The size of the brain is a frequent topic of study within the fields of anatomy, biological anthropology, animal science and evolution. Brain size is sometimes measured by weight and sometimes by volume (via MRI scans or by skull volume). Neuroimaging intelligence testing
can be used to study the volumetric measurements of the brain.
Regarding "intelligence testing", a question that has been frequently
investigated is the relation of brain size to intelligence.
This question is quite controversial and will be addressed further in
the section on intelligence. The measure of brain size and cranial
capacity is not just important to humans, but to all mammals.
Humans
In humans, the right cerebral hemisphere is typically larger than the left, whereas the cerebellar hemispheres are typically closer in size. The adult human brain weighs on average about 1.5 kg (3.3 lb). In men the average weight is about 1370 g and in women about 1200 g. The volume is around 1260 cm3 in men and 1130 cm3 in women, although there is substantial individual variation.
Yet another study argued that adult human brain weight is 1,300-1,400g
for adult humans and 350-400g for newborn humans. There is a range of
volume and weights, and not just one number that one can definitively
rely on, as with body mass. It is also important to note that variation
between individuals is not as important as variation within species, as
overall the differences are much smaller. The mechanisms of
interspecific and intraspecific variation also differ.
From early primates to hominids and finally to Homo sapiens,
the brain is progressively larger, with exception of extinct
Neanderthals whose brain size exceeded modern Homo sapiens. The volume
of the human brain has increased as humans have evolved (see Homininae), starting from about 600 cm3 in Homo habilis up to 1680 cm3 in Homo neanderthalensis, which was the hominid with the biggest brain size.
The increase in brain size stopped with neanderthals. Since then, the
average brain size has been shrinking over the past 28,000 years.
One study suggests that this decrease in brain size "was surprisingly
recent, occurring in the last 3,000 years", not the past 28,000 years. The cranial capacity has decreased from around 1,550 cm3 to around 1,440 cm3 in males while the female cranial capacity has shrunk from around 1,500 cm3 to around 1,240 cm3.
Other sources with bigger sample sizes of modern Homo sapiens find
approximately the same cranial capacity for males but a higher cranial
capacity of around 1330 cm3 in females.
Homo floresiensis is a hominin from the island of Flores in Indonesia with fossils dating from 60,000-100,000 years ago. Despite its relatively derived position in the hominin phylogeny, CT imaging of its skull reveals that that its brain volume was only 417 cm3, less than that of even Homo habilis, which is believed to have gone extinct far earlier (around 1.65 million years ago). The reason for this regression in brain size is believed to be island syndrome in which the brains of insular species become smaller due to reduced predation risk. This is beneficial as it reduces the basal metabolic rate without significant increases in predation risk.
In recent years, experiments have been conducted drawing conclusions
to brain size in association to the gene mutation that causes microcephaly, a neural developmental disorder that affects cerebral cortical volume.
Exceptional cases of hydrocephalus, such as what was reported by John Lorber in 1980 and by a study with rats, suggest that relatively high levels of intelligence and relatively normal functioning are possible even with very small brains.
It is unclear what conclusions could be drawn from such reports – such
as about brain capacities, redundancies, mechanics and size
requirements.
Biogeographic variation
Efforts to find racial or ethnic variation in brain size are generally considered to be a pseudoscientific endeavor and have traditionally been tied to scientific racism and attempts to demonstrate a racial intellectual hierarchy.
The majority of efforts to demonstrate this have relied on
indirect data that assessed skull measurements as opposed to direct
brain observations. These are considered scientifically discredited.
A large-scale 1984 survey of global variation in skulls has
concluded that variation in skull and head sizes is unrelated to race,
but rather climatic heat preservation, stating "We find little support
for the use of brain size in taxonomic assessment (other than with
paleontological extremes over time). Racial taxonomies which include
cranial capacity, head shape, or any other trait influenced by climate
confound ecotypic and phyletic causes. For Pleistocene hominids, we
doubt that the volume of the braincase is any more taxonomically
'valuable' than any other trait."
Sex
Average brain weight for males and females over lifespan. From the study Changes in brain weights during the span of human life.
Overall, there is a background of similarity between adult brain
volume measures of people of differing ages and sexes. Nevertheless,
underlying structural asymmetries do exist. There is variation in child
development in the size of different brain structures between
individuals and genders. A human baby's brain at birth averages 369 cm3 and increases, during the first year of life, to about 961 cm3, after which the growth rate declines. Brain volume peaks at the teenage years, and after the age of 40 it begins declining at 5% per decade, speeding up around 70. Average adult male brain weight is 1,345 gram, while an adult female has an average brain weight of 1,222 gram.
Males have been found to have on average greater cerebral, cerebellar
and cerebral cortical lobar volumes, except possibly left parietal.
The gender differences in size vary by more specific brain regions.
Studies have tended to indicate that men have a relatively larger amygdala and hypothalamus, while women have a relatively larger caudate and hippocampi. When covaried for intracranial volume, height, and weight, Kelly (2007) indicates women have a higher percentage of gray matter, whereas men have a higher percentage of white matter and cerebrospinal fluid. There is high variability between individuals in these studies, however.
However, Yaki (2011) found no statistically significant
gender differences in the gray matter ratio for most ages (grouped by
decade), except in the 3rd and 6th decades of life in the sample of 758
women and 702 men aged 20–69.
The average male in their third decade (ages 20–29) had a significantly
higher gray matter ratio than the average female of the same age group.
In contrast, among subjects in their sixth decade, the average woman
had a significantly larger gray matter ratio, though no meaningful
difference was found among those in their 7th decade of life.
Total cerebral and gray matter volumes peak during the ages from
10–20 years (earlier in girls than boys), whereas white matter and
ventricular volumes increase. There is a general pattern in neural
development of childhood peaks followed by adolescent declines (e.g. synaptic pruning).
Consistent with adult findings, average cerebral volume is
approximately 10% larger in boys than girls. However, such differences
should not be interpreted as imparting any sort of functional advantage
or disadvantage; gross structural measures may not reflect functionally
relevant factors such as neuronal connectivity and receptor density, and
of note is the high variability of brain size even in narrowly defined
groups, for example children at the same age may have as much as a 50%
differences in total brain volume. Young girls have on average relative larger hippocampal volume, whereas the amygdalae are larger in boys. However, multiple studies
have found a higher synaptic density in males: a 2008 study reported
that men had a significantly higher average synaptic density of 12.9 ×
108 per cubic millimeter, whereas in women it was 8.6 × 108 per cubic
millimeter, a 33% difference. Other studies have found an average of 4
billion more neurons in the male brain, corroborating this difference, as each neuron has on average 7,000 synaptic connections to other neurons.
Significant dynamic changes in brain structure take place through
adulthood and aging, with substantial variation between individuals. In
later decades, men show greater volume loss in whole brain volume and
in the frontal lobes, and temporal lobes, whereas in women there is increased volume loss in the hippocampi and parietal lobes.
Men show a steeper decline in global gray matter volume, although in
both sexes it varies by region with some areas exhibiting little or no
age effect. Overall white matter volume does not appear to decline with
age, although there is variation between brain regions.
Genetic contribution
Adult twin studies have indicated high heritability
estimates for overall brain size in adulthood (between 66% and 97%).
The effect varies regionally within the brain, however, with high
heritabilities of frontal lobe volumes (90-95%), moderate estimates in the hippocampi (40-69%), and environmental factors influencing several medial brain areas. In addition, lateral ventricle
volume appears to be mainly explained by environmental factors,
suggesting such factors also play a role in the surrounding brain
tissue. Genes may cause the association between brain structure and
cognitive functions, or the latter may influence the former during life.
A number of candidate genes have been identified or suggested, but they
await replication.
Studies demonstrate a correlation between brain size and
intelligence, larger brains predicting higher intelligence. It is
however not clear if the correlation is causal. The majority of MRI studies report moderate correlations around 0.3 to 0.4 between brain volume and intelligence.
The most consistent associations are observed within the frontal,
temporal, and parietal lobes, the hippocampus, and the cerebellum, but
only account for a relatively small amount of variance in IQ, which
suggests that while brain size may be related to human intelligence,
other factors also play a role. In addition, brain volumes do not correlate strongly with other and more specific cognitive measures. In men, IQ correlates more with gray matter volume in the frontal lobe and parietal lobe, which is roughly involved in sensory integration and attention, whereas in women it correlates with gray matter volume in the frontal lobe and Broca's area, which is involved in language.
Research measuring brain volume, P300 auditory evoked potentials,
and intelligence shows a dissociation, such that both brain volume and
speed of P300 correlate with measured aspects of intelligence, but not
with each other.
Evidence conflicts on the question of whether brain size variation also
predicts intelligence between siblings, as some studies find moderate
correlations and others find none.
A recent review by Nesbitt, Flynn et al. (2012) point out that crude
brain size is unlikely to be a good measure of IQ, for example brain
size also differs between men and women, but without well documented
differences in IQ.
A discovery in recent years is that the structure of the adult
human brain changes when a new cognitive or motor skill, including
vocabulary, is learned. Structural neuroplasticity (increased gray matter
volume) has been demonstrated in adults after three months of training
in a visual-motor skill, as the qualitative change (i.e. learning of a
new task) appear more critical for the brain to change its structure
than continued training of an already-learned task. Such changes (e.g.
revising for medical exams) have been shown to last for at least 3
months without further practicing; other examples include learning novel
speech sounds, musical ability, navigation skills and learning to read
mirror-reflected words.
Other animals
The largest brains are those of sperm whales, weighing about 8 kg (18 lb). An elephant's brain weighs just over 5 kg (11 lb), a bottlenose dolphin's 1.5 to 1.7 kg (3.3 to 3.7 lb), whereas a human brain is around 1.3 to 1.5 kg (2.9 to 3.3 lb). Brain size tends to vary according to body size. The relationship is not proportional, though: the brain-to-body mass ratio varies. The largest ratio found is in the shrew. Averaging brain weight across all orders of mammals, it follows a power law, with an exponent of about 0.75.
There are good reasons to expect a power law: for example, the
body-size to body-length relationship follows a power law with an
exponent of 0.33, and the body-size to surface-area relationship follows
a power law with an exponent of 0.67. The explanation for an exponent
of 0.75 is not obvious; however, it is worth noting that several
physiological variables appear to be related to body size by
approximately the same exponent—for example, the basal metabolic rate.
This power law formula applies to the "average" brain of mammals taken as a whole, but each family
(cats, rodents, primates, etc.) departs from it to some degree, in a
way that generally reflects the overall "sophistication" of behavior. Primates,
for a given body size, have brains 5 to 10 times as large as the
formula predicts. Predators tend to have relatively larger brains than
the animals they prey on; placental mammals (the great majority) have relatively larger brains than marsupials
such as the opossum. A standard measure for assessing an animal's brain
size compared to what would be expected from its body size is known as
the encephalization quotient. The encephalization quotient for humans is between 7.4-7.8.
When the mammalian brain increases in size, not all parts increase at the same rate. In particular, the larger the brain of a species, the greater the fraction taken up by the cortex.
Thus, in the species with the largest brains, most of their volume is
filled with cortex: this applies not only to humans, but also to animals
such as dolphins, whales or elephants. The evolution of Homo sapiens
over the past two million years has been marked by a steady increase in
brain size, but much of it can be accounted for by corresponding
increases in body size.
There are, however, many departures from the trend that are difficult
to explain in a systematic way: in particular, the appearance of modern
man about 100,000 years ago was marked by a decrease in body size at the
same time as an increase in brain size. Even so, it is noteworthy that Neanderthals, which became extinct about 40,000 years ago, had larger brains than modern Homo sapiens.
Not all investigators are happy with the amount of attention that
has been paid to brain size. Roth and Dicke, for example, have argued
that factors other than size are more highly correlated with
intelligence, such as the number of cortical neurons and the speed of their connections.
Moreover, they point out that intelligence depends not just on the
amount of brain tissue, but on the details of how it is structured. It
is also well known that crows, ravens, and grey parrots are quite intelligent even though they have small brains.
While humans have the largest encephalization quotient of extant animals, it is not out of line for a primate.
Some other anatomical trends are correlated in the human evolutionary
path with brain size: the basicranium becomes more flexed with
increasing brain size relative to basicranial length.
Cranial capacity
Cranial capacity is a measure of the volume of the interior of the skull of those vertebrates who have a brain. The most commonly used unit of measure is the cubic centimetre (cm3).
The volume of the cranium is used as a rough indicator of the size of
the brain, and this in turn is used as a rough indicator of the
potential intelligence of the organism. Cranial capacity is often tested
by filling the cranial cavity with glass beads and measuring their
volume, or by CT scan imaging.
A more accurate way of measuring cranial capacity, is to make an
endocranial cast and measure the amount of water the cast displaces. In
the past there have been dozens of studies done to estimate cranial
capacity on skulls. Most of these studies have been done on dry skull
using linear dimensions, packing methods or occasionally radiological
methods.
Knowledge of the volume of the cranial cavity can be important
information for the study of different populations with various
differences like geographical, racial, or ethnic origin. Other things
can also affect cranial capacity such as nutrition.
It is also used to study correlating between cranial capacity with
other cranial measurements and in comparing skulls from different
beings. It is commonly used to study abnormalities of cranial size and
shape or aspects of growth and development of the volume of the brain.
Cranial capacity is an indirect approach to test the size of the brain.
A few studies on cranial capacity have been done on living beings
through linear dimensions.
However, larger cranial capacity is not always indicative of a
more intelligent organism, since larger capacities are required for
controlling a larger body, or in many cases are an adaptive feature for
life in a colder environment. For instance, among modern Homo sapiens,
northern populations have a 20% larger visual cortex than those in the
southern latitude populations, and this potentially explains the
population differences in human brain size (and roughly cranial
capacity).
Neurological functions are determined more by the organization of the
brain rather than the volume. Individual variability is also important
when considering cranial capacity, for example the average Neanderthal
cranial capacity for females was 1300 cm3 and 1600 cm3 for males.
Neanderthals had larger eyes and bodies relative to their height, thus a
disproportionately large area of their brain was dedicated to somatic
and visual processing, functions not normally associated with
intelligence. When these areas were adjusted to match anatomically
modern human proportions it was found Neanderthals had brains 15-22% smaller than in anatomically-modern humans.
When the neanderthal version of the NOVA1 gene is inserted into stem
cells it creates neurons with less synapses than stem cells containing
the human version.
Parts of a cranium found in China in the 1970s show a young man having a cranial capacity of around 1700cm3 at least 160,000 years ago. This is greater than the average of modern humans.
In an attempt to use cranial capacity as an objective indicator of brain size, the encephalization quotient
(EQ) was developed in 1973 by Harry Jerison. It compares the size of
the brain of the specimen to the expected brain size of animals with
roughly the same weight.
This way a more objective judgement can be made on the cranial capacity
of an individual animal. A large scientific collection of brain
endocasts and measurements of cranial capacity has been compiled by
Holloway.
Since the dawn of the 20th century, the philosophy of Nietzsche
has had great intellectual and political influence around the world.
Nietzsche applied himself to such topics as morality, religion, epistemology, poetry, ontology, and social criticism.
Because of Nietzsche's evocative style and his often outrageous claims,
his philosophy generates passionate reactions running from love to
disgust. Nietzsche noted in his autobiographical Ecce Homo that his philosophy developed and evolved over time, so interpreters have found it difficult to relate concepts central to one work to those central to another, for example, the thought of the eternal recurrence features heavily in Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra), but is almost entirely absent from his next book, Beyond Good and Evil.
Added to this challenge is the fact that Nietzsche did not seem
concerned to develop his thought into a system, even going so far as to
disparage the attempt in Beyond Good and Evil.
Common themes in his thought can, however, be identified and discussed. His earliest work emphasized the opposition of Apollonian and Dionysian impulses in art, and the figure of Dionysus continued to play a role in his subsequent thought. Other major currents include the will to power, the claim that God is dead, the distinction between master and slave moralities, and radical perspectivism.
Other concepts appear rarely, or are confined to one or two major
works, yet are considered centerpieces of Nietzschean philosophy, such
as the Übermensch and the thought of eternal recurrence. His later works involved a sustained attack on Christianity and Christian morality, and he seemed to be working toward what he called the transvaluation of all values (Umwertung aller Werte). While Nietzsche is often associated in the public mind with fatalism and nihilism, Nietzsche himself viewed his project as the attempt to overcome the pessimism of Arthur Schopenhauer.
Nietzsche saw nihilism
as the outcome of repeated frustrations in the search for the meaning
of religion. He diagnosed nihilism as a latent presence within the very
foundations of European culture and saw it as a necessary and
approaching destiny. The religious worldview had already suffered a
number of challenges from contrary perspectives grounded in philosophical skepticism, and in modern science's evolutionary and heliocentric theory. Nietzsche saw this intellectual condition as a new challenge to European culture,
which had extended itself beyond a sort of point-of-no-return.
Nietzsche conceptualizes this with the famous statement "God is dead",
which first appeared in his work in section 108 of The Gay Science, again in section 125 with the parable of "The Madman", and even more famously in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The statement, typically placed in quotation marks,
accentuated the crisis that Nietzsche argued that Western culture must
face and transcend in the wake of the irreparable dissolution of its
traditional foundations, moored largely in classical Greek philosophy and Christianity. In aphorisms 55 and 56 of Beyond Good and Evil,
Nietzsche talks about the ladder of religious cruelty that suggests how
Nihilism emerged from the intellectual conscience of Christianity.
Nihilism is sacrificing the meaning "God" brings into our lives; in
aphorism 56, Nietzsche explains how to emerge from the utter
meaninglessness of life by reaffirming it through his idea of Eternal
Return.
Christianity and morality
In The Antichrist, Nietzsche fights against the way in which Christianity has become an ideology set forth by institutions like churches, and how churches have failed to represent the life of Jesus.
Nietzsche finds it important to distinguish between the religion of
Christianity and the person of Jesus. Nietzsche attacked the Christian
religion, as represented by churches and institutions, for what he
called its "transvaluation"
of healthy instinctive values. Transvaluation consists of the process
by which one can view the meaning of a concept or ideology from a
"higher" context. Nietzsche went beyond agnostic and atheistic thinkers
of the Enlightenment, who simply regarded Christianity as untrue. He claimed that the Apostle Paul may have deliberately propagated Christianity as a subversive religion (a "psychological warfare weapon") within the Roman Empire as a form of covert revenge for the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and of the Second Temple in 71 AD during the Jewish War
of 66–73 AD. Nietzsche contrasts the Christians with Jesus, whom he
regarded as a unique individual, and argues he established his own moral
evaluations. As such, Jesus represents a kind of step towards his ideation of the Übermensch.
Ultimately, however, Nietzsche claims that, unlike the Übermensch, who
embraces life, Jesus denied reality in favor of his "kingdom of God".
Jesus's refusal to defend himself, and subsequent death, logically
followed from this total disengagement. Nietzsche goes further to
analyze the history of Christianity, finding it has progressively
distorted the teachings of Jesus more and more. He criticizes the early
Christians for turning Jesus into a martyr and Jesus's life into the
story of the redemption of mankind in order to dominate the masses, and
finds the Apostles cowardly, vulgar, and resentful. He argues that
successive generations further misunderstood the life of Jesus as the
influence of Christianity grew. Nietzsche also criticized Christianity
for demonizing flourishing in life, and glorifying living an apathetic
life. By the 19th century, Nietzsche concludes, Christianity had become
so worldly as to parody itself—a total inversion of a world view which
was, in the beginning, nihilistic, thus implying the "death of God".
Nietzsche argued that two types of morality existed: a master
morality that springs actively from the "nobleman", and a slave morality
that develops reactively within the weak man. These two moralities do
not present simple inversions of one another. They form two different
value systems: master morality fits actions into a scale of "good" or
"bad" consequences, whereas slave morality fits actions into a scale of
"good" or "evil" intentions. Surprisingly he disdained both, though the first clearly less than the second.
The Wille zur Macht and the thought of eternal recurrence
Since Martin Heidegger at least, the concepts of the will to power (Wille zur Macht), of Übermensch and of the thought of Eternal Recurrence have been inextricably linked. According to Heidegger's interpretation, one can not be thought without the others. During Nazi Germany, Alfred Baeumler
attempted to separate the concepts, claiming that the Eternal
Recurrence was only an "existential experience" that, if taken
seriously, would endanger the possibility of a "will to power"—
deliberately misinterpreted, by the Nazis, as a "will for domination". Baeumler attempted to interpret the "will to power" along Social Darwinist lines, an interpretation refuted by Heidegger in his 1930s courses on Nietzsche.
The term Wille zur Macht first appeared in the posthumous fragment 23 [63] of 1876–1877. While Heidegger's reading has become predominant among commentators, some have criticized it: Mazzino Montinari by declaring that it was forging the figure of a "macroscopical Nietzsche", alien to all of his nuances.
"Will to power" (Wille zur Macht) is the name of a concept
created by Nietzsche; the title of a projected book which he finally
decided not to write; and the title of a book compiled from his
notebooks and published posthumously and under suspicious circumstances
by his sister and Peter Gast.
The work consists of four separate books, entitled "European Nihilism", "Critique of the Highest Values Hitherto", "Principles of a New Evaluation", and "Discipline and Breeding".
Within these books there are some 1067 small sections, usually the
shape of a circle, and sometimes just a key phrase—such as his opening
comments in the 1st monstrosity of the preface: "Of what is great one
must either be silent or speak with greatness. With greatness—that means
cynically and with innocence."
Despite Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche's falsifications (highlighted in 1937 by Georges Bataille and proved in the 1960s by the complete edition of Nietzsche's posthumous fragments by Mazzino Montinari and Giorgio Colli), his notes, even in the form given by his sister, remain a key insight into the philosophy of Nietzsche, and his unfinished transvaluation of all values. An English edition of Montinari & Colli's work is forthcoming (it has existed for decades in Italian, German and French).
Throughout his works, Nietzsche writes about possible great human beings
or "higher types" who serve as an example of people who would follow
his philosophical ideas. These ideal human beings Nietzsche calls by
terms such as "the philosopher of the future", "the free spirit", "the
tragic artist" and "the Übermensch".
They are often described by Nietzsche as being highly creative,
courageous, powerful and extremely rare individuals. He compares such
individuals with certain historical figures which have been very rare
and often have not been considered geniuses, such as Napoleon, Goethe and Beethoven. His main example of a genius exemplary culture is Archaic Greece.
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche posits the Übermensch (help·info)
(often translated as "overman" or "superman") as a goal that humanity
can set for itself. While interpretations of Nietzsche's overman vary
wildly, here are a few of his quotes from Thus Spoke Zarathustra:
I teach you the Übermensch. Man is something that shall
be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? ... All beings so far
have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb
of this great flood, and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome
man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or established
embarrassment. And man shall be that to Übermensch: a laughingstock or
painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and
much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man
is more ape than any ape...The Übermensch is the meaning of the earth.
Let your will say: the Übermensch shall be the meaning of the
earth ... Man is a rope, tied between beast and Übermensch—a rope over
an abyss ... what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an
end...
Amor fati and the eternal recurrence
Rock on Lake Silvaplana where Nietzsche conceived of the idea of Eternal return.
Nietzsche may have encountered the idea of the Eternal Recurrence in the works of Heinrich Heine,
who speculated that one day a person would be born with the same
thought-processes as himself, and that the same applied to every other
individual. Nietzsche expanded on this thought to form his theory, which
he put forth in The Gay Science and developed in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Schopenhauer directly influenced this theory. Schopenhauer postulated that a person who unconditionally affirms life would do so even if everything that has happened were to happen again repeatedly.
Nietzsche's view on eternal return is similar to that of Hume:
"the idea that an eternal recurrence of blind, meaningless
variation—chaotic, pointless shuffling of matter and law—would
inevitably spew up worlds whose evolution through time would yield the
apparently meaningful stories of our lives. This idea of eternal
recurrence became a cornerstone of his nihilism, and thus part of the
foundation of what became existentialism."
Nietzsche was so impressed by this idea, that he at first thought he
had discovered a new scientific proof of the greatest importance,
referring to it as the "most scientific of hypotheses". He gradually
backed-off of this view, and in later works referred to it as a
thought-experiment. "Nietzsche viewed his argument for eternal
recurrence as a proof of the absurdity or meaninglessness of life, a
proof that no meaning was given to the universe from on high."
What if a demon were to creep after you one day or night,
in your loneliest loneness, and say: "This life which you live and have
lived, must be lived again by you, and innumerable times more. And mere
will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every
thought and every sigh—everything unspeakably small and great in your
life—must come again to you, and in the same sequence and series ... The
eternal hourglass will again and again be turned—and you with it, dust
of dust!" Would you not throw yourself down and curse the demon who
spoke to you thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment, in
which you would answer him: "Thou art a god, and never have I heard
anything more divine!" [The Gay Science (1882), p. 341 (passage
translated in Danto 1965, p. 210).]
In the field of meta-ethics, one can perhaps most accurately classify Nietzsche as a moral skeptic;
meaning that he claims that all ethical statements are false, because
any kind of correspondence between ethical statements and "moral facts"
remains illusory. (This forms part of a more general claim that no
universally true fact exists, roughly because none of them more than
"appear" to correspond to reality). Instead, ethical statements (like
all statements) remain mere "interpretations." However, Nietzsche does
not claim that all interpretations are equivalent, since some testify
for "noble" character while others are the symptom of a "decadent"
life-form.
Sometimes Nietzsche may seem to have very definite opinions on
what he regards as moral or as immoral. Note, however, that one can
explain Nietzsche's moral opinions without attributing to him the claim
of their truth. For Nietzsche, after all, we need not disregard a
statement merely because it expresses something false. On the contrary,
he depicts falsehood as essential for "life". He mentions a "dishonest
lie", (discussing Wagner in The Case of Wagner)
as opposed to an "honest" one, recommending further to consult Plato
with regard to the latter, which should give some idea of the layers of
paradox in his work.
In the juncture between normative ethics and descriptive ethics,
Nietzsche distinguishes between "master morality" and "slave morality".
He recognizes that not everyone holds either scheme in a clearly
delineated fashion without some syncretism, he presents them in contrast to one another. Some of the contrasts in master vs. slave morality include:
"good" and "bad" interpretations vs. "good" and "evil" interpretations
"aristocratic" vs. "part of the 'herd'"
determines values independently of predetermined foundations
(nature) vs. determines values on predetermined, unquestioned
foundations (Christianity).
Nietzsche elaborated these ideas in his book On the Genealogy of Morality, in which he also introduced the key concept of ressentiment
as the basis for the slave morality. Nietzsche's primarily negative
assessment of the ethical and moralistic teachings of Christianity
followed from his earlier considerations of the questions of God and
morality in the works The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. These considerations led Nietzsche to the idea of eternal recurrence.
Nietzsche primarily meant that, for all practical purposes, his
contemporaries lived as if God were dead, though they had not yet
recognized it. Nietzsche believed this "death" had already started to
undermine the foundations of morality and would lead to moral relativism and moral nihilism.
As a response to the dangers of these trends he believed in
re-evaluating the foundations of morality to better understand the
origins and motives underlying them, so that individuals might decide
for themselves whether to regard a moral value as born of an outdated or
misguided cultural imposition or as something they wish to hold true.
Social and political views
Nietzsche's political ideas were variously interpreted as aristocratic radicalism, Bonapartism, individualist anarchism, and incorrectly as "proto-fascism" with some authors describing him as apolitical, anti-political or political sceptic.
Today two positions have dominated the literature: one attributes to
Nietzsche a commitment to aristocratic forms of social ordering, while
the other denies that Nietzsche has any political philosophy at all. Walter Kaufmann
put forward the view that the powerful individualism expressed in his
writings would be disastrous if introduced to the public realm of
politics. Georges Bataille argued in 1937, in the Acéphale
review, that Nietzsche's thoughts were too free to be instrumentalized
by any political movement. In "Nietzsche and Fascists," he argued
against such instrumentalization, by the left or the right, declaring
that Nietzsche's aim was to by-pass the short timespan of modern
politics, and its inherent lies and simplifications, for a greater
historical timespan.
Much of Nietzsche's contempt of politics is directed towards modern democratic, parliamentarian and party
politics. He contrasted such mundane, petty politics with his idea of
"great politics", and often praised individual politicians such as Napoleon. He interpreted Napoleon as an autocratic genius who stood above conventional morality and tried to revive the aristocratic spirit of Roman Empire, paganism and Renaissance, and not as a progressive revolutionary leader like some of his contemporaries.
Despite his proclaimed contempt for daily politics and culture of
newspaper reading, Nietzsche did comment on contemporary political
events in his letters and notes. He was deeply disturbed by the Paris Commune, he initially supported Bismarck but became disappointed by his later social policies and détente toward socialists and Catholics, he was worried about the rise of Adolf Stöcker, and after death of Emperor Friedrich III he became worried about the future of free speech in Germany.
Nietzsche extoled aristocratic
societies and military elites claiming that they create higher quality
of culture. He often linked noble classes with ancient barbarian
conquerors.
His thoughts were usually oriented to the future aristocracy, not so
much to the preservation of existing monarchical order, which he saw as
exhausted and thing of the past.
However, much of his thoughts on the subject are unsystematic and he
did not leave specific instructions about how this new aristocratic
class should be selected and elevated to the ruling positions in
society. The term "aristocratic radicalism" was first used by Georg Brandes to which Nietzsche responded:
The expression Aristocratic Radicalism, which you employ,
is very good. It is... the cleverest thing I have yet read about
myself. How far this mode of thought has carried me already, how far it
will carry me yet – I am almost afraid to imagine.
In the context of his criticism of morality and Christianity, expressed, among others works, in On the Genealogy of Morals and in The Antichrist, Nietzsche often criticized humanitarian feelings, detesting how pity and altruism were ways for the "weak" to take power over the "strong". To the "ethics of compassion" (Mitleid, "shared suffering") exposed by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche opposed an "ethics of friendship" or of "shared joy" (Mitfreude).
Individualism and liberalism
Nietzsche often referred to the common people who participated in mass movements and shared a common mass psychology as "the rabble", or "the herd". Although he valued individualism his general political views included many hierarchical and authoritarian
ideas which are usually incompatible with modern individualistic
ideologies. He often used the term "individualism" to describe a
certain set of personality traits - such as originality, nonconformism
and egoism - not to describe the political system based on institutions
that guarantee wide individual rights and freedoms. In his opposition to Christian tradition and modern philosophy Nietzsche also criticized the concepts of soul, subject and atomism (that is, the existence of an atomic subject at the foundation of everything, found for example in social contract theories). He considered the individual subject as a complex of instincts and wills-to-power, just as any other organization.
Beginning in the 1890s some scholars have attempted to link his philosophy with Max Stirner's radical individualism of The Ego and Its Own (1844). The question remained pendent. Recently there was unearthed further, still circumstantial, evidence clarifying his relationship with Stirner.
In any case, few philosophers really consider Nietzsche an
"individualist" thinker. Against the strictly "egoist" perspective
adopted by Stirner, Nietzsche concerned himself with the "problem of the
civilization" and the necessity to give humanity a goal and a direction
to its history, making him, in this sense, a very political thinker. In The Will to Power he described individualism as a part of the process that leads to the ultimate goal of establishing the order of rank:
Individualism is a modest and still unconscious form of
will to power; with it a single human unit seems to think it sufficient
to free himself from the preponderating power of society (or of the
State or Church). He does not set himself up in opposition as a
personality, but merely as a unit; he represents the rights of all other
individuals as against the whole. That is to say, he instinctively
places himself on a level with every other unit: what he combats he does
not combat as a person, but as a representative of units against a
mass. (...) When one has reached a certain degree of independence, one
always longs for more: separation in proportion to the degree of force;
the individual is no longer content to regard himself as equal to
everybody, he actually seeks for his peer—he makes himself stand out
from others. Individualism is followed by a development in groups and
organs; correlative tendencies join up together and become powerfully
active: now there arise between these centres of power, friction, war, a
reconnoitring of the forces on either side, reciprocity,
understandings, and the regulation of mutual services. Finally, there
appears an order of rank.
While Nietzsche shared some of the liberal ideas and values such as individualism, private property, economic inequality and suspicion of state power, his philosophy does not have much in common with classical liberalism and capitalism. He wrote that liberalism is synonymous with mediocrity and believed also that it leads to cultural decay. He dismissed capitalist class and captains of the industry as vulgar and even blamed them for the rise of socialism.
He claimed that rise of the capitalist class disrupted the order of
rank and that workers would not rebel if they were able to serve the
true, natural aristocrats instead of capitalists whom they do not see as
superiors but just as ordinary people who got lucky with money.
He praised Napoleon for reviving the warlike, aristocratic spirit
which triumphed over the ″modern ideas”, over “the businessman and the philistine”. He claimed that luxurious goods should be heavily taxed and that economy should be regulated so that people cannot get rich quickly by means of financial speculation. In Human, All Too Human he wrote that "youthful Jew of the stock exchange is the most repugnant invention of the whole human race", although he later noted that Jewish financiers should play a prominent role in the new united Europe.
Criticism of socialism and labour movement
Negative attitude towards socialism and proletarian movement was one of the most consistent themes in Nietzsche's philosophy. He wrote negatively of socialism as early as 1862 and his criticisms of socialism are often harsher than those of other doctrines. He was critical of French revolution and was deeply disturbed by the Paris Commune which he saw as a destructive insurrection of the vulgar lower classes that made him feel "annihilated for several days". In his later writings he especially praised contemporary French authors, most of whom were right-wing thinkers whose works expressed strongly negative response to the Commune and its political heritage. As opposed to the urban working class, Nietzsche praised the peasantry as an example of health and natural nobility.
He called socialism "the tyranny of the meanest and the dumbest" and claimed that it attracts inferior people who are motivated by ressentiment. A lot of his criticism is linked to his view of Christianity; he called socialism "residue of Christianity and of Rousseau in the de-Christianised world".
He described Rousseau as "moral tarantula", his ideas as "idiocies and
half-truths" that were born out of self-contempt and inflamed vanity,
claimed that he held a grudge against the ruling classes and by
moralizing he tried to blame them for his own misery. He named him together with Savonarola, Martin Luther, Robespierre and Saint-Simon as fanatics, “sick intellects” who influence masses and stand in opposition to strong spirits. He similarly called Eugen Dühring an "apostle of revenge", "moral braggart" and his ideas "indecent and revolting moralistic gibberish". He saw egalitarian and peaceful socialist community as essentially antagonistic to life; in On the Genealogy of Morality he wrote:
A legal system conceived of as sovereign and universal,
not as a means in the struggle of power complexes, but as a means
against all struggles in general, something along the lines of Dühring's
communist cliché in which each will must be considered as equal to
every will, that would be a principle hostile to life, a destroyer and
dissolver of human beings, an assassination attempt on the future of
human beings, a sign of exhaustion, a secret path to nothingness.
Nietzsche believed that if socialist goals are achieved society would
be leveled down and conditions for superior individuals and higher
culture would disappear. In Twilight of the Idols he wrote:
‘Equality’, a certain definite process of making
everybody uniform, which only finds its expression in the theory of
equal rights, is essentially bound up with a declining culture: the
chasm between man and man, class and class, the multiplicity of types,
the will to be one’s self and to distinguish one’s self – that, in fact,
which I call the pathos of distance is proper to all strong ages.
Highest society imagined by socialists would be lowest according to his order of rank. In The Antichrist he wrote:
Whom do I hate most heartily among the rabbles of today? The rabble of Socialists, the apostles to the Chandala,
who undermine the workingman's instincts, his pleasure, his feeling of
contentment with his petty existence—who make him envious and teach him
revenge.... Wrong never lies in unequal rights; it lies in the assertion
of "equal" rights.... What is bad? But I have already answered: all
that proceeds from weakness, from envy, from revenge. — The anarchist
and the Christian have the same ancestry....
In The Will to Power he further elaborated similarity between Christianity and socialism:
The Gospel is the announcement that the road to happiness
lies open for the lowly and the poor—that all one has to do is to
emancipate one's self from all institutions, traditions, and the
tutelage of the higher classes. Thus Christianity is no more than the
typical teaching of Socialists. Property, acquisitions, mother-country,
status and rank, tribunals, the police, the State, the Church,
Education, Art, militarism: all these are so many obstacles in the way
of happiness, so many mistakes, snares, and devil's artifices, on which
the Gospel passes sentence—all this is typical of socialistic doctrines.
Behind all this there is the outburst, the explosion, of a concentrated
loathing of the "masters,"—the instinct which discerns the happiness of
freedom after such long oppression.... (Mostly a symptom of the fact
that the inferior classes have been treated too humanely, that their
tongues already taste a joy which is forbidden them.... It is not hunger
that provokes revolutions, but the fact that the mob have contracted an
appetite en mangeant....)
Nietzsche never mentioned Karl Marx or Friedrich Engels
by name, and it is unclear whether he was acquainted with their ideas.
However, they are more or less extensively quoted and discussed in
eleven books that Nietzsche owned in his personal library and in one of
them he underlined Marx's name.
In socialist countries Nietzsche was usually considered a disreputable
reactionary, burgeois, imperialist or fascist philosopher. His books
were unavailable to the public in the Soviet Union since 1923. They were placed on the list of forbidden books
and were kept in libraries only for restricted, authorized use. Until
1988 they were not translated or reprinted, and in the years between
1938 and 1988 only ten dissertations on Nietzsche were defended.
Western Leftist writers, led by French postwar intellectuals, largely
rehabilitated Nietzsche on the Left and have proposed ways of using
Nietzschean theory in what has become known as the "politics of difference" — particularly in formulating theories of political resistance and sexual and moral difference.
Race, class and eugenics
Nietzsche often made racist, classist remarks and used racialist explanations of cultural and political phenomena.
Some of his later admirers often tried to reinterpret, downplay or
ignore this part of his thought, but because of preponderance of
explicit comments in Nietzsche's work, such approach remains
controversial.
There are also controversies about some newer translations of
Nietzsche which seem to be misleadingly euphemistic when dealing with
more loaded terms that Nietzsche used. Nietzsche used the term race in two different meanings, for ethnic groups and social classes.
He believed that race and class are identical in the sense that nations are composed of different races and that upper classes are usually of superior nature to the lower. He was fascinated by the restrictive caste system of India and Laws of Manu which he saw as promoting eugenics. Such ideas about aristocracy and race were especially popularized in 19th century by Arthur de Gobineau.
It is unclear whether Nietzsche was directly influenced by Gobineau
but he was probably aware of his work because of numerous similarities
and because Richard Wagner was an admirer who wrote an introductory
essay on his work. Despite his opposition to Darwinism, he was very interested in the works of Francis Galton.
One of the themes that Nietzsche often used to explain social phenomena was mixing of the races.
He believed that mixed race persons were usually inferior because of
the conflicting, incompatible instincts that exist in them, and
advocated racial purification. He used Socrates as a negative example of miscegenation, although he claimed that it can also occasionally create energetic individuals such as Alcibiades and Caesar. He blamed the mixing of the races on the decay of the European society and culture, but also credited it with the creation of modern men of the "historical sense."
He also used the term race in the ethnic meaning and in this
sense he supported the idea of mixing specific races which he considered
to be of high quality (for example he proposed that Germans should mix
with Slavs).
Despite occasional reverence for ancient Germanic conquests and his
identification of upper class with blond, dolichocephalic type, Nietzsche's ideas do not have much in common with Nordicism. He occasionally also praised non-European cultures, such as Moors, Incas and Aztecs, claiming that they were superior to their European conquerors. In The Dawn of Day he also proposed mass immigration of Chinese
to Europe claiming that they would bring “modes of living and thinking,
which would be found very suitable for industrious ants” and help
“imbue this fretful and restless Europe with some of their Asiatic
calmness and contemplation, and—what is perhaps most needful of
all—their Asiatic stability.”
Criticism of Anti-Semitism and nationalism
"The whole problem of the Jews exists only
in nation states, for here their energy and higher intelligence, their
accumulated capital of spirit and will, gathered from generation to
generation through a long schooling in suffering, must become so
preponderant as to arouse mass envy and hatred. In almost all
contemporary nations, therefore – in direct proportion to the degree to
which they act up nationalistically – the literary obscenity of leading
the Jews to slaughter as scapegoats of every conceivable public and
internal misfortune is spreading."
Nietzsche made numerous comments on Jews and Judaism, both positive and negative. Although he blamed Jews for inventing the religious slave morality which preceded Christianity and undermined the aristocratic Roman Empire, he also often praised Jewish intelligence and achievements. He had a very negative attitude toward contemporary anti-Semitic movements, which were usually based on Christian and nationalist animosity towards Jews. Nietzsche also became very critical of pan-Germanism and nationalism after Prussian victory over France. Although he participated in the war as a volunteer, he soon became disillusioned by the new German Empire, seeing the subsequent development in German culture as vulgar and triumphalist. Instead he praised European identity and integration. Later in his life he even started to identify as Polish, believing that his ancestors were Polish noblemen who migrated to Germany (both his Polish and aristocratic ancestry claims are usually rejected by biographers; see: Citizenship, nationality and ethnicity). In Ecce Homo he particularly praised French culture as superior to all others, especially German. Due to his complex views and occasionally contradictory comments on these matters, the idea of Nietzsche as a predecessor to Nazism and fascism remains controversial and debated among scholars (see: Nietzsche and fascism).
Owing largely to the writings of Kaufmann and French postwar
philosophers, Nietzsche's reputation improved and today he usually is
not linked to Nazism as he was in the past.
Nietzsche broke with his editor in 1886 because of his opposition to his editor's anti-Semitic stances, and his rupture with Richard Wagner, expressed in The Case of Wagner and Nietzsche contra Wagner,
both of which he wrote in 1888, had much to do with Wagner's
endorsement of pan-Germanism and anti-Semitism — and also of his
rallying to Christianity. In a March 29, 1887 letter to Theodor Fritsch, Nietzsche mocked anti-Semites, Fritsch, Eugen Dühring, Wagner, Ebrard, Wahrmund, and the leading advocate of pan-Germanism, Paul de Lagarde, who would become, along with Wagner and Houston Chamberlain, the main official influences of Nazism.
This 1887 letter to Fritsch ended by: "And finally, how do you think I
feel when the name Zarathustra is mouthed by anti-Semites?"
Peter Gast would "correct" Nietzsche's writings even after the philosopher's breakdown, and hence without his approval.
Section VIII of Beyond Good and Evil,
titled "Peoples and Fatherlands", criticized pan-Germanism and
patriotism, advocating instead the unification of Europe (§256, etc.).
In Ecce Homo
(1888), Nietzsche criticized the "German nation" and its "will to power
(to Empire, to Reich)", thus underscoring an easy misinterpretation of
the Wille zur Macht, the conception of Germans as a "race", and
the "anti-Semitic way of writing history", or of making "history conform
to the German Empire", and stigmatized "nationalism, this national neurosis from which Europe is sick", this "small politics".
Nietzsche heavily criticized his sister and her husband, Bernhard Förster, speaking harshly against the "anti-Semitic canaille":
I've seen proof, black on white, that Herr Dr. Förster
has not yet severed his connection with the anti-Semitic movement ...
Since then I've had difficulty coming up with any of the tenderness and
protectiveness I've so long felt toward you. The separation between us
is thereby decided in really the most absurd way. Have you grasped
nothing of the reason why I am in the world? ... Now it has gone so far
that I have to defend myself hand and foot against people who confuse me
with these anti-Semitic canaille;
after my own sister, my former sister, and after Widemann more recently
have given the impetus to this most dire of all confusions. After I
read the name Zarathustra in the anti-Semitic Correspondence my
forbearance came to an end. I am now in a position of emergency defense
against your spouse's Party. These accursed anti-Semite deformities
shall not sully my ideal!!
Georges Bataille was one of the first to denounce the deliberate misinterpretation of Nietzsche carried out by Nazis, among them Alfred Baeumler. In January 1937 he dedicated an issue of Acéphale, titled "Reparations to Nietzsche", to the theme "Nietzsche and the Fascists." There, he called Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche
"Elisabeth Judas-Förster," recalling Nietzsche's declaration: "To never
frequent anyone who is involved in this bare-faced fraud concerning
races."
Nietzsche titled aphorism 377 in the fifth book of The Gay Science (published in 1887) "We who are homeless" (Wir Heimatlosen), in which he criticized pan-Germanism and patriotism
and called himself a "good European". In the second part of this
aphorism, which according to Bataille contained the most important parts
of Nietzsche's political thought, the thinker of the Eternal Return
stated:
No, we do not love humanity; but on the other hand we are
not nearly "German" enough, in the sense in which the word "German" is
constantly being used nowadays, to advocate nationalism and race hatred
and to be able to take pleasure in the national scabies of the heart and
blood poisoning that now leads the nations of Europe to delimit and
barricade themselves against each other as if it were a matter of
quarantine. For that we are too open-minded, too malicious, too spoiled,
also too well-informed, too "traveled": we far prefer to live on
mountains, apart, "untimely", in past or future centuries, merely in
order to keep ourselves from experiencing the silent rage to which we
know we should be condemned as eyewitnesses of politics that are
desolating the German spirit by making it vain and that is, moreover, petty politics:—to
keep its own creation from immediately falling apart again, is it not
finding it necessary to plant it between two deadly hatreds? must it
not desire the eternalization of the European system of a lot of petty
states? ... We who are homeless are too manifold and mixed racially and
in our descent, being "modern men", and consequently do not feel tempted
to participate in the mendacious racial self-admiration and racial
indecency that parades in Germany today as a sign of a German way of
thinking and that is doubly false and obscene among the people of the
"historical sense". We are, in one word—and let this be our word of
honor!— good Europeans, the heirs of Europe, the rich,
oversupplied, but also overly obligated heirs of thousands of years of
European spirit: as such, we have also outgrown Christianity and are
averse to it, and precisely because we have grown out of it,
because our ancestors were Christians who in their Christianity were
uncompromisingly upright; for their faith they willingly sacrificed
possessions and position, blood and fatherland. We—do the same. For
what? For our unbelief? For every kind of unbelief? No, you know better
than that, my friends! The hidden Yes in you is stronger than all Nos
and Maybes that afflict you and your age like a disease; and when you
have to embark on the sea, you emigrants, you, too, are compelled to
this by— a faith! ...
War and military values
Nietzsche made numerous comments in which he denounces pacifism, praises war, military values
and conquests. Some of them could be read as metaphoric, but in others
he quite explicitly refers to specific policies or military actions and
commanders. Although he volunteered for the Franco-Prussian war, he soon became critical of Prussian militarism, mostly because of his disillusionment in German culture and national politics, but didn't renounce militarism in general. He praised Napoleon for reviving the military spirit which he saw as defense against the decadent rule of "modern ideas", "businessmen and philistines". In The Will to Power he further elaborated:
When the instincts of a society ultimately make it give
up war and renounce conquest, it is decadent: it is ripe for democracy
and the rule of shopkeepers. In the majority of cases, it is true,
assurances of peace are merely stupefying draughts.
He opposed the "rule of mandarins", solving conflicts by arbitration instead of war, and encouraged the military development of Europe. He proposed conscription, polytechnic military education and the idea that all men of higher classes should be reserve officers in addition to their civilian jobs. In The Will to Power he wrote:
The maintenance of the military State is the last means
of adhering to the great tradition of the past; or, where it has been
lost, to revive it. By means of it the superior or strong type of man is
preserved, and all institutions and ideas which perpetuate enmity and
order of rank in States, such as national feeling, protective tariffs,
etc., may on that account seem justified.
Nietzsche's views on women have served as a magnet for controversy,
beginning during his life and continuing to the present. He frequently
made remarks in his writing that some view as misogynistic. He stated in Twilight of the Idols (1888) "Women are considered profound. Why? Because we never fathom their depths. But women aren't even shallow."
Relation to Schopenhauer
According to Santayana, Nietzsche considered his philosophy to be a correction of Schopenhauer's philosophy. In his Egotism in German Philosophy, Santayana listed Nietzsche's antithetical reactions to Schopenhauer:
The will to live would become the
will to dominate; pessimism founded on reflection would become optimism
founded on courage; the suspense of the will in contemplation would
yield to a more biological account of intelligence and taste; finally in
the place of pity and asceticism (Schopenhauer's two principles of
morals) Nietzsche would set up the duty of asserting the will at all
costs and being cruelly but beautifully strong.
These points of difference from Schopenhauer cover the whole philosophy
of Nietzsche.
These emendations show how Schopenhauer's philosophy was not a mere
initial stimulus for Nietzsche, but formed the basis for much of
Nietzsche's thinking.
Von Hartmann suggested that Schopenhauer was the only philosopher who has been systematically studied by Nietzsche.
Relation to Philipp Mainländer
Philipp Mainländer
The work of Philipp Mainländer
had an important impact on Nietzsche's intellectual development and
made him distance himself from the philosophy of Schopenhauer. In Mainländer's 200 pages long criticism of Schopenhauer's philosophy,
Mainländer argues against a metaphysical will behind the world, and
argues instead for a real multiplicity of wills that struggle with each
other.
Mainländer is perhaps best understood as a negative influence on Nietzsche.
Mainländer took the pessimism of Schopenhauer to its ultimate
conclusion and ended his own life. However, he did never recommend or
argue for suicide – this is a common misconception – and aims to
motivate those who abhor the world back to an active life with
self-chosen goals. Mainländer is a hedonist and the goal of his ethics to indicate how man can reach the highest happiness. If life is worthless, then this must be used to attain a state of complete fearlessness.
Both Nietzsche and Mainländer owed their philosophical awakening to The World as Will and Representation, they disliked the popular successor of Schopenhauer, Eduard von Hartmann, both championed the individual and rejected traditional values, both proclaimed that God is dead (Mainländer had popularized the theme before Nietzsche). Their mental collapse has also drawn comparisons.
Relation to Søren Kierkegaard
Nietzsche knew little of the 19th-century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Georg Brandes,
a Danish philosopher, wrote to Nietzsche in 1888 asking him to study
the works of Kierkegaard, to which Nietzsche replied that he would.
Recent research, however, suggests that Nietzsche was exposed to the works of Kierkegaard through secondary literature. Aside from Brandes, Nietzsche owned and read a copy of Hans Lassen Martensen's Christliche Ethik (1873) in which Martensen extensively quoted and wrote about Kierkegaard's individualism in ethics and religion. Nietzsche also read Harald Høffding's Psychologie in Umrissen auf Grundlage der Erfahrung (ed. 1887)
which expounded and critiqued Kierkegaard's psychology. Thomas Brobjer
believes one of the works Nietzsche wrote about Kierkegaard is in Morgenröthe,
which was partly written in response to Martensen's work. In one of
the passages, Nietzsche wrote: "Those moralists, on the other hand, who,
following in the footsteps of Socrates,
offer the individual a morality of self-control and temperance as a
means to his own advantage, as his personal key to happiness, are the
exceptions." Brobjer believes Kierkegaard is one of "those moralists".
The first philosophical study comparing Kierkegaard and Nietzsche was published even before Nietzsche's death. More than 60 articles and 15 full-length studies have been published devoted entirely in comparing these two thinkers.
Perhaps Nietzsche's greatest philosophical legacy lies in his 20th century interpreters, among them Pierre Klossowski, Martin Heidegger, Georges Bataille, Leo Strauss, Alexandre Kojève, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze (and Félix Guattari), Jacques Derrida and Albert Camus. Foucault's later writings, for example, adopt Nietzsche's genealogical method to develop anti-foundationalist theories of power that divide and fragment rather than unite politics (as evinced in the liberal
tradition of political theory). The systematic institutionalisation of
criminal delinquency, sexual identity and practice, and the mentally ill
(to name but a few) are examples used by Foucault to demonstrate how
knowledge or truth is inseparable from the institutions that formulate
notions of legitimacy from "immoralities" such as homosexuality and the like (captured in the famous power-knowledge
equation). Deleuze, arguably the foremost of Nietzsche's interpreters,
used the much-maligned "will to power" thesis in tandem with Marxian
notions of commodity surplus and Freudian ideas of desire to articulate
concepts such the rhizome and other "outsides" to state power as traditionally conceived.
Certain recent Nietzschean interpretations have emphasized the
more untimely and politically controversial aspects of Nietzsche's
philosophy. Nietzschean commentator Keith Ansell Pearson
has pointed out the absurd hypocrisy of modern egalitarian liberals,
socialists, communists and anarchists claiming Nietzsche as a herald of
their own left-wing politics: "The values Nietzsche wishes to subject to
a revaluation are largely altruistic and egalitarian values such as pity, self-sacrifice, and equal rights. For Nietzsche, modern politics rests largely on a secular inheritance of Christian values (he interprets the socialist doctrine of equality in terms of a secularization of the Christian belief in the equality of all souls before God". Works such as Bruce Detwiler's Nietzsche and the Politics of Aristocratic Radicalism, Fredrick Appel's Nietzsche contra Democracy, and Domenico Losurdo's Nietzsche, il ribelle aristocratico
challenge the prevalent liberal interpretive consensus on Nietzsche and
assert that Nietzsche's elitism was not merely an aesthetic pose but an
ideological attack on the widely held belief in equal rights of the modern West, locating Nietzsche in the conservative-revolutionary tradition.
