Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzschewas a German philosopher, cultural critic, poet and Latin and Greek scholar whose work has exerted a profound influence on Western philosophy and modern intellectual history. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869, at the age of 24. Nietzsche resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life, and...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth15 October 1844
CityRocken, Germany
CountryGermany
Men were considered "free" only so that they might be considered guilty - could be judged and punished: consequently, every act had to be considered as willed, and the origin of every act had to be considered as lying within the consciousness (and thus the most fundamental psychological deception was made the principle of psychology itself).
The misunderstanding of passion and reason, as if the latter were an independent entity and not rather a system of relations between various passions and desires; and as if every passion did not possess its quantum of reason.
So far no one had had enough courage and intelligence to reveal me to my dear Germans. My problems are new, my psychological horizon frighteningly comprehensive, my language bold and clear; there may well be no books written in German which are richer in ideas and more independent than mine.
Natural death is independent of all reason and is really an irrational death, in which the pitiable substance of the shell determines how long the kernel is to exist or not; in which, accordingly, the stunted, diseased and dull witted jailer is lord, and indicates the moment at which his distinguished prisoner shall die.
One lives for the day, one lives very fast, one lives very irresponsibly: precisely this is called "freedom."
The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude.
The free man is a warrior.
"This - is now my way - where is yours"? Thus did I answer those who asked me "the way". For the way - it does not exist!
Free from what? What does that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly, however, shall your eye show to me: free for what?
Do you call yourself Free? It is your ruling thought that I would hear, and not that you have escaped from a yoke.
How difficult it is to live when one feels that the judgment of many millenniums is around one and against one.
These four, however, seek the freedom of their will at the very point where they are most securely chained. It is as if the silkworm sought freedom of will in spinning. What is the reason?
A man unconsciously imagines that where he is strong, where he feels most thoroughly alive, the element of his freedom must lie.
He who has attained intellectual emancipation to any extent cannot, for a long time, regard himself otherwise than as a wanderer on the face of the earth and not even as a traveller towards a final goal, for there is no such thing.