Nietzsche is one of the greatest philosophers of all time.
[Ack!
No! Show me the Graphics]
[Quotes]
[Dictionary = Wörterbuch]
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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:
Nietzsche
was a Nazi.
FACT:
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.'"
aus
Also Sprach Zarathustra, Erster Teil, Die Reden Zarathustras, "Vom neuen Götzen."
"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.'"
from
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, First Part, The Teaching of Zarathustra, "Of new Idols."
This
is 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
Nietzsche
was anti-Semitic and racist.
FACT
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.
...but
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, which 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. Is there a link? Yea, verily!
http://www.freethought-web.org/ctrl/quotes_hitler.html
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.
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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:
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 ? 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 ? 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.inquiria.com/nz/
Wanna
read Nietzsche for ? Nietzsche's
Labyrinth is the latest entry into the 'fficial Fred For Free internet library
collection. I haven't checked their translations at all, 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.
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~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
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!):
http://www.cosmicbaseball.com/nietzsche.html
^This
page gave a 404 error 12/15/2003; I wrote the webmaster, again, even
These
other two are working fine:
http://www.cosmicbaseball.com/nietz6.html
http://www.cosmicbaseball.com/nietz8.html
...but
nietz8.html is slightly revisionist; it totally fails to reference his years
playing on the Paradise Pisces team!
...more Nietzsche pages that seem to have entered an alternate reality...
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 ? The
Pirate Nietzsche Page provides many of his
writings, some in their entirety!
Nietzsche's
Car
^12/15/2003 'Fore Oh 'for, this was a fun site, but it's
disappeared. 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.
...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.
English translations of German on this page are my own.
All the design, layout, and images are my own, unless otherwise noted.
On the graphics-enabled web page, the background image of Nietzsche is my manipulation of an image found at Nietzsche's Features: http://turn.to/nietzsche
Nietzsche's
signature jpg is the inverse of an image collected from the Nietzsche Hauptseite (alles auf deutsch!):
http://www.virtusens.de/walther/
Nietzsche's photo is my manipulation of an image found on the biography page at Nietzsche's Car.
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