Nietzsche's works in philosophy. Nietzsche: philosophy of life

One of the most mysterious figures in the history of European non-classical thought is Friedrich Nietzsche. The philosophy of life, of which he is considered the founder, was born in the era of crisis of the nineteenth century. In those days, many thinkers began to rebel against traditional rationalism, denying its very basis - reason. There is disappointment in the idea of progress. Existing ways and methods of cognition are seriously criticized as unnecessary for a person and not important for the meaning of his life. A kind of “rebellion against reason” occurs. As a criterion for philosophizing, the principle of connection with the individual, with his feelings, moods, experiences, with the hopelessness and tragedy of his existence is put forward. The attitude towards reason and rationalistic systems becomes negative, since they are accused of the impossibility of guiding a person both in life and in history. This style of thinking is beginning to dominate in Western Europe. Nietzsche's philosophy of life (we'll look at it briefly in this article) is a prime example of this.

Biography of the thinker

Friedrich Nietzsche was born in a small town near Leipzig, in the large family of a Protestant pastor. He studied at a classical gymnasium, from where he developed a love for history, ancient texts and music. His favorite poets were Byron, Hölderlin and Schiller, and his composer was Wagner. At the Universities of Bonn and Leipzig, the young man studied philology and theology, but even then his classmates did not understand him. But he was so capable that at the age of twenty-four he was invited to be a professor. He took up a position in the department of philology at the University of Basel. For many years he was friends with Wagner, until he became disillusioned with the latter. By the age of thirty, he became very ill and began to live on a pension for health reasons. This time is the most fruitful in his life. However, even those closest to him gradually ceased to understand his writings. It was only in the eighties of the nineteenth century that Nietzsche’s works became truly popular. But he was not destined to see this. He did not receive any income from the publication of his works. Even his friends did not fully understand him. From the second half of the eighties, the philosopher began to experience clouding of reason, then madness. He spends some time in a mental hospital and eventually dies of apoplexy in the city of Weimar.

Revolutionary teaching

So, what is Nietzsche's philosophy of life? First of all, it should be said that this is a very controversial teaching. At the same time, it was often subject to various distortions, including from leading politicians. It was born under the influence of the theory of Schopenhauer and the music of Wagner. The main works of the philosopher, where this theory is presented, can be called “Dawn”, “Beyond Good and Evil” and “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”. Nietzsche is very characterized by polysemantic concepts and symbols. In the Western European philosophical tradition, Nietzsche's theory is recognized as revolutionary in its structure and the problems it raises. Although she had nothing to do with radical politics at all. It simply offers a unique approach to the entire heritage of humanity.

Criticism of culture

The philosopher greatly yearned for the mythical times when gods and heroes acted, and therefore began to develop his ideas by analyzing ancient tragedy. In it he distinguished two principles, which he called Dionysian and Apollonian. These terms are very important to Nietzsche. His main ideas in the field of culture are connected precisely with these concepts. The Dionysian principle is an unbridled, passionate, irrational desire that does not obey any laws and is not limited by boundaries, coming from the depths of life itself. Apollonian is the desire to measure, to give everything shape and harmony, to streamline chaos. An ideal culture, as the philosopher believed, is one in which these tendencies are in harmonious interaction with each other, when there is a kind of balance. Such a model, according to Nietzsche’s thought, is pre-Socratic Greece. Then came the dictatorship of reason, the Apollonian principle eclipsed everything and became rational and logical, and the Dionysian principle was completely banished. Since then, culture has been taking leaps and bounds towards destruction, civilization is rotting, spiritual values have no meaning, and all ideas have lost their meaning.

About religion: criticism of Christianity

Many popular phrases today belong to Nietzsche. His statements, such as “God is dead,” are still quoted in literature, in polemics, and even in everyday life. But what is the meaning of the philosopher's attitude to religion? In various of his works, including the pamphlet “Antichristian,” Nietzsche reproaches this particular religion for the death of God. Modern churches, he says, have become His tombs. Christianity with its apology for the weak is to blame for everything. The compassion it preaches kills the will to live. It perverted the commandments of Christ. Instead of teaching people to act as the Teacher does, it only requires them to believe. Christ demanded not to judge people, but his followers do the exact opposite all the time. It radiates a hatred of life. It gave birth to the principle of equality before God, which socialists are now trying to introduce on earth. All Christian values are vices, lies and hypocrisy. In fact, there is a fundamental inequality between people - some of them are masters by nature, while others are slaves. Christ in modern society would be considered an idiot. However, it cannot be said that Nietzsche was merciless towards other religions. For example, he considered Buddhism to be a model of successful teaching. However, many modern researchers believe that the thinker criticized not so much the foundations of Christianity as its modern institutionalized form.

Nietzsche's actual philosophy of life

These ideas can be briefly summarized as follows. The central concept of all his theories is the spontaneously becoming Being. Its essence is the “will to power,” which is a cosmic principle independent of the subject, a play of forces, energies and passions. All this arose from nothingness. But this game leads nowhere, it is meaningless, meaningless. Man, as a social being, seeks to consolidate his inherent “will to power”, constancy, and believes that this is possible. But these are groundless hopes. There is nothing permanent either in nature or in society. Our world itself is a lie that changes all the time. This tragic contradiction is revealed by Nietzsche. The philosophy of life is also based on the fact that people need illusion. The weak in order to survive, and the strong in order to rule. The philosopher often emphasizes this point. Life is not just existence. This is growth, strengthening, strengthening. If the will to power is absent, any living creature degrades.

About history

The philosopher proves this thesis by considering social development. Nietzsche, whose statements are very vivid and precise, and therefore often turned into aphorisms, came to the conclusion that civilization had put shackles on people. This, as well as public morality and the dominant Christian tradition, turned a person from a strong, strong-willed being into some kind of frail paralytic. At the same time, Nietzsche emphasizes the mystery of history as a science. This phenomenon appears to him as something opposite to life and will, and even dangerous for them. But this is also a necessary phenomenon. Such a danger can paralyze a person, or it can stimulate his development. There are several types of understanding history. The philosopher calls one of them monumental. It uses superficial analogies with the past and can become a dangerous weapon in the hands of politicians. The second is “antique”. It consists of a tendentious selection of facts, far from analyzing the real meaning of events. And only the third - critical - is a real and practical method. He struggles with the past, which is always worthy of condemnation. These words of Nietzsche about the life of all humanity may seem terrible. But he just proposes an argument with the past as an equal opponent. This discussion will allow us to “master” history and put it at the service of life. Then it will be possible to both honor tradition and try to free ourselves from it.

About ethics

Nietzsche is often called the founder of nihilism. There is truth in this. However, we should not oversimplify Nietzsche. The philosophy of life suggests that nothing can be built on nihilism alone. We need to replace it with something. The basis of human life is will. Schopenhauer thought so. However, for him the concept of will means something universal, abstract. Nietzsche has a specific individual in mind. And the main driving force of man is the same “will to power.” It is its presence that can explain the behavior of most people. This basis of behavior is not a psychological, but rather an ontological phenomenon.

This is the basis of the philosopher’s teaching about the ideal, or about the superman. If life has unconditional value, then the most worthy of it are the strong people, in whom the will to power is best realized. Such a person is a natural aristocrat, and therefore he is free from the false values imposed on him by age and tradition, which represent good and evil. Nietzsche described his ideal in his famous work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Everything is permitted to such a person. After all, God is dead, as Nietzsche often argued. The philosophy of life, however, gives no reason to believe that the superman lacks ethics. He just has his own rules. This is a man of the future who transgresses ordinary nature and is capable of founding a new humanism. On the other hand, the philosopher was very critical of the next century and prophesied that “it will face such colic, in comparison with which the Paris Commune is just a slight indigestion.”

About eternal return

Nietzsche was sure that eras when such ideal people could manifest themselves already existed in history. First of all, this is the “Golden Age” of pre-Socratic antiquity and the Italian Renaissance. This also shows the benefits of history for life. What does it consist of? After all, as the philosopher believes, it leads society to degradation. But history is the guarantor of the “eternal return” of those very “golden eras” that, it would seem, have long since sunk into the past. Nietzsche was a supporter of the so-called mythological time, which involves the repetition of any significant events. The superman is a rebel and a genius who will smash the old slave morality. But the values he created will again be frozen by categories and institutions, and will be replaced by the era of the dragon, which will again dominate the new man. And this will be repeated ad infinitum, but between these two extremes a “golden era” will exist for at least some time, for which it is worth living.

Style and popularity

For this you just need to read Nietzsche. Quotes from this amazing philosopher-prophet are so attractive because he is trying to break down outdated, from his point of view, moral foundations, revise generally accepted values, appeals to feelings, intuition, life experience, and historical reality. Of course, his works contain a lot of bravado, designed for external effect. Since he was a philologist, he was very concerned with the literary aspect of his works. They are very succinct, clear, and his statements are often provocative and unexpected. This is a very shocking and “literary” philosopher. But the words of Nietzsche, whose quotes (like “If you go to a woman, do not forget the whip,” “Push the falling one,” and others) are taken out of context, should not be taken literally. This philosopher requires a heightened understanding and attunement to a completely different universe than the one to which we are accustomed. It was this revolutionary nature of presentation that brought Nietzsche’s works such amazing popularity. His radical questioning of values and the objectivity of truth caused many fierce discussions and comments during the thinker’s lifetime. The metaphorical nature and irony of his statements and aphorisms was difficult to surpass. However, many contemporaries, especially Russian philosophers, did not understand Nietzsche. They criticized him, reducing the thinker's ideas exclusively to the preaching of pride, atheism and self-will. In Soviet times, there was a widespread tendency to consider Nietzsche as the person who contributed to the emergence of the ideology of National Socialism. But all these reproaches towards the thinker do not have the slightest basis.

Followers

Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy of life was expressed in chaotic, troubled writings. But she received a second wind, oddly enough, in the systematic logical reasoning and clear conclusions of Wilhelm Dilthey. It was he who put the philosophy of life founded by Nietzsche on a par with academic schools and forced leading scientists to take it into account. He brought all these chaotic ideas into system. Reinterpreting the theories of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Schleiermacher, Dilthey combined the philosophy of life with hermeneutics. It adds new meanings and interpretations developed by the German tragic genius theory. Dilthey and Bergson used the philosophy of life to create an alternative picture of the world to rationalism. And his ideas about individual transcendence of values, structures, and contexts had a profound influence on thinkers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, who used his concepts as the starting point for their own theories.

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most famous in the world. His main ideas are imbued with the spirit of nihilism and harsh, sobering criticism of the current situation in science and worldview. The brief includes several main points. We should start by mentioning the sources of the thinker’s views, namely, Schopenhauer’s metaphysics and Darwin’s law o Although these theories influenced Nietzsche’s ideas, he subjected them to serious criticism in his works. Nevertheless, the idea of the struggle of the strongest and the weakest for existence in this world led to the fact that he was imbued with the desire to create a certain ideal of man - the so-called “superman”. Nietzsche's philosophy of life, briefly speaking, includes the principles that are described below.

Philosophy of life

From the point of view of a philosopher, life is given to the knowing subject in the form of the only reality that exists for a certain person. To highlight the main idea, Nietzsche's brief philosophy denies the identification of mind and life. The well-known statement is subject to severe criticism. Life is understood primarily as a constant struggle of opposing forces. Here the concept of will, namely the will to it, comes to the fore.

Will to power

In fact, Nietzsche’s entire mature philosophy comes down to a description of this phenomenon. A brief summary of this idea can be summarized as follows. The will to power is not a banal desire for dominance, for command. This is the essence of life. This is the creative, active, active nature of the forces that make up existence. Nietzsche asserted will as the basis of the world. Since the entire universe is chaos, a series of accidents and disorder, it is she (and not the mind) that is the cause of everything. In connection with ideas about the will to power, the “superman” appears in Nietzsche’s writings.

Superman

He appears as a kind of ideal, a starting point around which Nietzsche’s brief philosophy is centered. Since all norms, ideals and rules are nothing more than a fiction created by Christianity (which inculcates slave morality and the idealization of weakness and suffering), the superman crushes them in his path. From this point of view, the idea of God as the product of the cowardly and weak is rejected. In general, Nietzsche’s brief philosophy considers the idea of Christianity as the implantation of a slave worldview with the goal of making the strong weak and elevating the weak to an ideal. The superman, personifying the will to power, is called upon to destroy all this lies and pain in the world. Christian ideas are seen as hostile to life, as denying it.

True Being

Friedrich Nietzsche fiercely criticized the opposition of a certain “true” to the empirical. Supposedly there must be some better world, opposite to the one in which a person lives. According to Nietzsche, the denial of the correctness of reality leads to the denial of life, to decadence. This should also include the concept of absolute being. It does not exist, there is only the eternal cycle of life, countless repetitions of everything that has already taken place.

In the town of Recken near the city of Lützen in Germany in the family of a Lutheran pastor. His birthday coincided with the birthday of the king, Frederick William IV, so the boy was named after him.

Nietzsche wrote his first poems and essays at the age of ten. In 1858 he entered the Naumburg school in Pfort. In 1864-1868 he studied philology in Boyne and Leipzig. From 1869 to 1879 - professor at the University of Basel in classical philology. He volunteered in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) and was a nurse. Having seriously undermined his health, he soon returned to Basel, where he resumed teaching. Nietzsche spent the following years mainly in Switzerland and Italy.

Influenced by the works of Arthur Schopenhauer and the aesthetic ideas and art of Richard Wagner, Nietzsche moved from classical philology to philosophy.

There are several main stages in Nietzsche's philosophical evolution: the romanticism of the young Nietzsche, when he was entirely influenced by the ideas of Schopenhauer and Wagner; the stage of so-called positivism, associated with disappointment in Wagner and a sharp break with the ideal of the artist, when Nietzsche turned his attention to the “positive” sciences - natural science, mathematics, chemistry, history, economics; the period of mature Nietzsche or actually Nietzschean, imbued with the idea of the “will to power”. In turn, the work of the mature Nietzsche, from the point of view of the topic and order of the problems he considered, can be presented as follows: a) the creation of an affirmative part of the teaching by developing a cultural and ethical ideal in the form of the idea of the “superman” and the “eternal return”; b) the negative part of the teaching, expressed in the idea of "revaluation of all values."

In his first major work, “The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music” (1872), Nietzsche developed the ideas of a typology of culture, continuing the traditions outlined by Friedrich Schiller, Friedrich Schelling and the German romantics, but giving his own, original interpretation of Greek culture, in which, in his opinion, The three most important principles inherent in any European culture were fully expressed: Dionysian, Apollonian and Socratic. The work ends with the philosopher’s hope for the revival of the tragic age with its Dionysian art, which has become a kind of symbol of vitality. Here Nietzsche formulates the main problem of his entire life and philosophy, which will then find its most complete embodiment in the work “Thus Spake Zarathustra” - how, in what way, to create such a culture, obeying which a person could ennoble his inner world and educate himself.

At the second stage of his work, the philosopher devoted all his energy to the study of human sciences (“Human, too human”, 1874; “Morning Dawn”, 1881; “The Gay Science”, 1882).

Nietzsche tried to bring together his most significant conclusions in the book “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” (1883-1884). In this book, Nietzsche first put forward the theory of the superman (Übermensch) and the will to power; later developed his ideas in the works “Beyond Good and Evil” (1886) and “Towards the Genealogy of Morality” (1887).

As a cultural and ethical ideal, Nietzsche puts forward the image of the superman, aestheticized by him and enclosed in an artistically complete form. A superman is a man of powerful vitality, powerful instincts, the Dionysian principle has not been extinguished or suppressed in him.

The only representatives of true humanity, according to Nietzsche, are philosophers, artists and saints. Every ordinary person, according to the philosopher, should look at himself as a failed product of nature and try to educate himself as a philosopher, artist or saint.

All those whom Nietzsche admired were people of exceptional intelligence and creative power, they were passionate natures who were able to put their passion at the service of creativity. At the end of the book "Twilight of the Idols" (1888), Goethe is presented as an example of a superman. Another such example for Nietzsche was Leonardo da Vinci.

Nietzsche's struggle for the liberation of people from the power of spirits and social authorities entered the history of culture under the slogan of “revaluation of the values that existed until now.” It was this struggle that made Nietzsche one of the most brilliant singers of European nihilism. All the works he wrote after Zarathustra represent such a “revaluation.”

The study of philosophy, Christian religion and ascetic morality leads the philosopher to the conclusion that they separate a person from the sources of true existence, from life itself. The path that European humanity eventually took turns out to be fraught with a number of consequences that Nietzsche prophetically foretells to his contemporaries, lifting the curtain of the European future: the collapse of European spirituality and the devaluation of its values, the “revolt of the masses,” totalitarianism and the reign of the “coming boor.” with its leveling of man under the banner of universal equality of people. Overcoming nihilism can only be a revaluation of all values and the creation of new ones.

The central concept in the philosophy of the late Nietzsche was the concept of “will to power,” most fully expounded in his work “The Will to Power” (1886-1888). The will to power is interpreted by Nietzsche as the principle of everything that exists. He seeks confirmation of his thoughts in any analytical material available to him: in philosophy, religion, art, psychology, politics, natural science, right down to everyday life.

According to Nietzsche, the will to power finds its expression in all human activities; he even suggested that it could be the energetic basis of the entire cosmos as a whole. Nietzsche did not call for striving for power, he spoke about honesty with oneself and turned to examples of “superhuman” strength embodied in people like Goethe and Leonardo, as opposed to the “human, all too human” strength of military despots.

In 1889, Nietzsche's creative activity was cut short due to mental illness.

Nietzsche's ideas have had a huge influence on modern philosophy. No author has been cited as often as Nietzsche. Many pages of works or entire books by Semyon Frank, Nikolai Berdyaev, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and other outstanding philosophers are devoted to the analysis of his legacy, polemics with his prophecies, and are permeated with rejection of his ideas or admiration for them.

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti

Biography of the thinker

Revolutionary teaching

Criticism of culture

About religion: criticism of Christianity

Nietzsche's actual philosophy of life

About history

About ethics

About eternal return

Style and popularity

Followers

Friedrich Nietzsche(full name - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) - German thinker, philosopher, composer, philologist and poet. His philosophical ideas were strongly influenced by the music of the composer Wagner, as well as the works of Kant, Schopenhauer, and ancient Greek philosophy.

short biography

Friedrich Nietzsche was born October 15, 1844 in eastern Germany, in a rural area called Röcken. There was no unified German state at that time, and in fact Friedrich Wilhelm was a citizen of Prussia.

Nietzsche's family belonged to a deeply religious community. His father- Carl Ludwig Nietzsche was a Lutheran pastor. His mother– Francis Nietzsche.

Nietzsche's childhood

2 years after the birth of Friedrich, his sister was born - Elizabeth. Another 3 years later (in 1849) his father died. Friedrich's younger brother Ludwig Joseph, - died at the age of 2, six months after the death of his father.

After the death of her husband, Nietzsche’s mother raised her children on her own for some time, and then moved to Naumburg, where relatives joined in the upbringing, surrounding the little ones with care.

From early childhood Friedrich Wilhelm showed success in studies- He learned to read quite early, then mastered writing and even began to compose music on his own.

Nietzsche's youth

At 14 years old After graduating from the Naumburg Gymnasium, Friedrich goes to study at Gymnasium "Pforta". Then - to Bonn and Leipzig, where he begins to master theology and philology. Despite significant successes, Nietzsche did not receive satisfaction from his activities either in Bonn or Leipzig.

When Friedrich Wilhelm was not yet 25 years old, he was invited to become a professor of classical philology at the Swiss University of Basel. This has never happened in the history of Europe.

Relationship with Richard Wagner

Friedrich Nietzsche was simply fascinated by both the music of the composer Wagner and his philosophical views on life. In November 1868 Nietzsche meets the great composer. Later he becomes almost a member of his family.

However, the friendship between them did not last long - in 1872 the composer moved to Bayreuth, where he began to change his views on the world, converted to Christianity, and began to listen more to the public. Nietzsche did not like this, and their friendship came to an end. In 1888 he wrote a book "Case Wagner", in which the author expressed his attitude towards Wagner.

Despite this, Nietzsche himself admitted later that the music of the German composer influenced his thoughts and manner of presentation in books and works on philology and philosophy. He said this:

“My compositions are music written in words, not notes”

Philologist and philosopher Nietzsche

The ideas and thoughts of Friedrich Nietzsche had a significant influence on the formation of the latest philosophical movements - existentialism and postmodernism. His name is associated with the origin of the theory of negation - nihilism. He also gave birth to a movement that was later called Nietzscheanism, which spread at the beginning of the 20th century both in Europe and in Russia.

Nietzsche wrote on all the most important issues of social life, but above all about religion, psychology, sociology, and morality. Unlike Kant, Nietzsche did not simply criticize pure reason, but went further - questioned all the obvious achievements of the human mind, tried to create his own system for assessing the human condition.

In his morality, he was too aphoristic and not always clear: with aphorisms he did not give final answers, more often he frightened with the inevitability of the arrival of new "free minds", not clouded by the consciousness of the past. He called such highly moral people "superman".

Books by Friedrich Wilhelm

During his life, Friedrich Wilhelm wrote more than a dozen books on philosophy, theology, philology, mythology. Here is a small list of his most popular books and works:

“Thus spoke Zarathustra. A book for everyone and no one” - 1883-87.
"Case Wagner" - 1888
“Morning Dawn” - 1881
“The Wanderer and His Shadow” - 1880
“Beyond good and evil. Prelude to the philosophy of the future" - 1886

Nietzsche's disease

At the University of Basel, Nietzsche experienced seizures for the first time mental illness. To improve his health, he had to go to a resort in Lugano. There he began to work intensively on the book "The Origin of Tragedy", which I wanted to dedicate to Wagner. The disease did not go away, and he had to leave his professorship.

May 2, 1879 he left teaching at the university, receiving a pension with an annual salary of 3,000 francs. His subsequent life became a struggle against illness, despite which he wrote his works. Here are the lines with his own memories of that period:

“ ...at thirty-six years old I had sunk to the lowest limit of my vitality - I was still living, but I could not see three steps ahead of me. At that time - it was in 1879 - I left my professorship in Basel, lived the summer like a shadow in St. Moritz, and spent the next winter, the sun-poor winter of my life, like a shadow in Naumburg.

This was my minimum: The Wanderer and His Shadow arose in the meantime. Without a doubt, I then knew a lot about shadows... In the next winter, my first winter in Genoa, that softening and spiritualization, which was almost due to the extreme impoverishment in blood and muscles, created the “Dawn.”

The perfect clarity, transparency, even excess of spirit, reflected in the said work, coexisted in me not only with the deepest physiological weakness, but also with the excess of the feeling of pain.

In the midst of the torture of three days of continuous headaches, accompanied by painful vomiting of mucus, I had the clarity of a dialectician par excellence, I thought very calmly about things for which, in healthier conditions, I would not have found in myself enough refinement and calmness, I would not have found the audacity of a rock climber.”

last years of life

In 1889 At the insistence of Professor Frans Overback, Friedrich Nietzsche was placed in a Basel psychiatric clinic. In March 1890, his mother took him home to Naumburg.

However, soon after this she dies, which causes even greater damage to the health of the weak Nietzsche - apopleptic strike. After this he can neither move nor speak.

August 25, 1900 Friedrich Nietzsche died in a mental hospital. His body is buried in the old church of Röcken, in the family crypt.