| RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR
Friedrich Nietzsche was, doubtless,
one of modern philosophy's most influential thinkers. His
philosophical touchstone, even motifs provide the precepts and percepts to unmasking
the root motives that contextualise conventional Western religion
and
morality, including theology. It also has everything in it to deeply influence generations of intellectuals:
from philosophers, poets, novelists, and playwrights to psychologists.
Friedrich Nietzsche's
raison d'etre of his own brand, or verve, of philosophical
certitude and thought underscored his expression that 'God
is dead' -- the very fulcrum that determines intellectual agenda,
long after he had imprinted his name in letters of gold…
on the sands of time.
And, for an unrelenting foe of nationalism,
anti-semitism, including power politics, it was a travesty
of history that Nietzsche's philosophical genius, and name,
were invoked by Fascists, most notably the perfidiously digressive
Nazi propaganda machine, to foster the very ideologies, or fanatical appui, he detested with all his mind, heart and soul.
Born on October 15, 1844, in a small hamlet in Prussian Saxony,
Nietzsche's early childhood was focused on imbibing the essentials
of Lutheran piety. His paternal grandfather, a publisher in
his own right, had published books defending Protestant values.
So, it was not without reason, that, the Nietzsche household
was influential.
Nietzsche's father was pastor at Rocken,
under the order of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, after whom Nietzsche
was named. Sadly, Nietzsche Senior died when his brilliant
son was but just five summers old. Which was precisely the
reason why Nietzsche had to spend most of his early childhood
among women. Yet, in the final analysis, not exactly in tune
with Freudian belief, Nietzsche didn't fancy feminism -- or,
its primary foundation.
Ever an inveterate, skilful learner, Nietzsche
was destined for fame from an early age. He went to a boarding
school, on a scholarship and, from there, to the prestigious
University of Bonn. His electives? No prizes for guessing:
theology, and classical philology. Not all was hunky-dory
for Nietzche though, notwithstanding Bonn's academically stimulating
milieu.
Ever the eternal rebel, Nietzsche got
himself sandwiched between his two leading classics professors,
and their famous, acrimonious quarrels. He felt lost, desolate.
Naturally, his fertile mind thought of a way out. Music. Nietzsche
wrote a host of compositions, under the prosilient influence
of the noted German composer, Robert Schumann. And, soon after,
in 1865, he successfully sought his transfer to that great
place of learning, University of Leipzig, where he joined
his old classics professor, from Bonn, Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl,
who had accepted an appointment there.
It was just the right time for Nietzsche's
classy revelation of mind and matter to blossom forth. He
prospered under Ritschl's temporal tutelage, and, in the process,
became the only student ever to publish in Ritschl's journal.
Two years later, Nietzsche began his military service. However,
within six months after he had enrolled, he had to take sick
leave. Reason? He sustained a serious chest injury while mounting
a horse. A blessing in disguise, perhaps. He resumed his studies,
in Liepzig, and discovered Arthur Schopenhauer's classical
philosophy. Schopenhauer's wisdom was to Nietzsche what
penicillin was to Fleming. That's not all. Nietzsche was
soon to meet the great operatic composer, Richard Wagner.
He also began his lifelong friendship with fellow classicist,
Erwin Rohde, the acclaimed author of Psyche.
In 1869, Nietzsche became a professor
in classical philology, in Basel. Which was paradoxical, because
he had not completed his doctoral thesis nor the basic proviso
of a German degree. What won him that exalted chair was Ritschl's
unparalleled praise, a deep respect for his ward's limitless
talents. That wasn't all. Nietzsche was soon conferred the
doctorate without examination, and appointed extraordinary
professor. He became a Swiss citizen.
Then the turbulence, in his life, began.
In 1870, after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, Nietzsche
contracted dysentery and diphtheria, while accompanying a
transport of wounded: a combined scourge. It enfeebled his
health permanently. His friendship with Wagner, though ambivalent,
began to wobble. It came to a pass when Nietzsche could no
longer bear with the composer's redundant exploitation of
Christian themes, juxtaposed with his own medley of chauvinism
and anti-semitism. The two genii broke off finally, come 1878.
If 1872 marked Nietzsche's emancipation
from the trappings of classical scholarship, by way of the
publication of his debut work, The Birth Of Tragedy From
Thy Spirit Of Music, a book of profound imaginative insight,
and fusion of Apollonian and Dionysian elements. Nietzsche's
appalling health only brought in its wake both isolation,
and creativity. In 1877, Nietzsche gave up his professorial
duties, and set up house with his sister. A year later, his
aphoristic work, Human, All Too Human, appeared, all
right, but his failing physical attributes began to hold doubts
whether Nietzsche himself had any intrinsic interest in his
life per se.
But, the genii cannot accept quarantine.
Nietzsche was no exception. His magnum opus, Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, was published between 1883 and 1885, in four
parts. A literary and philosophical masterpiece, in biblical
narrative form, it celebrates the essential of the essentials,
the sentient of the sentients of Nietzsche's monumental mental
chemistry, and alchemy of thought, analyses, and mature philosophy.
It was also the fount, the well-spring of Nietzsche's vision.
It was the design, and flow, that urged him to write, and
write prolifically, with a new-found iota of sublime understanding
of the origin and function of values in human life.
Nietzsche believed in X-raying expressions
of the ascetic ideal -- the analyses and evaluation of the
fundamental cultural values of Western philosophy, religion,
and morality. The ascetic ideal, according to Nietzsche, is
born when suffering becomes endowed with ultimate significance.
The Judeo-Christian tradition, for example, Nietzsche noted,
made suffering tolerable by interpreting it as God's intention,
and as a framework of atonement.
Nietzsche's etymological approach to the
interpretation of morality was centred on the distinction
between good and bad -- of something descriptive in terms of
a historical genealogy of master and slave morality. Nietzsche
called the devaluation of the highest values posited by the
ascetic ideal, 'Nihilism.' He often thought of his writings
as struggles with nihilism, religion, philosophy, and morality,
from which he developed his original theses vis-à-vis perspectivism, the will to power, eternal recurrence, and
the superman.
It goes without saying that Nietzsche's
sister Elizabeth, who had enormous control over her brother's
literary estate, was instrumental in refashioning Nietzsche's
works, thanks -- ironically -- to her greedy psyche. She committed
perfidy, and forgeries, and misled generations of commentators,
and scholars. With her fanatical enthusiasm for Adolf Hitler,
Elizabeth also linked Nietzsche's name with that of the Fuhrer
in the public mind, and imagination. Which, in more ways than
one, fulfilled, rather unscrupulously, Nietzsche's paramount,
and polemical, credo in his writings, that castigated, refuted,
wanton acts or purposes: that knowledge from no point of view
is as incoherent a notion as seeing from no vantage point.
Nietzsche ridiculed Darwinism, and German
nationalism, yes. But, denouncing ideals, even Christian,
or people, that had influenced him most, was also a habit
with him. Yes, Nietzsche, for most part of his tragic life,
what with his shunts to mental asylums, and back, was overwhelmed
by madness. For one primal reason: he did not retain a strong
enough impression of the disparity between the external world,
and his own fantasies. Nietzsche also carried his own sense
of 'psychic inflation' with Zarathustra, and produced delusions
of grandeur and psychosis. However, what was so special about
Nietzsche was his psychological perceptualisation, including
his first rustings of the savage god in the primaeval forests
of the unconscious. A signal 'spark' which appealed to none
other than psychologist extraordinaire, C G Jung.
A simple man, said Nietzsche, has his
place; but, not on the throne. His virtues are, therefore,
necessary to society, as those of the leader. Nietzsche laid
emphasis on industriousness, thrift, regularity, strong conviction
etc., So, he opined that a finer man has a divine right to
rule. Which need not necessarily mean that a mediocre man
cannot become 'perfect:' of perfection only as an instrument.
"A high civilisation," Nietzsche observed, "is
a pyramid; it can stand only upon a broad base; its prerequisite
is a strongly and soundly consolidated mediocrity." Rings
a bell. Right?
Nietzsche was far ahead of his time. He
once wrote: "My time is not yet; only the day after tomorrow
belongs to me." Quite true. For one inescapable reason:
he had both the audacity, and voice, to question conventional,
even traditional, wisdom. He sat alone, on lonely heights,
and from there came his inspiration. As he himself wrote,
in his brilliant, poetically licenced, literary prose:
I sat there waiting -- waiting for nothing,
Enjoying, beyond good and evil, now
The light, now the shade; there was only
The day, the lake, the noon, time without end.
Then, my friend, suddenly one became two,
And Zarathustra passed by me.
Nietzsche believed that without good birth,
nobility was impossible. He argued that passions will become
powers only when they are selected and unified by some great
purpose which moulds a chaos of desires into the power of
a personality. He wrote: "Woe to the thinker who is not
the gardener but the soil of his plants." Nietzsche underlined
that energy, intellect, and pride, made the superman. The
final patent of nobility, he argued, was a purpose: a purpose
for which one will do almost anything except betray a friend.
When the last blow came, on January 3,
1889, in the form of a stroke, Nietzsche went into a rage.
And, then he regressed into a state of quietude, peace, and
even a web of composure. So, in one lucid moment, he even
said: "Ah! books... I too have written some good books." A
year-and-a-half later, Nietzsche was no more.
All he carried with him, to a world
beyond, was his originality -- not the presages of his awesome
thoughts that were more than misunderstood by most; even
confused, by some others.
It sums up Nietzsche -- philosopher supreme
-- who paid the ultimate price for being a genius.
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