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Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche 15 Oct. 1844 - 25 Aug. 1900

("What is done from love always takes place beyond good and evil.")
 

 

 

 

http://WordReference.com/de/en/
Text only what got you here?     English>deutsch translator

 

 

 

Nietzsche is one of the greatest philosophers of all time.


 

A genuine tragedy of the 20th century was the distortion, misinterpretation, and subsequent defamation and posthumous calumniation of Friedrich Nietzsche, which continues even to this day.  I offer below several excellent links to credible resources about Nietzsche, his writing and his life, much more comprehensive than I could ever hope to put together on my own.

While I have your attention, however... 
I'd like to take a moment to dispel two of the more insidious myths about Nietzsche:
 
 
 

MYTH 1
FACT
Nietzsche was a Nazi.

Nietzsche could not possibly be a Nazi, simply by virtue of time:
Nietzsche died in 1900.


.The German Workers' Party, DAP,
pre-cursor to the NSDAP, which developed into the Nazi Party, 
made its first appearance in 1919.

.
It is still something of a puzzle to me how Hitler, while building his fascist totalitarian regime, managed to completely ignore Nietzsche's vehemently anti-state position, which was delivered with unwavering clarity in Also Sprach Zarathustra!

"Staat heißt das kälteste aller kalten Ungeheuer.  Kalt lügt es auch; und diese Lüge kriecht aus seinem Munde: 'Ich, der Staat, bin das Volk.'"

"The coldest of all cold monsters is known by the name, State. 
It tells cold lies, as well; and this lie creeps from its mouth: 
'I, the State, am the people.'"

One of Nietzsche's friendlier assessments of the State, as it turns out. 
These are not the words of an individual who supports concepts of government, let alone something that would be called a "Reich."




 
.

MYTH 2

.

FACT
Nietzsche was anti-Semitic and racist.


Nietzsche had no love for racists, and avoided them, to the point of dissociating completely from his own sister as a result of her anti-Semitic dealings.  From 1875 - 1882, one of Nietzsche's closest colleagues was Paul Rée, a Jew. 
   
 

He tenaciously maintained friendship with Rée much to the dismay of his increasingly anti-Semitic contemporaries, namely his own sister, and Cosima and Richard Wagner, among others.  Nietzsche, in fact, made his aversion to racism clear when in 1887 he wrote a letter to anti-Semite, Theodor Fritsch, explicitly telling Fritsch he was not interested in racist ideas, and calling the anti-Semitic movement queer, abominable, hypocritical, absurd, and false.


What about the Will to Power?

.
The Will to Power is not Friedrich Nietzsche's work anymore than Steven Spielberg's "Artificial Intelligence" is a Stanley Kubrick film.
It is important to note that the last ten years of his life, Nietzsche had completely lost his sanity.  His sister assumed his care, and thusly acquired access to all his unpublished notes which she "edited" to produce her own version of his philosophy.  These bastardized works (in particular The Will to Power, published in 1901, would be more accurately credited as the written work of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, rather than that of her brother) were subsequently used in developing the emerging anti-Semitic movements.  The last ten years of his life, Friedrich Nietzsche was completely oblivious to what his sister (or anyone else) was doing.
 

The invention and perpetuation of myths is but one method of disinformation.  
Another effective method is suppression of truth.

For those who have sought to discredit Nietzsche, they are quick to turn his distaste for the cruel hypocrisies exercised by many of the world's religions into a despicable nihilistic atheism.  They then, by a set of logistical leaps possible only in a world devoid of logic, proclaim his "godless heathen" beliefs as the inspirational kindling leading to Adolph Hitler's ungodly acts of the Holocaust.  Right.  As more and more people die who were actually alive at the time, certain truths become more easily swept under the rug. 

What they do not mention, is that Hitler was, by his own word, a God-fearing Christian.   
 

Throughout his reign of terror, Hitler never renounced his belief in Jesus Christ as Saviour, nor did he reject his Catholic faith; in fact, he used it as means to rally the people.  One need only refer to Mein Kampf, or review Hitler's many speeches.  Are there links?  Yea, verily!
http://www.worldzone.net/family/johnanderson/indexz22.shtml
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/john_murphy/religionofhitler.html
     http://kevin.davnet.org/essays/hitler.html#Conclusions


Only the mind of a madman could somehow adapt the philosophy of a man who had little to no respect for government or organized religions into a twisted tool for promoting the heinous, fascist, and (from Hitler's perspective) Christian state that was the Third Reich.

For those Christians and Jews who are of the notion that if someone as bad as Hitler liked Nietzsche, it doesn't matter if Nietzsche was dead, clearly Nietzsche was as crazy and/or evil as Hitler: 
How is it that the Bible is "the sacred word of God," since the Ku Klux Klan has relied on the teachings of the Bible to promote their beliefs since their inception?  There is no sound rationalization by which one can condemn Nietzsche and laud the Bible, if one is to judge these works not by the individuals who wrote them, but by the individuals who choose to "follow" them.

 


Obviously, I am at odds with the popular perceptions of Nietzsche, but I'll not attempt to challenge them all here on this meager bit of cyber-dust.  Rather,  I provide these links, both for friends of Nietzsche, as well as those curious to find out what sort of man he actually was:  

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Nietzsche Hauptseite

Alles auf deutsch (everything in German), an excellent Nietzsche site in his native tongue.  Actually, it offers an English version, but I have not thoroughly cross-read it to determine the overall translation quality.  A gloss deemed it quite good, indeed, but it was just a quick skim.  Very much a frames site.
 

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~fnchron/

From Dartmouth College, this is perhaps the absolute best biographical, historical website devoted to Nietzsche.  It provides a year-to-year synopsis of Nietzsche's life, from birth to death, as well as featuring quotes from personal written sources in their original German, with English translations.  As concise as it is comprehensive, as comprehensive as it is concise.  When you arrive at this site, simply click on the graphic to begin the journey, in case that isn't apparent.  Thank you so much for this marvelous website, Malcolm Brown! 
 
 

http://users.aol.com/lrdetrigan/nietbio.html

A nice one page bio.  Below is the index page to this site, set up in frames, with even more Nietzsche links and info; I find the nietbio.html the most useful original composition on this site, however. Also, the index4.html is all about frames:

http://users.aol.com/lrdetrigan/index4.html

 

http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/n/i.htm

A useful historical glossary entry.  Not an elaborate site, more informative than some, but.  Well, look at the addy. www.marxists.org   What can one expect?  (I'm an anarchist, by the way, if you're wondering where I'm coming from on that marxist crack...)
 
 

http://www.cas.usf.edu/journal/pringle/because.html

Be cause, be cause, be cause, be cause, be cause--be cause of the wonderful things he does!
Nietzsche pulls back the curtains we tailored to shroud the mystery of Oz, I mean, god.
 
 

The Quantum Nietzsche

Yes, precisely what science nerds such as myself live and die for.  A full manuscript exploring Nietzsche's philosophy as it applies to quantum mechanics.  Or is it exploring quantum mechanics as it applies to Nietzsche's philosophy.  Ich glaube, daß es die Beiden ist!   Oh, and here is Dr. Plank's (yes, Plank with no "c," William Plank, not Max!)  homepage: http://www.quantumnietzsche.com/
 
 

The Perspectives of Nietzsche

The Perspectives of Nietzsche, as presented by one Bill Curry at Pitt.  This is also very much a frames site.
 
 

http://www.fns.org.uk/index.htm

The Friedrich Nietzsche Society--it's in Britain...
 
 

http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/

Wanna read Nietzsche for free? The Nietzsche Channel tends to load slow when I come in on a modem, but it has Nietzsche's works auf deutsch and in English! If you have any German skills at all, I highly recommend you give the German a spin, most especially Zarathustra, as it is written in comparatively simple language, vs. Jenseits von Gut und Böse.  Without a doubt, my preferred springboard for Nietzsche reading and written reference.

 

http://www.publicappeal.org/library/nietzsche/

Wanna read Nietzsche for free? Nietzsche's Features has quality overall coverage of Nietzsche's written work (in English translation). The complete texts are mainly off-site links, but highly reliable. Easy online access to almost all the quotables you'll ever need!

   

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/zarathustra.html

Should you have chosen to begin your Nietzsche reading with Also Sprach Zarathustra, this is an exceedingly fine study guide to Book One, provided by Paul Brians in the department of English at Washington State University.  Rock on, Paul!  Your fab site provided me with the following equally fab link...

 

http://www.ewige-wiederkehr.de/
(...but this addie seems to load the page a little quicker: http://www.fortunecity.de/lindenpark/heiner/65/eternalreturn/#Eternal%20Return also, there are pop-ups and pop-unders here, no matter what route you go)

Maybe you've seen that Nietzsche wristwatch that has a profile portrait of our boy Fred on the dial, and the words "The Eternal Return of the Same"  written all around the circumference, and you've wondered, what's all that?  Well, here ya go!  The page is provided in English and German--choose yer language (loads English, clicks German).

 

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/452786.html

"Nietzsche, The Problem of Autumn," from the Chicago Press book,
The Good European: Nietzsche's Work Sites in Word and Image, by David Farrell Krell and Donald L. Bates.
Has nice quotes and pictures of places through which Nietzsche wandered, at this "teaser" website.
"For Nietzsche, travel was a stimulus to thought, through solitude."—Publishers Weekly
 
 

http://infonectar.com/aphorisms.html

A fun aphorism page  :)
Note: aphorisms are provided only as translated into English!
I'm not certain the source of the translations.
 

http://www.digitalmedusa.com/sgettis/lee.html

A very nice little piece of Nietzsche-inspired abstract portraiture art, with a couple of Nietzsche links.  (Note:The PatronSaints/Nietzche.html link was dead as of 12/15/2003.)

 

http://www.inch.com/~ari/nietzsche1.html

There are 3 Nietzsche-related pages at this site.  Follow the arrows at the bottom of the page that loads with this link.  There are some pictures and writing samples included at this site.

 

http://killdevilhill.com/nietzschechat/list.php?f=28

Known 'round the world as the Friedrich Nietzsche Fireside Chat, it's a listserv/bulletin board to chat about Nietzsche.

Earlier versions are still available:  http://killdevilhill.com/nietzschechat/shakespeare1.html earlier version
http://killdevilhill.com/nietzschechat/wwwboard2.html  earliest version

The Nietzsche Page at the University of Southern California

Once upon a time, everyone was raving about Douglas Thomas' Nietzsche page at USC.  In fact, if you do a web search for Nietzsche, you'll find many, many, many pages that feature an extremely outdated link for this page.  Guess what.  I found the new, updated link, and... IT WORKS!  Yippee!  So if you've been wondering where the hell that damned "The Nietzsche Page at USC" had slipped off to--hey, hey, hey!  It's Phat Phreddie!  Oh, but do be forewarned--it appears Dr. Thomas has not updated his links in a very long time.  So don't get too excited!  ;)

 


http://www.zmag.org/

...and if Nietzsche were alive today, he'd be posting on the web at zmag.org!
 
 

http://www.theonion.com/

...and this is without doubt where he'd be getting his recreational news.
 
 

http://www.cosmicbaseball.com

...ach!  and lest I forget, no doubt about it, Cosmic Baseball would be his recreational sport of choice.
Here are the links to his specific pages within the Cosmic Baseball site (some have player stats!):

This page gave a 404 error 12/01/2003; I wrote the webmaster (again)!  -->  http://www.cosmicbaseball.com/nietzsche.html
These other two are working fine, but nietz8.html is slightly revisionist; http://www.cosmicbaseball.com/nietz6.html
it totally fails to reference his years playing on the Paradise Pisces team! http://www.cosmicbaseball.com/nietz8.html

 

http://infovillage.com/PatronSaints/Nietzche.html   (This page dead as of 12/15/2003)

An excellent brief write-up with several good links.  Oh, and in case you're wondering, the URL *is* correctly recorded.  Click on it, you'll see!  :)



Nietzsche and Nihilism
(12/15/2003 Jack Miller's web presence seems to have evapourated, but maybe he'll return?)

Addressing the issues of Nietzsche and nihilism.
Miller also provides the exceedingly valuable Pirate Nietzsche Page described and linked below.  (12/15/2003 Which is just as absent from the internet as the Nietzsche and Nihilism page formerly linked here.)



http://www.cwu.edu/~millerj/nietzsche/index.html
(12/15/2003 This page has given 404 errors for months, now, but maybe it'll be back?)

Wanna read Nietzsche for free? The Pirate Nietzsche Page provides many of his writings, some in  their entirety!
 
 

Nietzsche's Car
(12/15/2003 For Oh 'fore.  What a drag.  I really loved this site.  Maybe he's put it up somewhere else?  If you find out, let me know!)

So, what kind of car *would* Nietzsche drive???
This site has many, many good historical pictures and excellent information, presented in a "homier" fashion than the more professional, academic Dartmouth pages. Click on "Hello, etc." Check that out, then scroll on down to the "biography" link--this fella has really got the photos! And he knows his stuff, too.

 

http://www.inquiria.com/nz/

Wanna read Nietzsche for free? Nietzsche's Labyrinth WAS an entry in the 'fficial Fred For Free internet library collection, but unfortunately it didn't last long.  I never did check their translations, but I did explore their many cool links to additional writings on Nietzsche's writings!  Labyrinth, indeed...  A maze that's fun and informative, so even when you're lost you'll see that you're found.  But it's gone now.  (Cue up "Flowers of the Forest," I s'pose.)


 

 

A closing comment: 

I have never sat in a classroom where a professor spoke falsely or ill of Nietzsche, but I have heard accounts of others who have had this experience.  There is positively no excuse for such malicious disinformation being willfully spread by those who pose as respectable educators.  Isolating phrases out of context has long been a means of intentional misrepresentation to detract from those who threaten the status quo, and this seems to be a key means by which Nietzsche is defamed.  I urge anyone who seeks truth to read Nietzsche, in his native German, when possible, cover-to-cover--not just the snippets an ignorantly-biased professor spews to further his own hate-filled agenda.  Such individuals are no better than Nietzsche's own racist, misdirected sister.

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