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    An Introductory Word on Nietzsche
    An Introductory Word on Nietzsche
    An Introductory Word on Nietzsche
    Ebook78 pages38 minutes

    An Introductory Word on Nietzsche

    By William Mackintire Salter

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    According to Professor Riehl of Berlin, the most widely read of serious writers in Germany today is Nietzsche. German ideas require time to cross the Channel and still more time to reach America; but already translations of Nietzsche’s numerous works are appearing in England, and within three or four years three books have been devoted to him in this country. Probably erelong the thoughtful among us will have to attend to him, as we have had to attend to other German writers in the past. As yet very confused ideas are current about him; his disciples are more or less confused themselves. Nietzsche once half-humorously remarked that the first disciples of a doctrine really prove nothing against it.


    Moreover, Nietzsche was a lonely, markedly individual thinker, caring more to express himself than to be comprehended by the ordinary reader, soliloquizing much; and he said many things that, unless we carefully, patiently attend, may mislead, have misled. I could easily quote passages from him that would offend you, as they did me when I first came upon them. No one needs to be studied more before he is judged. No one lends himself less to impressionist treatment, which is all he ordinarily gets from non-Continental writers. Indeed, I sometimes think that Nietzsche is a philosopher for philosophers and a moralist for moralists rather than for the common run of us, so subtle is his thinking, such an acquaintance with the history and refinements of philosophical and ethical speculation does he presuppose.


    CrossReach Publications

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCrossReach Publications
    Release dateFeb 1, 2019
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      An Introductory Word on Nietzsche - William Mackintire Salter

      An Introductory Word On Nietzsche1

      According to Professor Riehl of Berlin, the most widely read of serious writers in Germany today is Nietzsche.12 German ideas require time to cross the Channel and still more time to reach America; but already translations of Nietzsche’s numerous works are appearing in England, and within three or four years three books have been devoted to him in this country. Probably erelong the thoughtful among us will have to attend to him, as we have had to attend to other German writers in the past. As yet very confused ideas are current about him; his disciples are more or less confused themselves. Nietzsche once half-humorously remarked that the first disciples of a doctrine really prove nothing against it.

      Moreover, Nietzsche was a lonely, markedly individual thinker, caring more to express himself than to be comprehended by the ordinary reader, soliloquizing much; and he said many things that, unless we carefully, patiently attend, may mislead, have misled. I could easily quote passages from him that would offend you, as they did me when I first came upon them. No one needs to be studied more before he is judged. No one lends himself less to impressionist treatment, which is all he ordinarily gets from non-Continental writers.23 Indeed, I sometimes think that Nietzsche is a philosopher for philosophers and a moralist for moralists rather than for the common run of us, so subtle is his thinking, such an acquaintance with the history and refinements of philosophical and ethical speculation does he presuppose.

      Accordingly, it may be most useful, as well as most conformable to my abilities, to cover a quite limited field this morning; and I shall content myself, after giving a few facts about his life and a very general characterization of him, to portray somewhat in detail his state of mind during one—the first—period of his career. What I say may thus serve as a kind of introduction to the subject; and happy shall I be if I interest any one sufficiently to take it up on his own account.

      Nietzsche was the son of a Protestant pastor (indeed he came from a line of them), and was born in 1844 in Röcken, a small Prussian village. He had the best and strictest of school training at Naumburg and Schulpforta; at Schulpforta beginning a lifelong friendship with Paul Deussen, since well known as an authority on Hindu philosophy, a disciple of Schopenhauer, and now professor at Kiel. At twenty he entered the University of Bonn, removing later, with his great teacher, the philologist Ritschl, to Leipzig. His university studies were only interrupted by a period of military service. At twenty-four (in 1868) he was made professor of classical philology at Basel, becoming Ordinarius two years later. He also undertook work in the Pädagogium, or higher Gymnasium, of the city. Eight years later he was obliged on account of ill-health to relinquish his duties at the Pädagogium, and two years after, in 1878, he resigned, for the same reason, his university position as well. To his sister, who saw him in the spring following, he was hardly recognizable, "ein gebrochener, müder, geälterter Mann." He was then thirty-five. His subsequent life was more or less

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