII, page 424)
[ 13 ] This insecurity in regard to himself is also expressed in Nietzsche in that at the end of his career, he gives an absolutely new interpretation to his entire development. His world conception has one of its sources in ancient Greece. Everywhere in his writing one can point out what great influence the Greeks had upon him. He never tires of continually emphasizing the greatness of Greek culture. In 1875 he writes, “The Greeks are the only talented nation of world history; as learners they are very talented; they understand this best, and do not only know how to decorate and to refine the borrowed, as the Romans do. Genius makes all half-talented, tributary; thus the Persians themselves sent their messengers to the Greek oracle. How those Romans with their dry seriousness contrast with these talented Greeks!” (Nietzsche's Works, Volume X, page 352) And what beautiful words he found in 1873 for the first Greek philosophers: “Every nation is shamed when one points to such a wonderfully idealistic community of philosophers as those of the old Greek masters, Thales and Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, and Socrates. All these people are hewn entirely from one stone. Between their thinking and their character strong necessity reigns. ... Thus together they formed what Schopenhauer called a talent republic in contrast to the scholar republic; one giant calls to the other through the empty halls of the ages, and, undisturbed by the mischievous noisy ways of dwarfs who crawl beneath them, they continue the lofty conversation of spirits. ... The first experience of philosophy on Greek soil, the sanction of the Seven Wise Ones, is at once a clear and unforgettable line in the picture of the Hellenic. Other nations have saints; the Greeks have Wise Ones. ... The judgment of those philosophers about life and existence says altogether so much more than a modern opinion because they had life before them in luxuriant perfection, and because in them the feeling of the thinker did not go astray, as in us, in the conflict between the desire for freedom, beauty, largeness of life, and the impulse for truth, which asks only, What is life really worth?” (Nietzsche's Works, Volume VIII, page 7) This Greek wise one always stood before Nietzsche's eyes as an ideal. He tries to emulate him with the one side of his being, but with the other side he denies him. In the Götzendämmerung, wilight of Idols, 1888 (Nietzsche's Works, Volume VIII, page 167), after his description of what he wishes to owe to the Romans, we read, “To the Greeks I owe absolutely no strong kindred impressions; and, to say it straight out, they can not be for us what the Romans are. One does not learn from the Greeks; their way is foreign, it is also too liquid to work imperatively, ‘classically.’ Whoever would have learned writing from a Greek? Who would have learned it without the Romans! ... The splendid, pliant corporality, and bold realism and immorality, which is part of the Hellenic, was a necessity, not something natural. It came only later; it was not there from the beginning. And from, festivals and arts one wanted nothing more than to feel and act in a buoyant spirit; they are a means to glorify one's self, under certain circumstances, to create fear for one's self. ... To judge the Greeks in the German manner, according to their philosophers, is to use, for example, the honorable gentlemen of the Socratic school for solving solutions which fundamentally are Hellenic! ... The philosophers indeed are the decadents of Greece. ...”
[ 14 ] One will only gain full clarity concerning Nietzsche's arguments when one combines the fact that his philosophical thoughts rest upon self-observation, with the idea that this self is not an harmonious self, but is rather a self split apart. This splitting apart he also brought into his explanation of the world. In looking back upon himself he could say, “Do not we artists have to confess to ourselves that a weird difference exists in us, that our taste, and, on the other hand, our creative power, stand alone in a mysterious way, remain standing alone, and have a force of growth in themselves: I want to say, quite different degrees of tempos, old, young, ripe, dry, rotten? So that, for example, a musician is able to create things for life which contradict what his spoiled listener-ear, listener-heart, values, tastes, prefers; he doesn't even need to know about this contradiction!” (Nietzsche's Works, Volume V, page 323) This is an explanation of the nature of an artist, formed according to Nietzsche's own being. We encounter something similar in him in all his writings.
[ 15 ] There is no doubt that in many cases one goes too far when one connects manifestations of the soul-life with pathological concepts; in a personality like Nietzsche's the world-conception finds full clarification only through such a connection. Useful as it might be in many ways to cling to the sentence of Dilthey's Einbildungskraft und Wahnsinn, Powers of Conceit and Illusion, (Leipzig, 1886), “The genius is no pathological manifestation, but the sound perfect human being,” just as wrong might it be to reject dogmatically such observations about Nietzsche as have been presented here.
5. Friedrich Nietzsches Persönlichkeit und die Psycho-Pathologie
[ 1 ] «Wie die psychischen Vorgänge den Gehirnerregungen parallel gehen, geht die physiologische Psychologie der Hirnphysiologie parallel. Wo die letztere ihr genügende Erkenntnis noch nicht bietet, wird die physiologische Psychologie die psychischen Erscheinungen wohl provisorisch rein als solche erforschen dürfen, jedoch immer geleitet von dem Gedanken, dass auch für diese psychischen Erscheinungen wenigstens die Möglichkeit eines Parallelismus zu zerebralen Vorgängen nachgewiesen werden muss.» Auch wenn man diesen Satz Theodor Ziehens (vgl. dessen «Leitfaden der physiologischen Psychologie», S. 2) nicht unbedingt unterschreibt, wird man doch zugeben müssen, dass er sich für die Methode der Psychologie außerordentlich fruchtbar erwiesen hat. Unter dem Einflusse der Anschauung, welche er ausdrückt, ist diese Wissenschaft zu wirklich naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen gelangt. Aber man wird sich auch klar darüber sein müssen, welch bedeutungsvolles Licht auf den Zusammenhang der psychischen Erscheinungen mit den entsprechenden physiologischen Vorgängen gerade die Beobachtung pathologischer Seelenerscheinungen wirft. Das pathologische Experiment hat sowohl der Psychologie wie der Physiologie die größten Dienste geleistet. Die abnormen Tatsachen des Seelenlebens klären uns über die normalen auf. Besonders wichtig muss es aber erscheinen, die abnormen Erscheinungen bis in die Gebiete hinein zu verfolgen, in denen sich die Seelentätigkeit bis zu den höchsten geistigen Leistungen steigert.
[ 2 ] Eine Persönlichkeit wie die Nietzsches bietet zu einer solchen Betrachtung besondere Anhaltspunkte. Ein morbider Kern in seiner Persönlichkeit gab ihm immer und immer wieder Veranlassung, auf die physiologische Grundlage seiner Vorstellungen zurückzugehen. Er hat abwechselnd alle Töne angeschlagen, von der poetischen Diktion bis zu den höchsten Gipfeln der begrifflichen Abstraktion. Er spricht sich mit aller Schärfe darüber aus, wie seine Vorstellungsweise mit seinen körperlichen Zuständen zusammenhängt. «Im Jahre 1879 legte ich meine Basler Professur nieder, lebte den Sommer über wie ein Schatten in St. Moritz und den nächsten Winter, den sonnenärmsten meines Lebens, als Schatten in Naumburg. Dies war mein Minimum. In meinem sechsunddreißigsten Lebensjahre kam ich auf den niedrigsten Punkt meiner Vitalität — ich lebte noch, doch ohne drei Schritte weit vor mich zu sehen. 9Der Wanderer und sein Schatten: entstand währenddem. Unzweifelhaft, ich verstand mich damals auf Schatten ... Im Winter darauf, meinem ersten Genueser Winter, brachte jene Versüßung und Vergeistigung, die mit einer extremen Armut an Blut und Muskel beinahe bedingt ist, die 9Morgenröte: hervor. Die vollkommene Helle und Heiterkeit, selbst Exuberanz des Geistes, welche das genannte Werk widerspiegelt, verträgt sich bei mir nicht nur mit der tiefsten physiologischen Schwäche, sondern sogar mit einem Exzess von Schmerzgefühl.» «Mitten in Martern, die ein ununterbrochner dreitägiger Gehirn-Schmerz samt mühseligem Schleim-Erbrechen mit sich bringt, — besaß ich eine Dialektiker-Klarheit par excellence und dachte Dinge sehr kaltblütig durch, zu denen ich in gesünderen Verhältnissen nicht Kletterer, nicht raffiniert, nicht kalt genug bin. Meine Leser wissen vielleicht, inwiefern ich Dialektik als Dekadenz-Symptome betrachte, zum Beispiel im allerberühmtesten Fall: im Fall des Sokrates.» — (Vgl. M. G. Conrad: «Ketzerblut», S. 186, und Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche: «Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches» II, I, S.328.)
[ 3 ] Nietzsche betrachtet den Wechsel seiner Vorstellungsarten geradezu als das Ergebnis der Veränderlichkeit in seinen körperlichen Zuständen. «Ein Philosoph, der den Gang durch viele Gesundheiten gemacht hat und immer wieder macht, ist auch durch ebenso viele Philosophien hindurchgegangen: er kann eben nicht anders, als seinen Zustand jedesmal in die geistigste Form und Ferne umzusetzen, — diese Kunst der Transfiguration ist eben Philosophie.» (Werke, Band V, S.8.) In seinen i888 niedergeschriebenen Lebenserinnerungen «Ecce homo» spricht Nietzsche davon, wie er aus der Krankheit heraus den Antrieb erhalten hat, eine optimistische Weltauffassung in sich auszubilden: «Denn man gebe acht darauf: die Jahre meiner niedrigsten Vitalität waren es, wo ich aufhörte, Pessimist zu sein: der Instinkt der Selbst-Wiederherstellung verbot mir eine Philosophie der Armut und Entmutigung.» (Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, «Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches» II, I. S. 338f)
[ 4 ] Das Widerspruchsvollste in Nietzsches Ideenwelt erscheint von diesem Gesichtspunkte aus begreiflich. In Gegensätzen bewegte sich seine physische Natur. «Man hat nämlich, vorausgesetzt, dass man eine Person ist, notwendig auch die Philosophie seiner Person: doch gibt es da einen erheblichen Unterschied. Bei dem einen sind es seine Mängel, welche philosophieren, bei dem andern seine Reichtümer und Kräfte.» (Werke, Band V, S.5.) Bei Nietzsche selbst ist es abwechselnd einmal das eine, einmal das andere. Solange er sich im Vollbesitz der Jugendkraft befand, nahm er den «Pessimismus des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts als Symptom einer höheren Kraft des Gedankens, einer siegreichen Fülle des Lebens»; er nahm die tragische Erkenntnis, die er bei Schopenhauer vorfand, als «den schönsten Luxus unserer Kultur, als deren kostbarste, vornehmste, gefährlichste Art Verschwendung, aber immerhin auf Grund ihres Überreichtums, als ihren erlaubten Luxus.» Einen solch erlaubten Luxus konnte er in der tragischen Erkenntnis nicht mehr sehen, als das Morbide in seinem Leben die Oberhand bekam. Deswegen schafft er sich nunmehr eine Philosophie der höchstmöglichen Lebensbejahung. Er brauchte nun eine Weltanschauung der «Selbstbejahung, der Selbstverherrlichung», eine Herrenmoral; er brauchte die Philosophie der «Ewigen Wiederkunft». «Ich komme wieder, mit dieser Sonne, mit dieser Erde, mit diesem Adler, mit dieser Schlange — nicht zu einem neuen Leben oder besseren Leben oder ähnlichen Leben: — ich komme ewig wieder zu diesem gleichen und seligen Leben, im größten und auch im kleinsten.» -«Denn ein Göttertisch ist die Erde, und zitternd von schöpferischen neuen Worten und Götterwürfen: 0, wie sollte ich nicht nach der Ewigkeit brünstig sein und nach dem hochzeitlichen Ring der Ringe, — dem Ring der Wiederkunft?» («Zarathustra», III. T.) Die unsicheren Angaben, die wir über Nietzsches Vorfahren besitzen, machen ein befriedigendes Urteil darüber leider unmöglich, wie viel von Nietzsches geistiger Eigentümlichkeit auf Vererbung zurückzuführen ist. Mit Unrecht ist öfter darauf hingewiesen worden, dass sein Vater an einer Gehirnkrankheit gestorben ist. Dieser hat sich die Krankheit erst nach Nietzsches Geburt durch einen Unfall zugezogen. Nicht unwichtig scheint aber doch zu sein, dass Nietzsche selbst auf ein morbides Element bei seinem Vater hinweist. «Mein Vater starb mit sechsunddreißig Jahren: er war zart, liebenswürdig und morbid, wie ein nur zum Vorübergehen bestimmtes Wesen, — eher eine gütige Erinnerung an das Leben, als das Leben selbst.» -(M. G. Conrad, «Ketzerblut», S. 179.) Wenn Nietzsche davon spricht, dass in ihm etwas Dekadentes neben etwas Gesundem lebt, so denkt er offenbar selbst daran, das erstere von seinem Vater, das letztere von seiner Mutter herzuleiten, die eine kerngesunde Frau war.
[ 5 ] In Nietzsches Seelenleben finden sich eine Reihe von ans Pathologische grenzenden Zügen, die an Heinrich Heine und an Leopardi erinnern, die auch sonst viel ähnliches mit ihm haben. Heine wurde von Jugend auf von düstersten Melancholien gequält, litt an traumartigen Zuständen; und auch er wusste später aus der elendesten Körperverfassung, aus zunehmendem Siechtum die Ideen zu schöpfen, die denen Nietzsches nicht ferne stehen. Ja, man findet in Heine geradezu einen Vorläufer Nietzsches in bezug auf die Gegenüberstellung von apollinischer oder ruhig betrachtender Lebensauffassung (vgl. «Die Philosophie Friedrich Nietzsches als psycho-pathologisches Problem», oben, S.127) und dionysisch-dithyrambischer Lebensbejahung. Und auch Heines Geistesleben bleibt vom psychologischen Gesichtspunkte aus unerklärlich, wenn man nicht den pathologischen Kern in seiner Natur berücksichtigt, den er von seinem Vater ererbt hat, der eine degenerative, wie ein Schatten durchs Leben schleichende Persönlichkeit war.
[ 6 ] Besonders auffällig sind die Ähnlichkeiten in den physiologischen Charakteren Leopardis und Nietzsches. Dieselbe Feinfühligkeit gegenüber Wetter und Jahreszeit, Ort und Umgebung findet sich bei beiden. Leopardi fühlt die geringsten Veränderungen in Thermometer- und Barometerstand. Er konnte nur im Sommer produzieren; er zog umher, stets nach dem für sein Schaffen geeignetsten Aufenthaltsort zu suchen. Nietzsche spricht sich über solche Eigentümlichkeiten seiner Natur in folgender Weise aus: «Jetzt, wo ich die Wirkungen klimatischen und meteorologischen Ursprungs aus langer Übung an mir als an einem sehr feinen und zuverlässigen Instrumente ablese und bei einer kurzen Reise schon, etwa von Turin nach Mailand, den Wechsel in den Graden der Luftfeuchtigkeit physiologisch bei mir nachrechne, denke ich mit Schrecken an die unheimliche Tatsache, dass mein Leben bis auf die letzten zehn Jahre, die lebensgefährlichen Jahre, immer sich nur in falschen und mir geradezu verbotenen Orten abgespielt hat. Naumburg, Schulpforta, Thüringen überhaupt, Leipzig, Base], Venedig — ebenso viele Unglücks-Orte für meine Physiologie ...» Mit dieser außergewöhnlichen Sensibilität hängt bei Leopardi sowohl wie bei Nietzsche eine Missachtung aller altruistischen Gefühle zusammen. Für beide gehört es zu den Überwindungen, die Menschen zu ertragen. Aus Nietzsches eigenen Worten kann man ersehen, dass ihm die Scheu vor starken Eindrücken vor Reisen, die seiner Empfindlichkeit zu viel zumuten, das Misstrauen gegen die selbstlosen Triebe einflößt. Er sagt: «Ich werfe den Mitleidigen vor, dass ihnen die Scham, die Ehrfurcht, das Zartgefühl vor Distanzen leicht abhanden kommt.» Auch für Leopardi war es gewiss, dass ein erträglicher Mensch nur selten zu finden ist; er begegnete dem Elend mit Ironie und Bitterkeit, wie Nietzsche es zu seinem Grundsatz machte: «Die Schwachen und Missratenen sollen zugrunde gehen: erster Satz unserer Menschenliebe. Und man soll ihnen noch dazu helfen.» (Werke, Band VIII, S 218.) Nietzsche sagt vom Leben, es sei «wesentlich Aneignung, Verletzung, Überwältigung des Fremden und Schwächeren, Unterdrückung, Härte, Aufzwängung eigner Formen, Einverleibung und mindestens, mildestens, Ausbeutung». («Jenseits von Gut und Böse», § 259.) Ebenso ist das Leben für Leopardi ein unaufhörlicher, furchtbarer Kampf, in dem die einen die andern zertreten.
[ 7 ] Wie sehr bei beiden diese Gedanken in das Pathologische hinüberspielen, das geht aus der vollständig irrationalen Art hervor, wie sie zu ihnen kommen. Nicht durch logische Erwägungen, wie etwa der Nationalökonom Malthus und der Philosoph Hobbes, oder durch sorgfältige Beobachtungen wie Darwin werden sie zu dem Gedanken des Kampfes ums Dasein getrieben, sondern durch die erwähnte, hochgesteigerte Sensibilität, welche die Ursache ist, dass jeder äußere Reiz als feindlicher Eingriff mit einem heftigen Abwehraffekt beantwortet wird. Man kann das bei Nietzsche ganz klar nachweisen. Er findet den Gedanken des Kampfes ums Dasein bei Darwin. Er lehnt ihn nicht ab; aber er deutet ihn so um, wie es seiner gesteigerten Sensibilität entspricht: «Gesetzt aber, es gibt diesen Kampf — und in der Tat, er kommt vor — so läuft er leider umgekehrt aus, als die Schule Darwins wünscht, als man vielleicht mit ihr wünschen dürfte: nämlich zu Ungunsten der Starken, der Bevorrechtigten, der glücklichen Ausnahmen. Die Gattungen wachsen nicht in der Vollkommenheit: die Schwachen werden immer wieder über die Starken Herr, — das macht, sie sind die große Zahl, sie sind auch klüger ... Darwin hat den Geist vergessen (- das ist englisch!), die Schwachen haben mehr Geist ... Wer die Stärke hat, entschlägt sich des Geistes.» (Werke, Band VIII. S.128.)
[ 8 ] Ohne Zweifel bedingen sich bis zu einem gewissen Grade die gesteigerte Sensibilität und der Trieb, seine Beobachtungen vorzugsweise auf die eigene Persönlichkeit zu lenken. Allseitig gesunde und harmonische Naturen wie zum Beispiel Goethe finden sogar in der weitgehenden Selbstbeobachtung etwas Bedenkliches. In vollem Gegensätze zu Nietzsches Vorstellungsart steht Goethes Ansicht: «Nehmen wir das bedeutende Wort vor: erkenne dich selbst, so müssen wir es nicht im asketischen Sinne auslegen. Es ist keineswegs die Heautognosie unserer modernen Hypochondristen, Humoristen und Heautontimorumenen damit gemeint; sondern es heißt ganz einfach: gib einigermaßen acht auf dich selbst, nimm Notiz von dir selbst, damit du gewahr werdest, wie du zu deinesgleichen und der Welt zu stehen kommst. Hierzu bedarf es keiner psychologischen Quälereien; jeder tüchtige Mensch weiß und erfährt, was es heißen soll; es ist ein guter Rat, der einem jeden praktisch zum größten Vorteil gereicht ... Wie kann man sich kennen lernen? Durch Betrachten niemals, wohl aber durch Handeln. Versuche, deine Pflicht zu tun, und du weißt gleich, was an dir ist.» Nun wissen wir, dass auch Goethe eine feine Sensibilität besaß. Aber er besaß zugleich das notwendige Gegengewicht: die Fähigkeit, die er selbst in bezug auf andere am trefflichsten in einem Gespräche mit Eckermann am 20. Dezember I 829 beschrieben hat: «Das Außerordentliche, was ausgezeichnete Talente leisten, setzt eine sehr zarte Organisation voraus, damit sie seltener Empfindungen fähig sein... mögen. Nun ist eine solche Organisation im Konflikt mit der Welt und den Elementen leicht gestört und verletzt, und wer nicht, wie Voltaire, mit großer Sensibilität eine außerordentliche Zähigkeit verbindet, ist leicht einer fortgesetzten Kränklichkeit unterworfen.» Diese Zähigkeit fehlt Naturen wie Nietzsche und Leopardi. Sie würden sich an ihre Eindrücke, an die auf sie ausgeübten Reize völlig verlieren, wenn sie sich nicht künstlich gegen die Außenwelt abschließen würden, ja sich ihr feindlich gegenüberstellten. Man vergleiche mit der Überwindung, die Nietzsche im Umgang mit Menschen brauchte, Goethes Wohlgefallen an diesem Umgang, das er mit den Worten schildert: «Geselligkeit lag in meiner Natur; deswegen ich bei vielfachem Unternehmen mir Mitarbeiter gewann und mich ihnen zum Mitarbeiter bildete und so das Glück erreichte, mich in ihnen und sie in mir fortleben zu sehen.»
II.
[ 9 ] Eine im Geistesleben Nietzsches höchst auffallende Erscheinung ist die stets bei ihm latent vorhandene, zuweilen aber deutlich hervortretende Verdoppelung des Selbstbewusstseins. Das «zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust» grenzt bei ihm ans Pathologische. Er kann den Ausgleich zwischen den «zwei Seelen» nicht herbeiführen. Seine Polemiken sind kaum anders als von diesem Gesichtspunkte aus zu verstehen. Er trifft mit seinen Urteilen fast niemals wirklich den Gegner. Er legt sich das, was er angreifen will, erst in der merkwürdigsten Art zurecht und kämpft dann gegen ein Wahnbild, das der Wirklichkeit recht ferne steht. Man begreift dies erst, wenn man erwägt, dass er im Grunde nie gegen einen äußeren Feind, sondern gegen sich selbst kämpft. Und er kämpft am heftigsten, wenn er zu einer anderen Zeit selbst auf dem Standpunkt gestanden hat, den er als gegnerischen ansieht, oder wenn dieser Standpunkt wenigstens eine bestimmende Rolle in seinem Seelenleben spielt. Sein Feldzug gegen Wagner ist nur ein Feldzug gegen sich selbst. Er hat sich in einer Zeit, in der er zwischen sich widerstreitenden Ideenkreisen hin- und hergeworfen wurde, halb unwillkürlich an Wagner angeschlossen. Er wurde mit ihm persönlich befreundet. Wagner wuchs in seinen Augen ins Unermessliche. Er nennt ihn seinen «Jupiter», bei dem er von Zeit zu Zeit aufatmet: «Ein fruchtbares, reiches, erschütterndes Leben, ganz abweichend und unerhört unter mittleren Sterblichen! Dafür steht er auch da, festgewurzelt durch eigene Kraft, mit seinem Blick immer drüber hinweg über alles Ephemere, und unzeitgemäß im schönsten Sinne.» (E. Förster-Nietzsche, «Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches», II, I, S. 16.) Nietzsche bildete nunmehr in sich eine Philosophie aus, von der er sich sagen konnte, dass sie sich vollständig mit Wagners Kunstrichtung und Lebensauffassung deckt. Er identifiziert sich vollständig mit Wagner. Er betrachtet ihn als den ersten großen Erneuerer der tragischen Kultur, die einst im alten Griechenland einen bedeutsamen Anfang erlebt hat, die aber durch die klügelnde Verstandesweisheit Sokrates' und durch die Einseitigkeit Platos zurückgedrängt worden sein soll und nur noch einmal im Zeitalter der Renaissance eine Wiederbelebung von kurzer Dauer erfahren hatte. Was er als Wagners Mission erkannt zu haben glaubt, macht Nietzsche zum Inhalt seines eigenen Wirkens. Nun kann man aber in seinen «Nachgelassenen Schriften» sehen, wie er unter dem Einfluss Wagners sein zweites Ich vollkommen zurückdrängt. Innerhalb dieser Schriften finden sich Ausführungen aus der Zeit vor und wahrend seiner Wagner-Begeisterung, die in der ganz entgegengesetzten Richtung des Empfindens und Denkens sich bewegen. Dennoch formt er sich von Wagner ein Idealbild, das nicht in Wirklichkeit, sondern nur in seiner Phantasie lebt. Und in diesem Idealbild geht sein Ich vollständig auf. Später treten in diesem Ich die Vorstellungskreise auf, die den Gegensatz zur Wagnerschen Anschauungsweise bilden. Er wird nun im wahren Sinne des Wortes der heftigste Gegner seiner eigenen Gedankenwelt. Denn er bekämpft nicht den Wagner der Wirklichkeit; er bekämpft das Bild, das er sich früher von Wagner gemacht hat. Seine Leidenschaftlichkeit, seine Ungerechtigkeit ist nur verständlich, wenn man sieht, wie er deshalb so heftig wird, weil er etwas bekämpft, das ihn selbst seiner Meinung nach ruiniert hat, das ihn von seinem eigentlichen Wege abgebracht hat. Hätte er wie ein anderer Zeitgenosse Wagners diesem objektiv bestimmten Zeit ausgebildet hat. Er sagt: «Wagner den Rücken zu kehren, war für mich ein Schicksal; irgend etwas nachher wieder gern zu haben, ein Sieg. Niemand war vielleicht gefährlicher mit der Wagnerei verwachsen, niemand hat sich härter gegen sie gewehrt, niemand sich mehr gefreut, von ihr los zu sein. Eine lange Geschichte! — Will man ein Wort dafür? — Wenn ich Moralist wäre, wer weiß, wie ich's nennen würde! Vielleicht Selbstüberwindung. — Was verlangt ein Philosoph am ersten und letzten von sich? Seine Zeit in sich zu überwinden, «zeitlos» zu werden. Womit also hat er seinen härtesten Strauß zu bestehn? Mit dem, worin gerade er das Kind seiner Zeit ist. Wohlan! Ich bin so gut wie Wagner das Kind dieser Zeit, will sagen ein décadent: nur dass ich das begriff, nur dass ich mich dagegen wehrte. Der Philosoph in mir wehrte sich dagegen.» (Werke, Band VIII, 5. ,.) gegenübergestanden, so wäre er vielleicht auch später dessen Gegner geworden. Aber er wäre der ganzen Angelegenheit ruhiger, kühler abwägend gegenüber gestanden. Es kommt ihm auch zum Bewusstsein, dass er nicht von Wagner loskommen will, sondern nur von seinem eigenen «Ich», wie es sich in einer
[ 10 ] Noch klarer spricht er in folgenden Worten aus, wie er die Zweiteilung seines Ich und den unvermittelten Gegensatz der Gedankenwelten in seinem Bewusstsein empfand: «Wer seine Zeit angreift, kann nur sich angreifen: was kann er denn sehen, wenn nicht sich? So kann man im andern auch nur sich verherrlichen. Selbstvernichtung, Selbstvergötterung, Selbstverachtung — das ist unser Richten, Lieben, Hassen.» (Werke, Band XI, S.92.)
[ 11 ] Im Herbst 1888 kann sich Nietzsche mit dem Inhalt seiner Schrift «Richard Wagner in Bayreuth» gar nicht mehr anders abfinden, als dass er sich zurechtlegt: er habe gar nicht Wagner gemeint, sondern sich selbst. «Ein Psychologe dürfte noch hinzufügen, dass, was ich in jungen Jahren bei Wagnerischer Musik gehört habe, nichts überhaupt mit Wagner zu tun hat; dass, wenn ich die dionysische Musik beschrieb, ich das beschrieb, was ich gehört hatte, — dass ich instinktiv alles in den neuen Geist übersetzen und transfigurieren musste, den ich in mir trug. Der Beweis dafür, so stark als nur ein Beweis sein kann, ist meine Schrift 9Wagner in Bayreuth:: an allen psychologisch entscheidenden Stellen ist nur von mir die Rede, — man darf rücksichtslos meinen Namen oder das Wort 9Zarathustra: hinstellen, wo der Text das Wort Wagner gibt. Das ganze Bild des dithyrambischen Künstlers ist das Bild des präexistenten Dichters des 9Zarathustra:, mit abgründlicher Tiefe hingezeichnet und ohne einen Augenblick die Wagnersche Realität auch nur zu berühren. Wagner selbst hatte einen Begriff davon; er erkannte sich in der Schrift nicht wieder.» (E. Förster-Nietzsche, «Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches», II, 1, S.259.)
[ 12 ] Nietzsche kämpft fast immer, wo er kämpft, gegen sich selbst. Als er in der ersten Zeit seines schriftstellerischen Wirkens heftig gegen die Philologie zu Felde zog: da war es der Philologe in ihm, den er bekämpfte, dieser ausgezeichnete Philologe, der vor der Ablegung des Doktorexamens bereits zum Universitätsprofessor ernannt worden war. Als er, von 1876 ab, mit seinem Kampf gegen die Ideale begann, da hatte er seinen eigenen Idealismus im Auge. Und als er am Ende seiner Schriftstellerlaufbahn seinen beispiellos heftigen «Antichrist» schrieb, da war es wieder nichts anderes als das heimliche Christliche in ihm selber, wodurch er herausgefordert wurde. Er hatte keinen besonderen Kampf in sich selbst führen müssen, um vom Christentum loszukommen. Aber er ist auch nur mit der Vernunft, mit der einen Seite seines Wesens losgekommen; mit seinem Herzen, mit seiner Gefühlswelt, in seiner praktischen Lebensführung blieb er den christlichen Vorstellungen treu. Er trat als leidenschaftlichster Gegner einer Seite seines eigenen Wesens auf. «Man muss das Verhängnis aus der Nähe gesehen haben, noch besser, man muss es an sich erlebt, man muss an ihm fast zugrunde gegangen sein, um hier keinen Spaß mehr zu verstehen, die Freigeisterei unserer Herren Naturforscher und Physiologen ist in meinen Augen ein Spaß- ihnen fehlt die Leidenschaft in diesen Dingen, das Leiden an ihnen.» Wie Nietzsche den Zwiespalt in seinem Innern fühlte, und wie er sich ohnmächtig wusste, die verschiedenen Mächte seines Innern in einer Einheit des Bewusstseins auszugleichen, das zeigt der Schluss eines Gedichtes aus dem Sommer 1888, also aus der Zeit kurz vor der Katastrophe:
«Jetzt—
zwischen zwei Nichtse
eingekrümmt,
ein Fragezeichen,
ein müdes Rätsel —
ein Rätsel für Raubvogel...
—sie werden dich schon ‹lösen›,
sie hungern schon nach deiner ‹Lösung›,
sie flattern schon um dich, ihr Rätsel,
um dich, Gehenkter! ...
Oh Zarathustra!
Selbstkenner!
Selbsthenker.»(Werke, Band VIII, S. 369)
[ 13 ] Diese Unsicherheit über sich selbst drückt sich bei Nietzsche auch darin aus, dass er am Ende seiner Laufbahn geradezu seine ganze Entwicklung umdeutet. Seine Weltanschauung hat eine ihrer Quellen im griechischen Altertume. Man kann überall in seinen Schriften nachweisen, einen wie großen Einfluss die Griechen auf ihn gehabt haben. Er wird nicht müde, die Höhe der griechischen Kultur fortwährend zu betonen. 1875 schreibt er: «Die Griechen als das einzig geniale Volk der Weltgeschichte; auch als Lernende sind sie dies, sie verstehn dies am besten und wissen nicht bloß zu schmücken und zu putzen mit dem Entlehnten: wie es die Römer tun.— Das Genie macht alle Halbbegabten tributpflichtig: so schickten Perser selbst ihre Gesandtschaften an die griechischen Orakel. — Wie stechen die Römer durch ihren trocknen Ernst gegen die genialen Griechen ab!» (Werke, Band X, 5.352.) Und welch schöne Worte fand er 1873 für die ersten griechischen Philosophen: «Jedes Volk wird beschämt, wenn man auf eine so wunderbar idealisierte Philosophengesellschaft hinweist, wie die der altgriechischen Meister Thales, Anaximander, Heraklit, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedokles, Demokrit und Sokrates. Alle jene Männer sind ganz aus einem Stein gehauen. Zwischen ihrem Denken und ihrem Charakter herrscht strenge Notwendigkeit ... So bilden sie zusammen das, was Schopenhauer im Gegensatz zu der Gelehrten-Republik eine Genialen-Republik genannt hat: ein Riese ruft dem anderen durch die öden Zwischenräume der Zeiten zu, und ungestört durch mutwilliges, lärmendes Gezwerge, welches unter ihnen wegkriecht, setzt sich das hohe Geistergespräch fort... Gleich das erste Erlebnis der Philosophie auf griechischem Boden, die Sanktion der sieben Weisen, ist eine deutliche und unvergessliche Linie am Bilde des Hellenischen. Andere Völker haben Heilige, die Griechen haben Weise ... Das Urteil jener Philosophen über das Leben und das Dasein überhaupt besagt so sehr viel mehr als ein modernes Urteil, weil sie das Leben in einer üppigen Vollendung vor sich hatten, und weil bei ihnen nicht wie bei uns das Gefühl des Denkers sich verwirrt in dem Zwiespalt des Wunsches nach Freiheit, Schönheit, Größe des Lebens und des Triebes nach Wahrheit, die nur frägt: was ist das Leben überhaupt wert?» (Werke, Band X, 5. 7ff..) Immer stand Nietzsche dieser griechische Weise als ein Ideal vor Augen; er suchte ihm mit der einen Seite seines Wesens gleichzukommen; mit der andern aber verleugnet er ihn. In der «Götzen-Dämmerung» (1888) (Werke, Band VIII, S.167) lesen wir nach der Schilderung dessen, was er den Römern verdanken will: «Den Griechen verdanke ich durchaus keine verwandt starken Eindrücke; und, um es geradezu herauszusagen, sie können uns nicht sein, was die Römer sind. Man lernt nicht von den Griechen — ihre Art ist zu fremd, sie ist auch zu flüssig, um imperativisch, um 9klassisch: zu wirken. Wer hätte je an einem Griechen schreiben gelernt! Wer hätte es je ohne die Römer gelernt! ... Die prachtvoll geschmeidige Leiblichkeit, der verwegene Realismus und Immoralismus, der dem Hellenen eignet, ist eine Not, nicht eine 9Natur: gewesen. Er folgte erst, er war nicht von Anfang an da. Und mit Festen und Künsten wollte man auch nichts anderes, als sich obenauf fühlen, sich obenauf zeigen: es sind Mittel, sich selber zu verherrlichen, unter Umständen vor sich Furcht zu machen... Die Griechen auf deutsche Manier nach ihren Philosophen beurteilen, etwa die Biedermännerei der sokratischen Schulen zu Aufschlüssen darüber benützen, was im Grunde hellenisch sei.... Die Philosophen sind ja die décadents des Griechentums ...»
[ 14 ] Man wird über manche Ausführungen Nietzsches erst volle Klarheit gewinnen, wenn man die Tatsache, dass seine philosophischen Gedanken auf Selbstbeobachtung beruhen, zusammenhält mit der andern, dass dieses Selbst kein in sich harmonisches, sondern ein in sich zersplittertes war. Diese Zersplitterung brachte er auch in seine Welterklärung. Im Hinblicke auf sich konnte er sagen: «Müssen wir es uns nicht eingestehn, wir Künstler, dass es eine unheimliche Verschiedenheit in uns gibt, dass unser Geschmack und andrerseits unsre schöpferische Kraft auf eine wunderliche Weise für sich stehn, für sich stehn bleiben und ein Wachstum für sich haben, — ich will sagen, ganz verschiedene Grade und Tempi von alt, jung, reif, mürbe, faul? So dass zum Beispiel ein Musiker zeitlebens Dinge schaffen könnte, die dem, was sein verwöhntes Zuhörer-Ohr, Zuhörer-Herz schätzt, schmeckt, vorzieht, widersprechen: — er brauchte noch nicht einmal um diesen Widerspruch zu wissen!» (Werke, Band V, S.323.) Dies ist eine Erklärung der Künstlernatur nach Nietzsches eigener Wesenheit gebildet. Ein ähnliches begegnet uns bei ihm in allen seinen Schriften.
[ 15 ] Es ist kein Zweifel, dass man in manchen Fällen zu weit geht, wenn man Erscheinungen des Seelenlebens mit pathologischen Begriffen in Zusammenhang bringt; bei einer Persönlichkeit wie Nietzsche zeigt sich, dass die Weltanschauung nur durch einen solchen Zusammenhang volle Erklärung findet. So nützlich es in mancher Beziehung sein mag, an dem Satz Diltheys («Dichterische Einbildungskraft und Wahnsinn», Leipzig 1886) festzuhalten: «Das Genie ist keine pathologische Erscheinung, sondern der gesunde, der vollkommene Mensch», so verfehlt wäre es, sich jede solche Betrachtung, wie sie hier über Nietzsche geliefert worden ist, durch ein derartiges Dogma abzuschneiden.
5 Friedrich Nietzsche's personality and psycho-pathology
[ 1 ] "Just as the psychological processes go parallel to the brain's excitations, physiological psychology goes parallel to brain physiology. Where the latter does not yet offer sufficient insight, physiological psychology may provisionally investigate the psychic phenomena purely as such, but always guided by the thought that for these psychic phenomena, too, at least the possibility of a parallelism to cerebral processes must be demonstrated." Even if one does not necessarily subscribe to this sentence by Theodor Ziehen (cf. his "Leitfaden der physiologischen Psychologie", p. 2), one must admit that it has proven to be extraordinarily fruitful for the method of psychology. Under the influence of the view which he expresses, this science has arrived at truly scientific findings. But one must also be aware of the significant light that the observation of pathological phenomena of the soul throws on the connection between psychological phenomena and the corresponding physiological processes. The pathological experiment has rendered the greatest service to both psychology and physiology. The abnormal facts of mental life enlighten us about the normal ones. However, it must seem particularly important to follow the abnormal phenomena into the areas in which the activity of the soul increases to the highest mental achievements.
[ 2 ] A personality such as Nietzsche's offers special points of reference for such an examination. A morbid core in his personality prompted him again and again to go back to the physiological basis of his ideas. He alternately struck all tones, from poetic diction to the highest peaks of conceptual abstraction. He speaks out with all acuity about how his way of imagining is connected with his physical states. "In 1879 I resigned my professorship in Basel, lived like a shadow in St. Moritz for the summer and the next winter, the sunniest of my life, as a shadow in Naumburg. This was my minimum. In my thirty-sixth year I reached the lowest point of my vitality - I was still alive, but without being able to see three steps ahead of me. 9The Wanderer and his Shadow: was created during this time. Undoubtedly, I understood shadows back then ... The following winter, my first Genoese winter, that sweetening and spiritualization, which is almost conditioned by an extreme poverty of blood and muscle, gave birth to the 9Morning blush. The perfect brightness and serenity, even exuberance of spirit, which the said work reflects, is not only compatible in me with the deepest physiological weakness, but even with an excess of pain." "In the midst of the torments brought on by three days of uninterrupted brain pain and laborious vomiting of phlegm, I possessed a dialectical clarity par excellence and thought things through very cold-bloodedly for which, in healthier circumstances, I am not a climber, not refined, not cold enough. My readers may know to what extent I regard dialectics as symptoms of decadence, for example in the most famous case: the case of Socrates." - (Cf. M. G. Conrad: "Ketzerblut", p. 186, and Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche: "Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches" II, I, p.328.)
[ 3 ] Nietzsche regards the change of his modes of conception almost as the result of the variability in his physical states. "A philosopher who has gone through many states of health and continues to do so has also gone through just as many philosophies: he cannot help but transform his state each time into the most spiritual form and distance - this art of transfiguration is philosophy." (Works, Volume V, p.8.) In his memoirs "Ecce homo", written in 888, Nietzsche speaks of how his illness gave him the impetus to develop an optimistic view of the world: "For take heed: the years of my lowest vitality were when I stopped being a pessimist: the instinct of self-restoration forbade me a philosophy of poverty and discouragement." (Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, "The Life of Friedrich Nietzsche" II, I. p. 338f)
[ 4 ] The most contradictory aspects of Nietzsche's world of ideas appear comprehensible from this point of view. His physical nature moved in contradictions. "For one has, provided that one is a person, necessarily also the philosophy of one's person: but there is a considerable difference. With the one it is his defects that philosophize, with the other his riches and powers." (Works, Volume V, p.5.) With Nietzsche himself it is alternately the one and the other. As long as he was in full possession of his youthful strength, he took the "pessimism of the nineteenth century as a symptom of a higher power of thought, of a victorious fullness of life"; he took the tragic knowledge that he found in Schopenhauer as "the most beautiful luxury of our culture, as its most precious, most noble, most dangerous kind of waste, but nevertheless, due to its abundance, as its permitted luxury." He could no longer see such a permitted luxury in the tragic realization when the morbid got the upper hand in his life. That is why he now created a philosophy of the highest possible affirmation of life. He now needed a world view of "self-affirmation, self-glorification", a master morality; he needed the philosophy of the "Eternal Return". "I shall come again, with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this serpent - not to a new life or a better life or a similar life: - I shall come again eternally to this same and blessed life, in the greatest and also in the smallest." - "For the earth is a table of the gods, and trembling with creative new words and gods' throws: 0, how should I not be eager for eternity and for the nuptial ring of rings, - the ring of the Second Coming?" ("Zarathustra", III. T.) The uncertain information we have about Nietzsche's ancestors unfortunately makes a satisfactory judgment about how much of Nietzsche's spiritual peculiarity is due to inheritance impossible. It has often been wrongly pointed out that his father died of a brain disease. He only contracted the disease after Nietzsche's birth as a result of an accident. However, it seems not unimportant that Nietzsche himself points to a morbid element in his father. "My father died at the age of thirty-six: he was tender, amiable and morbid, like a being destined only to pass, - more a kindly reminder of life than life itself." -(M. G. Conrad, "Ketzerblut", p. 179.) When Nietzsche speaks of something decadent living in him alongside something healthy, he himself evidently thinks of deriving the former from his father, the latter from his mother, who was a perfectly healthy woman.
[ 5 ] In Nietzsche's mental life there are a number of traits bordering on the pathological, reminiscent of Heinrich Heine and Leopardi, who also have much in common with him in other respects. Heine was tormented from a young age by the darkest melancholia, suffered from dream-like states; and later he also knew how to draw ideas from the most miserable physical condition, from increasing infirmity, which are not far removed from those of Nietzsche. Indeed, one finds in Heine a forerunner of Nietzsche in terms of the juxtaposition of an Apollonian or calmly contemplative view of life (cf. "The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche as a Psycho-Pathological Problem", above, p.127) and a Dionysian-dithyrambic affirmation of life. And Heine's spiritual life also remains inexplicable from a psychological point of view if one does not take into account the pathological core in his nature, which he inherited from his father, who was a degenerative personality that crept through life like a shadow.
[ 6 ] The similarities in the physiological characters of Leopardi and Nietzsche are particularly striking. The same sensitivity to weather and season, place and environment is found in both. Leopardi sensed the slightest changes in thermometer and barometer readings. He could only produce in summer; he moved around, always looking for the most suitable place for his work. Nietzsche speaks about such peculiarities of his nature in the following way: "Now that I read the effects of climatic and meteorological origins from long practice on myself as on a very fine and reliable instrument and, on a short journey already, say from Turin to Milan, physiologically calculate the change in the degrees of humidity on me, I think with horror of the uncanny fact that my life, except for the last ten years, the life-threatening years, has always taken place only in wrong and to me downright forbidden places. Naumburg, Schulpforta, Thuringia in general, Leipzig, Base], Venice - just as many places of misfortune for my physiology ..." For both Leopardi and Nietzsche, this extraordinary sensitivity is linked to a disregard for all altruistic feelings. For both of them, enduring people is part of the overcoming. From Nietzsche's own words we can see that his fear of strong impressions before traveling, which are too much for his sensitivity, instills in him a distrust of selfless instincts. He says: "I reproach the compassionate that they easily lose their shame, their reverence, their delicacy before distances." For Leopardi, too, it was certain that it was rare to find a tolerable person; he confronted misery with irony and bitterness, as Nietzsche made it his principle: "The weak and the wayward shall perish: first sentence of our philanthropy. And they should also be helped." (Works, Volume VIII, p 218.) Nietzsche says of life that it is "essentially appropriation, violation, overpowering of the alien and the weaker, oppression, harshness, imposition of one's own forms, incorporation and at least, at the mildest, exploitation". ("Beyond Good and Evil", § 259.) Likewise, for Leopardi, life is an incessant, terrible struggle in which the one crushes the other.
[ 7 ] The extent to which both of these thoughts are pathological is evident from the completely irrational way in which they come about. They are not driven to the idea of the struggle for existence by logical considerations, such as the national economist Malthus and the philosopher Hobbes, or by careful observations such as Darwin, but by the highly heightened sensitivity mentioned above, which is the cause that every external stimulus is answered as a hostile intervention with a violent defensive effect. This can be clearly demonstrated in Nietzsche. He finds the idea of the struggle for existence in Darwin. He does not reject it; but he reinterprets it in a way that corresponds to his heightened sensibility: "Assuming, however, that this struggle exists - and indeed it does occur - it unfortunately turns out the other way round than the school of Darwin wishes, than one might wish with it: namely to the disadvantage of the strong, the privileged, the happy exceptions. Species do not grow in perfection: the weak always become masters over the strong, - that makes, they are the great number, they are also smarter ... Darwin forgot the spirit (- that's English!), the weak have more spirit ... He who has the strength renounces the spirit." (Works, Volume VIII. p.128.)
[ 8 ] To a certain extent, there is no doubt that heightened sensitivity and the urge to direct one's observations preferably towards one's own personality are mutually dependent. All-round healthy and harmonious natures such as Goethe, for example, even find something questionable in extensive self-observation. Goethe's view is in complete contrast to Nietzsche's way of thinking: "If we take the important word: know thyself, we do not have to interpret it in an ascetic sense. It does not mean the heautognosy of our modern hypochondriacs, humorists and heautontimorumenes; it simply means: pay some attention to yourself, take note of yourself, so that you become aware of how you stand in relation to your peers and the world. No psychological torture is needed for this; every capable person knows and experiences what it means; it is good advice that is of the greatest practical benefit to everyone ... How can we get to know each other? Never by observation, but by action. Try to do your duty, and you will immediately know what is in you." We now know that Goethe also possessed a fine sensibility. But he also possessed the necessary counterbalance: the ability that he himself described most aptly in relation to others in a conversation with Eckermann on 20 December I 829: "The extraordinary things that excellent talents achieve require a very delicate organization so that they may be capable of rare sensations... may be. Now such an organization is easily disturbed and injured in conflict with the world and the elements, and he who does not, like Voltaire, combine with great sensibility an extraordinary toughness, is easily subject to continued sickliness." Natures like Nietzsche and Leopardi lack this toughness. They would lose themselves completely to their impressions, to the stimuli exerted on them, if they did not artificially close themselves off from the outside world, indeed, if they did not confront it with hostility. Compare the overcoming that Nietzsche needed in dealing with people with Goethe's pleasure in this contact, which he describes with the words: "Sociability was in my nature; that is why, in many undertakings, I gained associates for myself and made myself their associate and thus achieved the happiness of seeing myself live on in them and them in me."
II
[ 9 ] A highly conspicuous phenomenon in Nietzsche's intellectual life is the doubling of self-consciousness, which is always latent in his work, but at times emerges clearly. The "two souls dwell, alas! in my breast" borders on the pathological in his case. He cannot bring about a balance between the "two souls". His polemics can hardly be understood in any other way than from this point of view. He almost never really hits his opponent with his judgments. He first constructs what he wants to attack in the strangest way and then fights against a delusion that is very far removed from reality. You only understand this when you consider that he is basically never fighting against an external enemy, but against himself. And he fights most fiercely when he himself has at some other time stood on the standpoint that he sees as the enemy's, or at least when this standpoint plays a decisive role in his mental life. His campaign against Wagner is only a campaign against himself. At a time when he was being tossed back and forth between conflicting circles of ideas, he half-involuntarily aligned himself with Wagner. He became personal friends with him. Wagner grew immeasurably in his eyes. He calls him his "Jupiter", at whom he breathes a sigh of relief from time to time: "A fruitful, rich, shattering life, quite different and unheard of among middle mortals! That is why he stands there, firmly rooted by his own strength, with his gaze always above and beyond everything ephemeral, and untimely in the most beautiful sense." (E. Förster-Nietzsche, "Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches", II, I, p. 16.) Nietzsche now formed a philosophy within himself that he could say was completely in line with Wagner's artistic direction and view of life. He identified completely with Wagner. He regarded him as the first great innovator of tragic culture, which had once experienced a significant beginning in ancient Greece, but which is said to have been pushed back by the clever intellectual wisdom of Socrates and the one-sidedness of Plato and only experienced a short-lived revival in the age of the Renaissance. What he believes to have recognized as Wagner's mission, Nietzsche makes the content of his own work. In his "Nachgelassene Schriften", however, one can see how he completely represses his second self under the influence of Wagner. Within these writings, there are statements from the time before and while his enthusiasm for Wagner, which move in the completely opposite direction of feeling and thinking. Nevertheless, he forms an ideal image of Wagner that does not live in reality, but only in his imagination. And his ego is completely absorbed in this ideal image. Later, the circles of imagination appear in this ego, which form the contrast to Wagner's way of looking at things. He now becomes, in the true sense of the word, the fiercest opponent of his own world of thought. For he is not fighting the Wagner of reality; he is fighting the image he had previously formed of Wagner. His passion, his injustice, is only understandable when one sees how he becomes so fierce because he is fighting something that he himself believes has ruined him, that has led him astray from his true path. Had he, like another of Wagner's contemporaries, trained this objectively determined time. He says: "Turning my back on Wagner was a fate for me; to like something again afterwards was a victory. Perhaps no one was more dangerously attached to Wagnerianism, no one fought harder against it, no one was happier to be free of it. A long story! - Do you want a word for it? - If I were a moralist, who knows what I would call it! Perhaps self-conquest. - What does a philosopher demand of himself first and last? To overcome his time within himself, to become "timeless". With what, then, does he have to pass his hardest test? With that in which he is the child of his time. So long! I am as much the child of this time as Wagner, that is to say a décadent: only that I understood this, only that I resisted it. The philosopher in me resisted it." (Werke, vol. VIII, 5. ,.), he might have become its opponent later on. But he would have approached the whole matter in a calmer, more coolly considered manner. He also realizes that he does not want to get away from Wagner, but only from his own "I", as it is expressed in a
[ 10 ] He expresses even more clearly in the following words how he felt the division of his ego and the sudden contrast between the worlds of thought in his consciousness: "He who attacks his time can only attack himself: what can he see if not himself? In the same way, one can only glorify oneself in the other. Self-destruction, self-idolatry, self-contempt - that is our judging, loving, hating." (Works, Volume XI, p.92.)
[ 11 ] In the fall of 1888, Nietzsche could no longer come to terms with the content of his essay "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth" other than to say that he had not meant Wagner at all, but himself. "A psychologist might add that what I heard in Wagnerian music when I was young has nothing at all to do with Wagner; that when I described Dionysian music, I was describing what I had heard - that I instinctively had to translate and transfigure everything into the new spirit that I carried within me. The proof of this, as strong as proof can be, is my writing 9Wagner in Bayreuth:: in all psychologically crucial places, only I am mentioned, - one may ruthlessly put my name or the word 9Zarathustra: where the text gives the word Wagner. The whole image of the dithyrambic artist is the image of the pre-existent poet of 9Zarathustra:, drawn with abysmal depth and without even touching Wagner's reality for a moment. Wagner himself had a concept of it; he did not recognize himself in the writing." (E. Förster-Nietzsche, "The Life of Friedrich Nietzsche", II, 1, p.259.)
[ 12 ] Nietzsche almost always fights against himself wherever he fights. When he fought fiercely against philology in the early days of his literary career, it was the philologist in him that he fought against, this excellent philologist who had already been appointed university professor before taking his doctorate. When he began his fight against ideals in 1876, he had his own idealism in mind. And when, at the end of his writing career, he wrote his unprecedentedly violent "Antichrist", it was again nothing other than the secret Christianity within himself that challenged him. He did not have to fight a particular battle within himself to get away from Christianity. But he only got away with reason, with one side of his nature; with his heart, with his emotional world, in his practical way of life, he remained faithful to Christian ideas. He acted as the most passionate opponent of one side of his own nature. "One must have seen the doom from close up, even better, one must have experienced it oneself, one must have almost perished from it, in order not to understand any more fun here, the free-spiritedness of our gentlemen natural scientists and physiologists is in my eyes a fun - they lack the passion in these things, the suffering from them." The conclusion of a poem from the summer of 1888, shortly before the catastrophe, shows how Nietzsche felt the conflict within himself and how he felt powerless to balance the various forces within him in a unity of consciousness:
"Now—
between two nothingnesses
curved in,
a question mark,
a tired riddle—
a riddle for birds of prey...
—they will already 'solve' you,
they are already hungry for your 'solution',
they are already fluttering around you, their riddle,
around you, hanged man! ...
Oh Zarathustra!
Self-knower!
Self-knower."(Works, Volume VIII, p. 369)
[ 13 ] This uncertainty about himself is also expressed in Nietzsche's reinterpretation of his entire development at the end of his career. His world view has one of its sources in Greek antiquity. It can be seen everywhere in his writings how great an influence the Greeks had on him. He never tired of emphasizing the greatness of Greek culture. In 1875 he wrote: "The Greeks are the only people of genius in the history of the world; they are also the best learners, they understand this best and do not merely know how to decorate and polish what they have borrowed, as the Romans do." Genius makes all semi-talented people subject to tribute: the Persians themselves sent their legations to the Greek oracles. - How the Romans stand out by their dry earnestness against the ingenious Greeks!" (Werke, Vol. X, 5.352.) And what beautiful words he found in 1873 for the first Greek philosophers: "Every nation is put to shame when one points to such a wonderfully idealized society of philosophers as that of the ancient Greek masters Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus and Socrates. All these men are hewn entirely from one stone. There is a strict necessity between their thinking and their character ... Thus together they form what Schopenhauer, in contrast to the republic of scholars, called a republic of geniuses: one giant calls out to the other through the barren interstices of time, and undisturbed by wanton, noisy gnomes crawling away among them, the high conversation of minds continues... The very first experience of philosophy on Greek soil, the sanction of the seven wise men, is a clear and unforgettable line in the image of the Hellenic. Other peoples have saints, the Greeks have sages ... The judgment of those philosophers about life and existence in general says so much more than a modern judgment, because they had life before them in a luxuriant perfection, and because with them, unlike with us, the feeling of the thinker is not confused in the dichotomy of the desire for freedom, beauty, greatness of life and the drive for truth, which only asks: what is life worth at all?" (Werke, Vol. X, 5. 7ff.) Nietzsche always had this Greek sage before his eyes as an ideal; he sought to equal him with one side of his being; but with the other he denies him. In "Götzen-Dämmerung" (1888) (Works, Volume VIII, p.167), after describing what he wants to owe to the Romans, we read: "I owe the Greeks absolutely no related strong impressions; and, to put it bluntly, they cannot be to us what the Romans are. One does not learn from the Greeks - their manner is too foreign, it is also too fluid to be imperative, to be 9classical. Who would ever have learned to write from a Greek! Who would ever have learned it without the Romans! ... The splendidly supple corporeality, the daring realism and immoralism that is characteristic of the Hellenes was a necessity, not a 9nature:. It followed, it was not there from the beginning. And with festivals and arts they wanted nothing more than to feel on top, to show themselves on top: they are means of glorifying themselves, of making themselves fearful under certain circumstances... Judging the Greeks in the German manner according to their philosophers, using the bourgeoisie of the Socratic schools, for example, to find out what is basically Hellenic.... The philosophers are, after all, the decadents of Greekness ..."
[ 14 ] One will only gain full clarity about some of Nietzsche's statements if one combines the fact that his philosophical thoughts are based on self-observation with the fact that this self was not harmonious in itself, but fragmented. He also brought this fragmentation into his explanation of the world. With regard to himself he could say: "Must we not admit to ourselves, we artists, that there is an uncanny diversity in us, that our taste and, on the other hand, our creative power stand for themselves in a strange way, remain standing for themselves and have a growth for themselves, - I mean to say, quite different degrees and tempos of old, young, mature, mellow, lazy? So that, for example, a musician could create things throughout his life that contradict what his spoiled listener's ear, listener's heart appreciates, tastes, prefers: - he did not even need to know about this contradiction!" (Works, Volume V, p.323.) This is an explanation of the artist's nature formed according to Nietzsche's own nature. We encounter a similar one in all of his writings.
[ 15 ] There is no doubt that in some cases one goes too far when one connects phenomena of mental life with pathological concepts; in the case of a personality like Nietzsche, it is evident that the world view can only be fully explained through such a connection. As useful as it may be in some respects to hold on to Dilthey's sentence ("Dichterische Einbildungskraft und Wahnsinn", Leipzig 1886): "Genius is not a pathological phenomenon, but the healthy, the perfect human being", it would be a mistake to cut off any such consideration, as has been provided here about Nietzsche, by such a dogma.