Nietzsche as a Man and as a Philosopher

Abstract

It is not the intention here to present or even to outline a biography of Nietzsche. This would take us too far afield from the real intention of our investigations. There is a multitude of special problems pertaining to a Nietzsche biography and most existing biographies suffer from two serious limitations: (1) most biographies of Nietzsche display a radical bias of some sort on the part of the biographer (e.g., Alfred Baeumler, Ernst Bertram, Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche) and (2) almost every biographer of Nietzsche approaches his subject from only a few of the essential perspectives from which he can be viewed. In other words, there is at present no authoritative comprehensive biography of Nietzsche. However, for our purposes, such a biography is not essential, since our interest here is a less complex one; namely, the problem of the psychological and existential relevance of Nietzsche’s life-situation to his thought in general. What we shall be concerned with demonstrating is simply that there is a set of events and concerns in Nietzsche’s life that is crucial for the understanding of Nietzsche’s thought. Our interest here is not simply biographical, nor is it simply philosophical; rather, we are concerned with the existential psychological relations between the two, or more accurately, the personal philosophy of Nietzsche as an expression of his life-world. Nietzsche himself emphasizes this aspect of the interpretation of past systems when he says, “The only thing of interest in a refuted system is the personal element. It alone is what is forever irrefutable.”¹