A clarion call to rise above mediocrity

If somebody asks who is the most profound, enigmatic and controversial philosopher in Western philosophy, the answer will be Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). He was one of the most vilified, venerated and thoroughly misunderstood philosophers. At one time his philosophy was wrongly associated with Nazism. However, his concept of “Superman” was not somebody such as Adolph Hitler but someone closer to Aristotle’s “man of virtue.”

Celebrated psychologist Sigmund Freud paid tribute to him when he said that Nietzsche “had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other man who ever lived or was ever likely to live.”

Nietzsche was a brilliant son of a Protestant minister. At 24 he was appointed a professor at the University of Basel. However, he retired after 10 years due to ill health. Then he devoted much of his time and energy for writing. He soon became a world famous writer. In 1889 he suffered a nervous breakdown and remained insane until his death in 1900.

The will to power

Nietzsche was a prolific writer on ethics, religion, metaphysics and epistemology. He became popular for his concept of “the will to power.” According to him, moral and religious institutions stifled man’s will to master his own destiny. He dismissed Christianity as a religion with a “slave morality.” He saw the resentment of the weak towards the strong. Those who did not have the courage to seek revenge on the stronger elements in society expected God to wreak vengeance in the other world.

His explosive and revolutionary ideas offended established religions and their followers. However, even his detractors conceded that Nietzsche was a writer with a lucid and poetic style. He considered himself as a “cultural prophet.” In his The Will to Power he said, “This future speaks even now in a hundred signs, this destiny announces itself everywhere; for this music of the future all ears are cocked even now. For some time now, our whole European culture has been moving us towards a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect.”

Decadent society

Nietzsche was one of the first philosophers who noticed the symptoms of a decadent society in the 19th and 20th century nation states. The problem with Nietzsche, however, was that he was not simple or clear in some of his assertions such as “God is dead.”

What is more, he used biting satire, irony, hyperbole and deliberate contradictions to provoke the establishment and the reader. As a result, contemporary philosophers and critics found it difficult to identify him as a philosopher. After two centuries, however, he has emerged as a literary, psychological and philosophical force to be reckoned with.

Despite his academic brilliance he remained an outsider. At one stage he experimented with heavy drinking, singing and romantic pursuits. But he soon realised that such activities were futile. A turning point in his life came when he met the celebrated philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer who advocated pessimism. According to Schopenhauer, life is disappointing. The only way to happiness was to detach yourself from possessions. By the way, his views were similar to what the Buddha preached to his followers.

Nietzsche responded positively to Schopenhauer’s philosophy. At one stage he felt that the great philosopher was addressing him personally. Nietzsche absorbed his philosophy of renunciation, denial and resignation and came to the conclusion that life was not the result of a divine plan. Life was the expression of will. He insisted that life is governed by the will to power. It was a clear deviation from Schopenhauer’s philosophy which said the ultimate will is the will to live.

Doctorate

Nietzsche goes down in history as one of the few people who became professors without having a doctorate. After appointing him as a professor the university conferred a doctorate on him without any examination or dissertation. Nietzsche tried hard to follow the academic line but the students found him to be an ineffective professor. The students gradually distanced themselves from him.

Due to ill health and unpopularity among his students, Nietzsche resigned from the university in 1879 to pursue a path of his own. He referred to himself as an iconoclast. In fact he did philosophy with a hammer knocking down great idols to see which were hollow.

In the 1880s he made friends with Lou Salome, a Jewish intellectual. Their companionship flourished. She became his pupil and lover. when she left him to marry someone else, he was devastated. Heartbroken he retreated to the Swiss Alps where he wrote his masterpiece Thus Spake Zarathustra. It was a clarion call to everybody to rise above decadence and mediocrity.