WHY NIETZSCHE WAS NOT INSANE

(why nietzsche was not insane)

We get a nice feeling when life reflects philosophy. We can take a strange pleasure in hearing that the author of many works concerning tragedy and madness has gone insane – tragically. It satisfies us to know that author of the sentence “God is dead” was struck down by a mysterious malady. Poetic justice doubles as divine retribution.


The damned malcontent & philosopher Frederick Nietzsche proclaimed that life was pointless and all our values are arbitrarily invented. It was simply the Universe's good etiquette to put this bizarre man into a semi-comatose state which no sensible meaning could penetrate.


Yet – if we should discover, by some accident, or by careful reading and re-reading of his actual commentary, that his philosophy was sublimely optimistic, rationally spiritual, sensitive, community-oriented, even – faithful? What then? Surely we might be tempted to find a different story concerning the fate of this beautiful and lonely man, a fate updated by our understanding, a fate more appropriate...


There can be an alternative to the widely gossiped hypothesis that Nietzsche went tragically insane from sexual disease – or from “too much thinking!”


Here is another life & death of Nietzsche:


Consider that his peculiar intellectual work and his well-documented daily health practices are equivalent to what Hindus would call the life of a yoga-saint. It is know that each day he set himself to contemplation of beauty, to the minimal and organic regulation of diet, to various disciplines of self-overcoming, and endless toward deep meditation upon the singular energy which gives rise to all the appearances in the universe – the Will to Power. It is recorded often in Nietzsche's writings that he was in pursuit of a “creative surplus of power... the Great Health.”


A good Oriental education would presume that such a life moves radically toward a point of benevolent psychological mutation. This shift is expected to involve an increase of good humour, an intensification of compassion, and the identification of oneself with the infinite & transcendent power of creation. These are precisely the qualities that were reported by those who observed Nietsche's early “descent” into madness.


His letters became more joyful, more mythical and full of benevolent hilarity. He cannot resist describing his sense that he is God or Dionysus or whatever universal power those words could positively signify. And as for compassion? Nietzsche was initially arrested after trying to protect a horse that was being brutally beaten in the town square. German authorities incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital – “for his own good.”


Reports from his visiting friends describe him as being in excellent spirits, even unusually overflowing with wit and empathy. His closest philosophical companion, Peter Gast, recollects, “[...] He does not seem to be mad. If anything, it strikes me merely an intensification of the humorous part of his nature. Also his piano playing has improved immensely.” These sympathizers rejected the hasty diagnosis of syphillis – an explanation also later dismissed by the analysis of the Journal of Medical History. Unfortunately, Nietzsche's sister Elizabeth can not be counted among his sympathizers.


Herr Nietzsche had a deep fondness for his sister and always treated her very cordially. She, however, had not been able to tolerate the more organic and free-spirited aspects of his nature. Her own tastes ran toward domination and cruelty. In his letters, Nietzsche repeated chides for her for slanderous, self-serving gossip that she has been spreading about him and his ideas. When she marries a fanatic racist and would-be cult leader he finally disowns her... and she spends the next few years helping her husband run an Aryan compound in Paraguay. Abuse and mismanagement lead to overthrow and suicide of her husband, Herr Forster.


Now, without any other means of pursuing her domineering ambitions, she hears that her “dear brother” has been institutionalized for erratic behaviour. She sets sail for Europe and personally takes charge of his treatment. His health begins a hasty deterioration.


One possible explanation is that Nietzsche had an hereditary brain disease. He becomes moody, incoherent, infantile and prone to absence-seizure of increasing duration. These symptoms could be produced by a poisonous or radioactive element in his diet or, most troubling of all, by primitive electroshock experiments. These latter were certainly being conducted at the time. We must recall that the management of psychiatric institutions in 19th century Germany would hardly have met contemporary standards of ethical and rational procedures. In fact this particular psychiatric hierarchy would soon be diagnosing the terrible disease of sympathizing with Jews... and proscribing therapeutic “gas chambers.” Even the best of these institutions at that time must be described as dangerous, fanatical, political and highly experimental. A bad situation for Nietzsche with only his psychotic sister to protect him.


Whatever the specifics of his mistreatment it is clear that his initially overflowing vitality was rapidly extinguished, replacing a transformed man with an increasingly vegetative husk. He no longer made trouble for anyone. Instead he was a compliant martyr symbol for Elizabeth to interpret however she wished. She took him him and quite literally began to exploit his semi-conscious body as a tourist attraction – trotting him out for paying visitors and selling post-cards of his mindless, slumping body. She explained his philosophy as one of racial supremacy for the Aryans and revised his writings accordingly. Years later she would personally assure Adolf Hitler that he was fully supported by Nietzsche's works. This is the kind of woman who had both opportunity and motive to ensure her brother's total compliance.


This tale is still tragic in the extreme – but it shifts the onus of blame from Nietzsche's own body and mind to that of his sister and his untimely social circumstances. Of course we are not seeking to divorce him from responsibility for his life but instead to establish a new reconciliation between Nietzsche's personal history and that profound spirit of health and illumination that dazzles any sensitive reader of his work.


Revisionism?
Yes -- but not entirely unwarranted.


This gentle hermit of the Alps has been denounced as a racist, sexist, war-mongering nihilist, latent homosexual, compulsive masturbator, possible Antichrist, unlovable weirdo & an emotionally inadequate loner who probably went insane from Siphyllis because prostitutes were the only women who would have sex him!


What a malign and oddly “redneck” set of accusations – gossip that puzzles us all the more when we learn that this fellow was a tireless anti-nihilist, outspoke enemy of anti-semites, advocate of a post-nationalist Europe, lover of community, and a deeply spiritual philosopher whose most widely quoted negative remarks about women are usually pieces of dialogue from characters in his novel Thus Spake Zarathustra.

So perhaps revisionism is sorely needed.


Our alternative history is not proven, but neither is the conventional rumour. We must admit that there is, at least, a reasonable doubt...

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