Friedrich Nietzsche - Chronology

Based on the Chronology in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. by Walter Kaufmann (1954; Penguin, 1968). 

1844 - Born (15 Oct) at in Röcken, Germany.

1849 - Death of his father, a Lutheran pastor, on July 30.

1850 - Family moves to Naumburg.

1858-64 - Attends boarding school at Schulpforta.

1864 - Studies classical philology at Bonn University.

1865- Continues studies at Leipzig and accidentally discovers Schopenhauer’s main work in a second-hand bookstore.

1868 - First meeting with Richard Wagner.

1869 - Professor extraordinarius of classical philology at the University of Basel, Switzerland.

Winter Semester 1869-70 - First lecture course on Pre-Platonic philosophy (no information survives).

1870 Promoted to full professor. As a Swiss subject, volunteers as a medical orderly in the Franco-Prussian war and serves briefly with the Prussian forces. Returns to Basel in October, his health shattered.

1872 - Publication of Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geist der Musik (The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music), his first book.

Summer semester - Lecture course on Pre-Platonic philosophy.

1872-73 - Winter semester - Lecture course on “The History of Greek Eloquence” (attended by only two students). A manuscript believed to be the text of the lectures or based on the lectures has been translated as “The History of Greek Eloquence (1872-73),” trans. David J. Parent, Friedrich Nietzsche on Rhetoric and Language, ed and trans. Sander L. Gilman, Carole Blair, and David J. Parent (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 213-42.

1873 - Publication of the first two Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen (Untimely Meditations): David Strauss, der Bekenner und Schrisftsteller (“David Strauss, the Confessor and Writer”) and Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben (“On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life”).

Spring - Writes Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen (“Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks”), based upon texts for lecture course on Pre-Platonic philosophy.

Summer semester - Lecture course on Pre-Platonic philosophy.

Writes the unfinished manuscript Über Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralichen Sinne (“On the Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense”)

1873-74 - Prepares notes for a course of lectures on classical rhetoric for the summer semester of 1874; the course is not offered because of lack of student interest. For notes on the text of these lecture notes, click here: <http://www.mtsu.edu/~jcomas/nietzsche/rhetoric.html>.

1874 - Schopenhauer als Erzieher (“Schopenhauer as Educator”) is published as the third Untimely Meditation.

1876 - After many delays, Nietzsche completes and publishes “Richard Wagner in Bayreuth” as the last of the Untimely Meditations, although more had been planned originally.

Summer semester - Lecture course on Pre-Platonic philosophy.

Poor health. Leave from the university. Sorrento.

1878 - Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (Human, All-Too-Human) appears. For the next ten years a new book is printed every year.

1879 - Resignation from the university with pension. Vermischte Meinungen und Sprüche (Mixed Opinions and Maxims) published as Anhang (appendix) of Human, All Too Human. Summer in St. Moritz in the Engadin.

1880 - Der Wanderer und sein Schatten (The Wanderer and His Shadow) appears as Zweiter und letzter nachtrag (second and final sequel) of Human, All Too Human.

1881 - Publication of Die Morgenröte (The Dawn). Winter and Spring in Genoa, summer in Sils Maria (Engadin), fall in Genoa.

1882 - Publication of Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft (The Gay Science). Winter in Genoa, spring in Messina, summer in Tautenburg with Lou Salomé and his siter Elizabeth, fall in Leipzig. Goes to Rapallo in November.

1883 - Writes the First Part of Also Sprach Zarathustra in Rapello during the winter; spends March and April in Genoa, May in Rome, and the summer in Sils Maria, where he completes Part Two. Both parts are published separately in 1883. From now until 1888, Nietzsche spends every summer in Sils Maria, every winter in Nizza.

1884 - Writes the Third Part in Nizza in January. It is published later the same year.

1885 - The Fourth and Last Part of Zarathustra is written during the winter in Nizza and Mentone. Forty copies are printed privately, but only seven distributed among friends.

1886 - Publication of Jenseits von Gut und Böse (Beyond Good and Evil). A new preface is added to the remaining copies of both previous editions of The Birth of Tragedy (1872 and 1878, textually different); the last part of the title is now omitted in favor of a new subtitle: Griechentum und Pessimismus (The Greek Spirit and Pessimism). Second edition of Human, All Too Human with a new preface and with the two sequels printed as volume two.

1887 - Publication of Zur Genealogie der Moral (Toward a Genealogy of Morals). Second edition of The Dawn, with a new preface, and of The Gay Science, with a newly added fifth book (aphorisms 343-383) and an appendix of poems.

1888 - Winter in Nizza, spring in Turin, summer in Sils Maria, fall in Turin. Publication of Der Fall Wagner (The Wagner Case). The beginning of fame: Georg Brandes lectures on Nietzsche at the University of Copenhagen.

1889 - Nietzsche becomes insane early in January in Turin. Overbeck, a friend and former colleague, brings him back to Basel. He is committed to the asylum in Jena, but soon released in care of his mother, who takes him to Naumburg. Die Götzen-Dämmerung (Twilight of the Idols), written in 1888, appears in January.

1891 - The first public edition of the Fourth Part of Zarathustra is held up at the last minute lest it be confiscated. It is published in 1892.

1895 - Der Antichrist and Nietzsche contra Wagner, both written in 1888, are finally published in volume eight of Nietzsche’s collected works—the former, mistakenly, as Book One of Der Wille zur Macht (The Will to Power).

1897 - Nietzsche’s mother dies. His sister moves him to Weimar.

1900 - Dies (25 August) in Weimar.

1901 - His sister publishes some 400 of his notes, many already fully utilized by him, in Volume XV of the collected works under the title Der WIlle zur Macht (The Will to Power)

1904 - His sister integrates 200 pages of further material from The Will to Power in the last volume of her biography, Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches. A completely remodeled version of The Will to Power, consisting of 1067 notes, appears in a subsequent edition of the works in Volumes XV (1910) and XVI (1911).

1908 - First edition of Ecce Homo, written in 1888.

Quotes and short Texts

Origins of Knowledge

Throughout immense stretches of time the intellect produced nothing but errors; some of them proved to be useful and preservative of the species: he who fell in with them, or inherited them, waged the battle for himself and his offspring with better success. Those erroneous articles of faith which were successively transmitted by inheritance, and have finally become almost the property and stock of the human species, are, for example, the following: that there are enduring things, that there are equal things, that there are things, substances, and bodies, that a thing is what it appears, that our will is free that what is good for me is also good absolutely. It was only very late that the deniers, doubters of such propositions came forward - it was only very late that truth made its appearance as the most impotent form of knowledge. It seemed as if it were impossible to get along with truth, our organism was adapted for the very opposite; all its higher functions, the perceptions of the senses, and in general every kind of sensation, cooperated with those primevally embodied, fundamental errors. Moreover, those propositions became the very standards of knowledge according to which the "true "and the "false" were determined - throughout the whole domain of pure logic. The strength of conceptions does not, therefore, depend on their degree of truth, but on their antiquity, their embodiment, their character as conditions of life. Where life and knowledge seemed to conflict, there has never been serious contention; denial and doubt have there been regarded as madness. The exceptional thinkers like the Eleatics, who, in spite of this, advanced and maintained the antitheses of the natural errors, believed that it was possible also to live these counterparts: it was they who devised the sage as the man of immutability, impersonality and universality of intuition, as one and all at the same time, with a special faculty for that reverse kind of knowledge; they were of the belief that their knowledge was at the same time the principle of life. To be able to affirm all this, however, they had to deceive themselves concerning their own condition: they had to attribute to themselves impersonality and unchanging permanence, they had to mistake the nature of the philosophic individual, deny the force of the impulses in cognition, and conceive of reason generally as an entirely free and self-originating activity; they kept their eyes shut to the fact that they also had reached their doctrines in contradiction to valid methods, or through their longing for repose or for exclusive possession or for domination. The subtler development of sincerity and of skepticism finally made these men impossible; their life also, and their judgments, turned out to be dependent on the primeval impulses and fundamental errors of all sentient beings. The subtler sincerity and skepticism arose wherever two antithetical maxims appeared to be applicable to life, because both of them were compatible with the fundamental errors; where, therefore, there could be contention concerning a higher or lower degree of utility for life; and likewise where new maxims proved to be, not necessarily useful, but at least not injurious, as expressions of an intellectual impulse to play a game that was like all games innocent and happy The human brain was gradually filled with such judgments and convictions; and in this tangled skein there arose ferment, strife and lust for power. Not only utility and delight, but every kind of impulse took part in the struggle for "truths"; the intellectual struggle became a business, an attraction, a calling, a duty, an honor; cognizing and striving for the true finally arranged themselves as needs among other needs. From that moment not only belief and conviction, but also examination, denial, distrust and contradiction became forces; all "evil "instincts were subordinated to knowledge, were placed in its service, and acquired the prestige of the permitted, the honored, the useful, and finally the appearance and innocence of the good. Knowledge thus became a portion of life itself, and as life it became a continually growing power; until finally the cognitions and those primeval, fundamental errors clashed with each other, both as life, both as power, both in the same man. The thinker is now the being in whom the impulse to truth and those life-preserving errors wage their first conflict, now that the impulse to truth has also proved itself to be a life-preserving power. In comparison with the importance of this conflict everything else is indifferent; the final question concerning the conditions of life is here raised, and the first attempt is here made to answer it by experiment. How far is truth susceptible of embodiment - that is the question, that is the experiment.

I think?

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). He writes in Beyond Good and Evil:

“With regard to the superstitions of logicians, I shall never tire of emphasizing a small, terse fact, which is unwillingly recognized by these credulous minds—namely, that a thought comes when “it” wishes, and not when “I” wish; so that it is a PERVERSION of the facts of the case to say that the subject “I” is the condition of the predicate “think.” ONE thinks; but that this “one” is precisely the famous old “ego,” is, to put it mildly, only a supposition, an assertion, and assuredly not an “immediate certainty.” After all, one has even gone too far with this “one thinks”—even the “one” contains an INTERPRETATION of the process, and does not belong to the process itself. One infers here according to the usual grammatical formula—”To think is an activity; every activity requires an agency that is active; consequently”… It was pretty much on the same lines that the older atomism sought, besides the operating “power,” the material particle wherein it resides and out of which it operates—the atom. More rigorous minds, however, learnt at last to get along without this “earth-residuum,” and perhaps some day we shall accustom ourselves, even from the logician’s point of view, to get along without the little “one” (to which the worthy old “ego” has refined itself).”

Origin of the Logical

Where has logic originated in men's heads? Undoubtedly out of the illogical, the domain of which must originally have been immense. But numberless beings who reasoned otherwise than we do at present, perished; albeit that they may have come nearer to truth than we! Whoever, for example, could not discern the "like" often enough with regard to food, and with regard to animals dangerous to him, whoever, therefore, deduced too slowly, or was too circumspect in his deductions, had smaller probability of survival than he who in all similar cases immediately divined the equality. The preponderating inclination, however, to deal with the similar as the equal - an illogical inclination, for there is no thing equal in itself - first created the whole basis of logic. It was just so (in order that the conception of substance should originate, this being indispensable to logic, although in the strictest sense nothing actual corresponds to it) that for a long period the changing process in things had to be overlooked, and remain unperceived; the beings not seeing correctly had an advantage over those who saw everything "in flux." In itself every high degree of circumspection in conclusions, every skeptical inclination, is a great danger to life. No living being might have been preserved unless the contrary inclination - to affirm rather than suspend judgment, to mistake and fabricate rather than wait, to assent rather than deny, to decide rather than be in the right - had been cultivated with extra ordinary assiduity. The course of logical thought and reasoning in our modern brain corresponds to a process and struggle of impulses, which singly and in themselves are all very illogical and unjust; we experience usually only the result of the struggle so rapidly and secretly does this primitive mechanism now operate in us.

Cause and Effect

We say it is "explanation "; but it is only in "description" that we are in advance of the older stages of knowledge and science. We describe better, we explain just as little as our predecessors. We have discovered a manifold succession where the naive man and investigator of older cultures saw only two things, "cause" and "effect,"as it was said; we have perfected the conception of becoming, but have not got a knowledge of what is above and behind the conception. The series of "causes" stands before us much more complete in every case; we conclude that this and that must first precede in order that that other may follow - but we have not grasped anything thereby. The peculiarity, for example, in every chemical process seems a "miracle," the same as before, just like all locomotion; nobody has "explained" impulse. How could we ever explain? We operate only with things which do not exist, with lines, surfaces, bodies, atoms, divisible times, divisible spaces - how can explanation ever be possible when we first make everything a conception, our conception? It is sufficient to regard science as the exactest humanizing of things that is possible; we always learn to describe ourselves more accurately by describing things and their successions. Cause and effect: there is probably never any such duality; in fact there is a continuum before us, from which we isolate a few portions - just as we always observe a motion as isolated points, and therefore do not properly see it, but infer it. The abruptness with which many effects take place leads us into error; it is however only an abruptness for us. There is an infinite multitude of processes in that abrupt moment which escape us. An intellect which could see cause and effect as a continuum, which could see the flux of events not according to our mode of perception, as things arbitrarily separated and broken - would throw aside the conception of cause and effect, and would deny all conditionality.

The Madman

Have you ever heard of the madman who on a bright morning lighted a lantern and ran to the market-place calling out unceasingly: "I seek God! I seek God!" As there were many people standing about who did not believe in God, he caused a great deal of amusement. Why? is he lost? said one. Has he strayed away like a child? said another. Or does he keep himself hidden? Is he afraid of us? Has he taken a sea voyage? Has he emigrated? - the people cried out laughingly, all in a hubbub. The insane man jumped into their midst and transfixed them with his glances. "Where is God gone?" he called out. "I mean to tell you! We have killed him, you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither does it now move? Whither do we move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash on unceasingly? Backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we not stray, as through infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker? Shall we not have to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hear the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we not smell the divine putrefaction? - for even Gods putrefy! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers? The holiest and the mightiest that the world has hitherto possessed, has bled to death under our knife - who will wipe the blood from us? With what water could we cleanse ourselves? What lustrums, what sacred games shall we have to devise? Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us? Shall we not ourselves have to become Gods, merely to seem worthy of it? There never was a greater event - and on account of it, all who are born after us belong to a higher history than any history hitherto!" Here the madman was silent and looked again at his hearers; they also were silent and looked at him in surprise. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, so that it broke in pieces and was extinguished. "I come too early," e then said. "I am not yet at the right time. This prodigious event is still on its way, and is traveling - it has not yet reached men's ears. Lightning and thunder need time, the light of the stars needs time, deeds need time, even after they are done, to be seen and heard. This deed is as yet further from them than the furthest star - and yet they have done it themselves!" It is further stated that the madman made his way into different churches on the same day, and there intoned his Requiem aeternam deo. When led out and called to account, he always gave the reply: "What are these churches now, if they are not the tombs and monuments of God?"

History of an Error

The true world, attainable to the sage, the pious man and the man of virtue, - he lives in it, he is it. (The most ancient form of the idea was relatively clever, simple, convincing. It was a paraphrase of the proposition “I, Plato, am the truth.“)

The true world which is unattainable for the moment, is promised to the sage, to the pious man and to the man of virtue (”to the sinner who repents”). (Progress of the idea: it becomes more subtle, more insidious, more evasive, - it becomes a woman, it becomes Christian.)

The true world is unattainable, it cannot be proved, it cannot promise anything; but even as a thought, alone, it is a comfort, an obligation, a com­mand. (At bottom this is still the old sun; but seen through mist and skepticism: the idea has become sublime, pale, northern, Königsbergian.[2])

The true world - is it unattainable? At all events it is unattained. And as unattained it is also unknown. Consequently it no longer comforts, nor saves, nor constrains: what could something unknown constrain us to? (The grey of dawn. Reason stretches itself and yawns for the first time. The cock-crow of positivism.)

The ”true world” - an idea that no longer serves any purpose, that no longer constrains one to anything, - a useless idea that has become quite superfluous, consequently an exploded idea: let us abolish it! (Bright daylight; breakfast; the return of common sense and of cheerfulness; Plato blushes for shame and all free-spirits kick up a shindy.)

We have suppressed the true world: what world survives? The apparent world perhaps? …Certainly not! In abolishing the true world we have also abolished the world of appearance!

(Noon; moment of the shortest shadows; end of the longest error; mankind's zenith; Incipit Zarathustra.)”[3]

[2] Kant was a native of Königsberg and lived there all his life.

[3] Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, in Complete Works, Russell & Russell, New York, 1964, Vol. 16, p. 24

Danger of Enlightenment

All the half-insane, theatrical, bestially cruel, licentious, and especially sentimental and self-intoxicating elements which go to form the true revolutionary spirit, before the revolution, in Rousseau—all this composite being, with factitious enthusiasm, finally set even ‘enlightenment’ upon its fanatical head, which thereby began itself to shine as in an illuminating halo. Yet, enlightenment is essentially foreign to that phenomenon, and, left to itself, would have pierced silently through the clouds like a shaft of light, long content to transfigure individuals alone, and thus only slowly transfiguring national customs and institutions as well. But now, bound hand and foot to a violent and abrupt monster, enlightenment itself became violent and abrupt. Its danger has therefore become almost greater than its useful quality of liberation and illumination, which it introduced into the great revolutionary movement. Whoever grasps this will also know from what confusion it has to be extricated, from what impurities to be cleansed, in order that it may then by itself continue the work of enlightenment and also nip the revolution in the bud and nullify its effects.  ~ Friedrich Nietzsche