The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. Nietzsche's Philosophy as a Psycho-pathological Problem

[ 1 ] The following is not written to multiply the claims of Friedrich Nietzsche's opponents, but with the intention of making a contribution to the knowledge of this man from a point of view that undoubtedly comes into consideration when assessing his strange trains of thought. Anyone who delves into Friedrich Nietzsche's world view will come across numerous problems that can only be elucidated from the standpoint of psycho-pathology. On the other hand, it should be particularly important for psychiatry to deal with an important personality who has had an immeasurably great influence on contemporary culture. This influence also has a significantly different character than the effects that philosophers have otherwise had on their students. For Nietzsche does not influence his contemporaries through the logical force of his arguments. The spread of his views is rather due to the same reasons that make it possible for enthusiasts and fanatics of all times to play their roles in the world.

[ 2 ] What is offered here is not a complete explanation of Friedrich Nietzsche's mental state from a psychiatric point of view. Such an explanation is not yet possible today because a complete and accurate clinical picture of his illness is not yet available. Everything that has come to the public's attention about the history of his illness is incomplete and contradictory. What is quite possible today, however, is to look at Nietzsche's philosophy from the perspective of psycho-pathology. The actual work of the psychiatrist will perhaps begin precisely where that of the psychologist, which is to be presented here, ends. However, this work is absolutely necessary for the complete solution of the "Nietzsche problem". Only on the basis of such a psycho-pathological symptomatology will the psychiatrist be able to solve his task. ^{1The author of this essay believes himself called upon to view Nietzsche's views from this standpoint, for he already provided a picture of these views some time ago in his essay "Friedrich Nietzsche, a Fighter against his Time", which sought to do objective justice to this spirit, and in which he refrained from any sideways glance at a psycho-pathological explanation. The author does not want to separate himself from his previously expressed convictions, but only to grasp the problem from a different perspective.}

[ 3 ] One characteristic that runs through Nietzsche's entire work is the lack of a sense of objective truth. What science strives for as truth was basically never there for him. In the period shortly before the outbreak of complete madness, this lack grew into a formal hatred of everything that is called logical reasoning. "Honest things, like honest people, do not carry their reasons in their hands. It is indecent to point all five fingers. What must first be proven is worth little," he says in "Götzen-Dämmerung", written in 1888, shortly before his illness (Volume VIII of the Complete Edition, 5.7'). Because he lacked this sense of truth, he never went through the struggle that so many have to go through who are forced by their development to give up their acquired opinions. When he was confirmed at the age of seventeen, he was a complete believer in God. Indeed, three years later, when he left the grammar school in Schulpforta, he wrote: "To him, to whom I owe the most, I bring the first fruits of my gratitude; what else can I offer him but the warm feeling of my heart, which perceives his love more vividly than ever, his love, which let me experience this most beautiful hour of my existence? May he continue to protect me, the faithful God!" (E. Förster-Nietzsche: "The Life of Friedrich Nietzsche", I. p. 194.) In a short time, the believer in God becomes a complete atheist, without any inner struggle. In his memoirs, which he wrote down in 1888 under the title "Ecce homo", he spoke of his inner struggles. "Religious difficulties," he says there, "I do not know from experience..." "'God', 'immortality of the soul', 'salvation', 'afterlife', all concepts to which I paid no attention, no time, not even as a child - perhaps I was never childlike enough to do so? - I do not know atheism as a result, still less as an event: it comes to me by instinct." (M. G. Conrad: "Ketzerblut", p. 182.) It is characteristic of Nietzsche's mental constitution that he claims here that he himself paid no attention to the religious ideas mentioned as a child. From the biography provided by his sister, we know that his classmates called him the "little pastor" because of his religious statements. From all of this, it is clear that he overcame the religious beliefs of his youth with great ease.

[ 4 ] The psychological process through which Nietzsche arrives at the content of his views is not the one that a person who sets out for objective truth goes through. This can already be observed in the way he arrives at the fundamental ideas of his first work "The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music". Nietzsche assumes that ancient Greek art is based on two drives: The Apollonian and the Dionysian. Through the Apollonian drive, man creates a beautiful image of the world, a work of calm contemplation. Through the Dionysian drive, man places himself in a state of intoxication; he does not merely contemplate the world; he permeates himself with the eternal powers of being and expresses them in his art. The epic, the sculptural pictorial work, are products of Apollonian art. The lyrical, the musical work of art spring from the Dionysian impulse. The Dionysian-minded person interpenetrates himself with the spirit of the world and brings its essence to light through his own expressions. He himself becomes a work of art. "Singing and dancing, man expresses himself as a member of a higher community: he has forgotten how to walk and speak and is on the way to flying up into the air, dancing. Enchantment speaks from his gestures". ("Birth of Tragedy", §I..) In this Dionysian state, man forgets himself, he no longer feels himself as an individual, but as an organ of the general will of the world. Nietzsche sees Dionysian expressions of the human spirit in the festivals held in honor of the god Dionysus. He now imagines that the dramatic art of the Greeks originated from such games. A higher union of the Dionysian with the Apollonian had taken place. In the oldest drama, an Apollonian image of the Dionysian excited human being was created.

[ 5 ] Nietzsche arrived at such ideas through the Schopenhauerian philosophy. He simply translated the "world as will and imagination" into the artistic. The world of the imagination is not the real one; it is only a subjective image that our soul creates of things. In Schopenhauer's opinion, observation does not lead man to the actual essence of the world. This reveals itself to him in his will. The art of the imagination is Apollonian; that of the will is Dionysian. Nietzsche only needed to take a small step beyond Schopenhauer and he had arrived where he stands in the "Birth of Tragedy". Schopenhauer himself has already assigned music an exceptional position among the arts. He calls all other arts mere images of the will; he calls music a direct expression of the primal will itself.

[ 6 ] Now Schopenhauer never had such an effect on Nietzsche that one could say he became his follower. In the essay "Schopenhauer as Educator", Nietzsche describes the impression he received from the teachings of the pessimistic philosopher: "Schopenhauer talks to himself, or if you want to imagine a listener, think of the son whom the father instructs. It is an honest, coarse, good-natured utterance to a listener who hears with love. We lack such writers. The strong sense of well-being of the speaker envelops us at the first sound of his voice; we feel as if we were entering a high forest, we breathe deeply and suddenly feel good again. Here is an air that is always the same, invigorating, we feel; here is a certain inimitable impartiality and naturalness, such as people have who are at home in themselves, and indeed in a very rich home." This aesthetic impression is decisive for Nietzsche's position on Schopenhauer. He was not at all concerned with doctrine. Among the notes he made at the same time as he wrote the hymn-like essay "Schopenhauer as Educator", we find the following: "I am far from believing that I have understood Schopenhauer correctly, I have only learned to understand myself a little better through Schopenhauer; that is why I owe him the greatest gratitude. But in general it does not seem to me to be as important as it is now taken to be, that with any philosopher it should be exactly fathomed and brought to light what he actually taught in the strictest sense of the word, and what not: such an insight is at least not suitable for people who seek a philosophy for their life, not a new scholarship for their memory: and finally it remains improbable to me that such a thing can really be fathomed." (Nietzsche's Works, Volume X, p. 285f.)

[ 7 ] Nietzsche thus builds his ideas about the "birth of tragedy" on the basis of a philosophical doctrine, which he leaves open as to whether he has understood it correctly. He is not looking for logical, but merely aesthetic satisfaction.

[ 8 ] Further evidence of his lack of a sense of truth is provided by his behavior during the writing of "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth" in 1876. During this time, he not only wrote down everything he had to say in praise of Wagner, but also some of the ideas that he later put forward against Wagner in the "Wagner case". In "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth", he only included what could be used to glorify Richard Wagner and his art; he initially held back the more serious, heretical judgments in his desk. Of course, this is not the approach of someone who has a sense of objective truth. Nietzsche did not want to provide a true characterization of Wagner, but rather to sing the master's praises.

[ 9 ] It is highly significant how Nietzsche behaves when he encounters a personality in Paul Ree in 1876, who presents a series of those problems which, like the ethical ones in particular, also proved useful in life. The basic truths of mechanics and natural science were actually errors; he wanted to elaborate on this in a work for which he drew up the plan in 1881. This was all within Nietzsche's sphere of interest, viewed entirely in the spirit of strictly objective science. This way of looking at things had the effect of a new revelation on Nietzsche.^{2This is not to say that P. Rée had a considerable influence on the content of Nietzsche's world view.} He admires this pure research into truth, which is free of all romanticism. Miss Malwida von Meysenbug, the intellectual author of the "Memoirs of an Idealist", tells in her recently published book: "The Evening of an Idealist" of Nietzsche's position on Rées' way of looking at things in 1876. At that time, she belonged to the circle of people in Sorrento within which Nietzsche and Rées became closer. "How much his (Rées') way of explaining philosophical problems made an impression on Nietzsche, I saw from many conversations." She shares a passage from one such conversation: "It is - said Nietzsche - the error of all religions to seek a transcendental unity behind appearance, and this is also the error of philosophy and of Schopenhauer's idea of the unity of the will to life. Philosophy is just as monstrous an error as religion. The only thing of value and validity is science, which gradually adds stone to stone in order to build a secure edifice." This speaks a clear language. Nietzsche, who himself lacked a sense of objective truth, virtually idolized him when he confronted him with someone else. As a result, however, he himself does not turn towards objective scientificity. The nature of his own production remains the same as it was before. So even now the truth does not affect him through its logical nature, but makes an aesthetically pleasing impression on him. In his two volumes "Menschliches, Allzumenschliches" (1878), he sings the praises of objective scientificity one after the other; but he himself does not apply the method of this scientificity at all. Indeed, he continued on his path in such a way that in 1881 he arrived at the position of declaring war on all truth.

[ 10 ] Nietzsche makes an assertion at this time by which he consciously sets himself in opposition to the views represented by natural science. This assertion is his much-discussed doctrine of the "eternal return" of all things. In Dühring's "Kursus der Philosophie", he found a statement that was intended to prove that an eternal repetition of the same world events was incompatible with the principles of mechanics. It was precisely this that inspired him to assume such an eternal, periodic repetition of the same world events. Everything that happens today is said to have happened countless times and is said to repeat itself countless times. At this time, he also expresses how appealing it is for him to put forward counter-opinions to generally accepted truths. "What is the reaction of opinions? When an opinion ceases to be interesting, one seeks to give it an attraction by holding it to its counter-opinion. Usually, however, the counter-opinion seduces and now makes new supporters: it has become more interesting in the meantime." (Nietzsche's Works, Volume XI, p.65.) And because he realizes that his counter-opinion to the old scientific truths is not correct, he makes the claim that these truths themselves are not truths, but errors, which people have only accepted because they tried to do so for the sake of the idea of the "eternal return". The logically compelling force of truth was to be denied in order to be able to put forward a counter-opinion contrary to the essence of this truth.

[ 11 ] Nietzsche's fight against the truth gradually took on even greater dimensions. In 1885, in his essay "Beyond Good and Evil", he asked whether truth had any value at all. "The will to truth, which will still tempt us to many a venture, that famous truthfulness of which all philosophers have spoken with reverence up to now, what questions has this will to truth already put before us? What strange, bad, questionable questions? This is already a long story - and yet it seems that it has barely just begun ... Assuming we want truth, why not rather untruth?"

[ 12 ] Such questions can of course also arise in a perfectly logical mind. Epistemology has to deal with these questions. For a real thinker, however, the natural consequence of the emergence of such questions is the investigation into the sources of human cognition. For him, a world of the most subtle philosophical problems begins. None of this is the case with Nietzsche. He does not enter into any relationship with these questions that has anything to do with logic. "I still expect that a philosophical doctor in the exceptional sense of the word - one who has to pursue the problem of the overall health of people, time, race, humanity - will one day have the courage to take my suspicions to the extreme and dare to say: All philosophizing up to now has not been about truth at all, but about something else, let us say about health, future, growth, power, life ..." So wrote Nietzsche in the autumn of 1886 (in the preface to the second edition of "Fröhliche Wissenschaft"). You can see that Nietzsche has a tendency to perceive a contrast between the usefulness of life, health, power and so on and truth. It corresponds to natural feeling to assume here not a contrast but a harmony. In Nietzsche, the question of the value of truth does not appear as an epistemological need, but rather as an outflow of his lack of an objective sense of truth in general. This becomes grotesquely apparent in a sentence that also appears in the aforementioned preface: "And as far as our future is concerned: we will hardly be found again on the paths of those Egyptian youths who make temples unsafe at night, hug pillars of images and want to unveil, uncover and put into bright light everything that is kept hidden for good reasons. No, this bad taste, this will to truth, to truth at any price, this young man's madness in the love of truth - is disgusting to us." Nietzsche's hatred of Socrates arose from this aversion to the truth. The drive for objectivity in this spirit had something downright repulsive for him. In his "Götzen-Dämmerung" (1888), this is expressed in the sharpest possible way: "Socrates belonged to the lowest people by origin: Socrates was rabble. One knows, one can still see it oneself, how ugly he was ... Socrates was a misunderstanding."

[ 13 ] Compare the philosophical skepticism of other personalities with the battle against truth waged by Nietzsche. Usually this skepticism is based precisely on a pronounced sense of truth. The drive for truth drives the philosopher to investigate its value, its sources, its limits. Nietzsche does not have this drive. And the way in which he tackles the problems of knowledge is merely a product of his flawed sense of truth. It is understandable that such a deficiency manifests itself in a different way in a genius than in a subordinate personality. As great as the distance is between Nietzsche and the psychopathic inferior, who lacks a sense of truth in everyday life, qualitatively we are dealing here and there with the same psychological peculiarity that at least borders on the pathological.

II

[ 14 ] In Nietzsche's world of thought, a destructive instinct is revealed, which in his assessment of certain views and convictions allowed him to go far beyond what appears psychologically comprehensible as criticism. It is significant that the vast majority of everything Nietzsche wrote is the result of this destructive instinct. In the "Birth of Tragedy", the entire Western cultural development from Socrates and Euripides to Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner is presented as an aberration. The "Unzeitgemäßen Betrachtungen", which he began working on in 1873, were begun with the resolute intention of "singing the whole scale" of his "hostilities". Four of the twenty projected contemplations were completed. Two of them are combat pamphlets that ferociously ferret out the weaknesses of the opponent under attack or of Nietzsche's unsympathetic viewpoint, without the slightest concern for the relative justification of the opponent. The other two are indeed hymns of praise to two personalities; however, in 1888 (in the "Wagner case") Nietzsche not only retracted everything he had said in 1876 in glorification of Wagner, but he later portrayed the appearance of Wagner's art, which he initially praised as the salvation and rebirth of the entire Western culture, as the greatest danger to this culture. And he also wrote about Schopenhauer in 1888: "He interpreted, one after the other, art, heroism, genius, beauty, ... the will to truth, tragedy as a consequence of the denial: or the need for denial of the 9will: - the greatest psychological falsification that exists in history, apart from Christianity. To be more precise, in this he is merely the heir to Christian interpretation: only that he also knew how to approve the great cultural facts of humanity in a Christian, i.e. nihilistic, sense." So even towards phenomena that Nietzsche once admired, his destructive instinct does not rest. Even in the four writings that appear from 1878 to 1882, the tendency to destroy recognized trends essentially outweighs what Nietzsche himself puts forward as positive. It is almost not at all important to him to search for new insights, but rather to shake the existing ones. In 1888 he writes in "Ecce homo" about the work of destruction that he began in 1876 with "Menschliches, Allzumenschliches": "One error after another is calmly put on ice, the ideal is not refuted - it freezes to death ... Here, for example, 9the genius: freezes to death; one corner further on 9the saint: freezes to death; under a thick icicle 9the hero: freezes to death; at the end 9faith: freezes to death, the so-called 9conviction:, even 9pity: cools down considerably - almost everywhere the 9thing in itself freezes to death .... ...": "The human, the all-too-human ... with which I put an abrupt end to all the 9higher dizziness:, 9idealism:, 9beautiful feeling: and other femininities that I had introduced ..." This desire for destruction drives Nietzsche to pursue the victims he has fallen for with almost blind rage. For an idea, for a personality that he believes he must reject, he makes judgments that bear no relation at all to the reasons he has to cite for his rejection. The way in which he persecutes opposing opinions is not different in degree, but only in kind, from the way in which typical querulants persecute their opponents. The content of Nietzsche's judgments is less important. One can often agree with him about this content. But even in cases where he is undoubtedly right to a certain extent, one will have to admit that the way in which he arrives at his judgments represents a distortion in the psychological sense. Only the fascination of his form of expression, only the artistic treatment of language can disguise this fact in Nietzsche. Nietzsche's intellectual destructiveness becomes particularly clear, however, when one considers how few positive ideas he is able to oppose to the views he attacks. He claims of the entire culture to date that it has realized a completely false ideal of man; he opposes this reprehensible type of man with his idea of the "superman". As an example of a superman, he has a real destroyer in mind: Cesare Borgia. Imagining such a destroyer in an important historical role gives him a true spiritual lust. "I see the possibility before me, of a completely supernatural magic and colorful charm - it seems to me that it shines in all the shudders of refined beauty, that an art is at work in it, so divine, so devilishly divine, that one searches millennia in vain for a second such possibility; I see a spectacle so full of meaning, so wonderfully paradoxical at the same time, that all the deities of Olympus would have had cause for immortal laughter - Cesare Borgia as Pope . .. Do you understand me? Well, that would have been the victory that I long for today - Christianity was abolished!" (Nietzsche's Works, Volume VIII, 5.3".) The way in which Nietzsche's sense of destruction outweighs that of construction can be seen in the disposition of his last work, his "Umwertung aller Werte". Three quarters of it is purely negative work. He wants to offer an annihilation of Christianity under the title "The Antichrist", an annihilation of all previous philosophy, which he called a "nihilistic movement", under the heading "The Free Spirit", and an annihilation of all previous moral concepts: "The Immoralist". He called these moral concepts the "most disastrous kind of ignorance". Only the last chapter heralds something positive: "Dionysus, philosophy of the eternal return." (Nietzsche's Works, Volume VIII, p. III, Appendix.) However, he was never able to gain any significant content for this positive part of his philosophy.

[ 15 ] Nietzsche did not shy away from the worst contradictions when it came to destroying a particular school of thought, a cultural phenomenon. In 1888, when his aim in "Antichrist" was to portray the harmfulness of Christianity, he contrasted it with the older cultural phenomena with the following words: "The whole work of ancient culture is in vain: I have no word for it that expresses my feeling about something so monstrous ... Why the Greeks? Why the Romans? - All the prerequisites for an erudite culture, all the scientific methods were already there, the great, incomparable art of reading well had already been established - this prerequisite for the tradition of culture, for the unity of science; natural science in alliance with mathematics and mechanics was on the very best path - the sense of fact, the last and most valuable of all senses, had its schools, its centuries-old tradition! ... - And not buried overnight by a natural event! . .. ... But destroyed by cunning, secret, invisible, bloodless vampires!... - One need only read any Christian agitator, St. Augustine, for example, to understand, to smell what unclean fellows have come up with it." (Werke, Vol. VIII, p.307/308.) Nietzsche thoroughly despised the art of reading up to the point where he defended it in order to fight Christianity. Let us cite just one of his sentences on this art: "It is now certain to me that to have written a single line which deserves to be commented on by scholars of later times outweighs the merit of the greatest critic. There is a deep modesty in the philologist. Improving texts is an entertaining work for scholars, it is a rebus guess; but it should not be considered too important a thing. It would be bad if antiquity spoke less clearly to us because a million words would stand in the way!" (Werke, Vol. X, p.341.) And in 1882 Nietzsche made the following statement about the alliance of the sense of fact with mathematics and mechanics in his "Fröhliche Wissenschaft": "That only an interpretation of the world is right ... which allows counting, calculating, weighing, seeing and grasping and nothing else, that is a clumsiness and naivety, provided that it is not mental illness, not idiocy." "Do we really want to allow our existence to be degraded in this way to an arithmetic exercise and parlor squatting for mathematicians?" (Works, Volume V, p. 330/331.)

III.

[ 16 ] In an unmistakable way, one can observe a certain coherence of ideas in Nietzsche. Where only logical associations of ideas would be appropriate, he makes connections of thought that are based on merely external, coincidental characteristics, for example the similarity in sound of the words, or on metaphorical relationships that are indifferent at the point where the terms are used. In a passage in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where the future-men are contrasted with the present-men, we find the following excess of the imagination: “Like the wind when it rushes out of its mountain caves: it wants to dance to its own tune, the seas tremble and leap under its footsteps. He who gives wings to asses, who milks lionesses, praise be to this good unrestrained spirit, who comes like a storm wind to all today and all mob, - who is hostile to thistle and thistle heads and all withered leaves and weeds: praise be to this wild good free storm spirit, who dances on moors and mists as on meadows! Who hates the rabble-rousing giddy-dogs and all misguided dark breeding: praised be this spirit of all free spirits, the laughing storm, which blows dust into the eyes of all black-addicted, blackish-addicted people!” (Werke, Vol. VI, p. 429 f) In Antichrist there is the following thought, in which the word “truth” in a very external sense gives rise to an association of ideas at an important point: “Do I still have to say that in the whole New Testament there is only one single figure who must be honored? Pilate, the Roman governor. He doesn't persuade himself to take a Jewish trade seriously. One Jew more or less - what's the point? The noble scorn of a Roman, before whom an impudent abuse is made of the word "truth", has enriched the New Testament with the only word that has value ... which is its criticism, its destruction itself: ‘What is truth!’ ...” (Werke, Vol. VIII, p. 280 f) It certainly belongs in the class of incoherent associations of ideas when the following sentence appears at the end of a treatise on the value of German culture in Beyond Good and Evil, which is intended here to be more than a stylistic punch line: “It is wise for a people to assert that they are deep, clumsy, good-natured, honest, unwise, to let them be: they could even be - deep! Finally: one should do honor to one's name - it is not for nothing that one is called the 9tiusche: people, the deceptive people...”

[ 17 ] The more intimately one studies Nietzsche's development of thought, the more one becomes convinced that there are departures everywhere from what can still be explained psychologically. The drive to isolate himself, to shut himself off from the outside world, is deeply rooted in his mental organization. In "Ecce homo", he expresses this characteristically enough: "I have a completely uncanny irritability of the purity instinct, so that I physiologically perceive - smell - the closeness or - what am I saying? - the innermost, the 9pasture: of every soul. In this irritability I have psychological feelers with which I can touch and get hold of every secret: I become aware of the many hidden dirt at the bottom of some natures, perhaps caused by bad blood but covered over by education, almost at the first touch. If I have observed rightly, such natures, which are inimical to my cleanliness, feel the caution of my disgust in their turn: they do not become more fragrant as a result... This does not make my intercourse with people a small test of patience; my humanity does not consist in sympathizing with how people are, but in enduring that I sympathize with them... My humanity is a constant self-conquest. - But I need solitude, in other words, recovery, a return to myself, the breath of a free, light, playful air ... The disgust of people, of the riff-raff: has always been my greatest danger." - (M. G. Conrad: "Ketzerblut", p. 183f) Such instincts underlie his teachings on "Beyond Good and Evil" and a whole series of his other thoughts. He wants to educate a caste of noble people who set their goals in life from the realm of their complete arbitrariness. And the whole of history is for him only a means of breeding such a few masterly natures who use the whole of the rest of the human masses as a means to their personal ends. "One thoroughly misunderstands the predatory animal and the predatory man (for example Cesare Borgia), one misunderstands 9nature: as long as one is still looking for a 9disease: at the bottom of this healthiest of all tropical beasts and plants, or even for an innate 9hell: -: as almost all moralists have done up to now", it says in § 197 of "Beyond Good and Evil". Nietzsche sees it as essential to a true aristocracy that it "accepts with good knowledge the sacrifice of a myriad of people who, for their own sake, must be pressed down and diminished to incomplete human beings, to slaves, to tools". (§ 258 of "Beyond Good and Evil".) Nietzsche's assessment of the social question, which borders on the narrow-minded, also stems from this source. In his opinion, the workers must remain herds, they must not be educated to regard themselves as a purpose. "The instincts which make it possible for a worker to become himself have been destroyed by the most irresponsible thoughtlessness. The worker has been made fit for military service, he has been given the right of coalition, the political vote: what wonder if the worker today already feels his existence to be a state of emergency (morally expressed as injustice)? But what do we want? I ask again. If one wants an end, one must also want the means: if one wants slaves, one is a fool if one educates them to be masters." (Works, Volume VIII, p.153.)

[ 18 ] In the last phase of his work, he then placed his own person at the center of world events. "This book belongs to the very few. Perhaps none of them are alive yet. They may be those who understand my Zarathustra: how could I confuse myself with those for whom ears are already growing today? - Only the day after tomorrow belongs to me. Some are born posthumously. The conditions under which I am understood and then understood with necessity - I know them only too well ... New ears for new music. New eyes for the distant. A new conscience for previously silent truths ... Well done! These alone are my readers, my right readers, my predestined readers: what lies in the rest? - The rest is merely humanity. - One must be superior to humanity through strength, through height of soul - through contempt ... (Werke, Vol. VIII, p.215 f) It is only an intensification of such ideas when Nietzsche finally identifies himself with Dionysus.

[ 19 ] Nietzsche could only think in this way because, in his isolation, he lacked any idea of the extent to which his views were only nuances of what had otherwise worked its way up to dominance in the intellectual life of the nineteenth century. He also lacked any realization of the connection between his ideas and the scientific state of his age. What for others is the consequence of certain presuppositions stands isolated in his system of thought and in this isolation grows to an intensity that gives his favorite views the character of compulsory ideas. His entire biological conception of moral concepts has this character. Ethical concepts are supposed to be nothing other than expressions of physiological processes. "What is morality! A man, a people, has undergone a physiological change, feels it in the common feeling and interprets it in the language of his affects and according to the degree of his knowledge, without realizing that the seat of the change is in the physique. As if one were hungry and thought to appease it with concepts and customs, with praise and blame!" (Werke, Vol. XII, p.35.) Such concepts, which are fixed for a scientific world view, have an effect on Nietzsche as obsessions, and he does not speak of them with the calmness of the cognizer, who is able to measure the scope of his ideas, but with the passion of the fanatic and enthusiast. The idea of the selection of the best in the human "struggle for existence", an idea that is very much at home in the Darwinian literature of recent decades, appears in Nietzsche as the idea of the "superman". The struggle against the "belief in the hereafter", which Nietzsche wages so passionately in his "Zarathustra", is just another form of the struggle waged by the materialistic and monistic theory of nature. What is new about Nietzsche's ideas is basically only the emotional tone that he attaches to the ideas. And this emotional tone can only be understood in its intensity if one assumes that these ideas, torn from their systematic context, have an effect on him like compulsive ideas. This is the only way to explain the frequent repetition of the same idea, the unmotivated character with which certain thoughts often occur. We can particularly notice this completely unmotivated character in his idea of the "eternal return" of all things and processes. This idea appears again and again like a comet in his works from the period 1882-1888. Nowhere does it appear in any inner connection with what he otherwise puts forward. Virtually nothing is said to substantiate it. Everywhere, however, it is presented as a doctrine that is capable of causing the most profound upheavals in all of human culture.

[ 20 ] Nietzsche's mental constitution cannot be understood with the concepts of psychology; one must call upon psycho-pathology for help. This assertion is not intended to say anything against the genius of his work. Least of all is it intended to decide anything about truth or error in his ideas themselves. Nietzsche's genius has nothing at all to do with this investigation. In his work, genius appears through a pathological medium.

[ 21 ] The genius of Friedrich Nietzsche should not be explained by his sick constitution. Nietzsche was a genius, despite his illness. Another is to explain genius itself as a morbid mental state; another is to understand the overall personality of a man of genius by taking into account the morbid in his nature. One can be a follower of Nietzsche's ideas and still be of the opinion that the way he finds these ideas, connects them with each other, how he evaluates and represents them, can only be understood through psycho-pathological concepts. One can admire his beautiful, great character, his strange thinker's physiognomy and yet admit that morbid factors intervene in this character, in this physiognomy. Nietzsche's problem is of great interest precisely because a man of genius struggles for years with morbid elements, because he is only able to put forward great thoughts in a context that can be explained by psycho-pathology. Not the genius itself, only the form of expression of genius is to be explained in this way. Medicine will have an important contribution to make to the explanation of Nietzsche's mental image. Light will also be shed on the psycho-pathology of the masses once Nietzsche's way of thinking itself is understood. It is clear that it was not the content of Nietzsche's teachings that brought them so many followers, but that their effect was often based on the unhealthy way in which Nietzsche presented his ideas. Just as his thoughts were mostly not a means for him to understand the world and man, but psychological discharges through which he wanted to intoxicate himself, this is also the case with many of his followers. See how he himself describes the relationship between the thoughts compiled in his "Joyful Science" and his feelings. "9 Joyful Science: that means the Saturnalia of a mind that has patiently withstood a terrible long pressure - patiently, severely, coldly, without submitting, but without hope - and is now suddenly assailed by hope, by the hope of health, by the drunkenness of recovery. It is no wonder that a lot of unreasonable and foolish things come to light, a lot of wanton tenderness, even wasted on problems that have a prickly skin and do not want to be caressed and lured. This whole book is nothing but a delight after long privation and impotence, the rejoicing of returning strength, of newly awakened faith ..." (Nietzsche's Works, Volume V, p. 3f) This book is not about truth, but about finding thoughts that can provide a sick mind with a cure for itself, a means of exhilaration.

[ 22 ] A mind that wants to understand the development of the world and humanity through its thoughts needs not only the gift of imagination, which brings it to these thoughts, but also self-discipline, self-criticism, through which the thoughts are given their meaning, their scope, their context. This self-discipline is not present in Nietzsche to any great extent. For him, ideas rush forth without being put in their place by self-criticism. For him, there is no correlation between productivity and logic. Intuition is not accompanied by a corresponding degree of critical prudence.

[ 23 ] As justified as it is to point out the psychopathic origin of certain religious ideas and sects, it is also justified to examine the personality of a person for such an origin, which cannot be explained by the laws considered in psychology.