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Hello!
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was one of the most influential German philosophers of the 19th century, alongside Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. He developed a critique of Western culture, religion, and philosophy, leaving a profound impact on later generations. He went beyond the secularism of the Enlightenment, famously declaring "God is dead," which set the agenda for many intellectuals after his death. Nietzsche's defining characteristic was not just the themes he addressed but the style and subtlety with which he did so. He was a subject of much debate during his lifetime and gained recognition in the latter half of the 20th century as a significant figure in modern philosophy.
Friedrich Nietzsche was born in 1844 in Röcken, Prussia. His father, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, was a Lutheran pastor, and his mother was Franziska Oehler. After his father's death in 1849 and his younger brother's death in 1850, the remaining family moved to Naumburg, where they lived with his maternal grandmother. In 1864, Nietzsche began studying theology and classical philology at the University of Bonn but soon abandoned theology to focus on philology. In 1867, he volunteered for a year of military service with the Prussian artillery division in Naumburg. In 1868, an equestrian accident forced him to leave the military and return to academic life. That same year, he met Richard Wagner (another cannabis user, but that's another story), a central figure in his philosophical and musical development.
Nietzsche became a professor of classical philology at the University of Basel before completing his studies, earning his doctorate without a thesis defense due to the quality of his work at the University of Leipzig in 1869. Basel University appointed him as a professor of classical philology, and the following year, Nietzsche obtained Swiss citizenship and was promoted to honorary professor. After moving to Basel, Nietzsche renounced his German citizenship, officially remaining stateless for the rest of his life. In 1870, he received permission to serve in the Prussian army during the Franco-Prussian War, but only as a medical orderly, as neutral Switzerland prevented him from enlisting as a soldier. His brief military stint lasted a month but had a lasting impact on him, exposing him to the traumatic effects of war. He contracted diphtheria and dysentery, which severely damaged his health.
By 1872, his relationship with his fellow faculty members and the university community had deteriorated. In 1879, after experiencing health issues, he was forced to resign from his professorship, suffering from severe migraines and stomach attacks.
Nietzsche had known Richard Wagner and Wagner's wife, Cosima, since 1868. He had a deep affection for both and was a frequent guest at their home in Tribschen while he was in Basel, becoming part of their inner circle. In Ecce Homo, he wrote about Wagner: "Considering everything, I couldn't have endured my youth without Wagnerian music. For I was condemned to the Germans. When someone wants to escape unbearable pressure, they need hashish. Well, I needed Wagner. Wagner is the antidote par excellence to all German 'poison'—I don't deny it. From the moment a piano score of Tristan appeared—thank you very much, Mr. von Bülow!—I became a Wagnerian." Wagner appreciated Nietzsche, but his increasingly Christian artistic motives, as in Parsifal, along with his chauvinism and anti-Semitism, eventually became too much for Nietzsche to bear. By 1878, the rift between them was definitive.
In search of more favorable climates, Nietzsche traveled and lived as an independent author in various cities until 1889. He spent many summers in Sils Maria, near St. Moritz, Switzerland, and many autumns in Genoa, Rapallo, Turin, or Nice. Occasionally, he returned to Naumburg to visit his family. In the summer of 1882, he met Lou Salomé, fell in love with her, and proposed marriage, but she preferred his friend Paul Rée. Ultimately, she married another man. Nietzsche then moved to Rapallo, where he wrote the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra in just ten days (Nietzsche, 2005).
Nietzsche acknowledged his use of cannabis, stating that it allowed him to "approach the prodigious speed of mental processes." In some writings (unpublished until recently), we know that hashish led him to conclusions similar to those of William James (though James used other substances). Nietzsche concluded that "there must be a great number of consciousnesses and wills in every complex organic being: our dominant consciousness keeps them imprisoned in everyday life" (Nietzsche, 1988:401). Influenced by the French artists and writers of the Hashish Club (Baudelaire, Gautier, Balzac, and Delacroix) and especially by Wagner, Nietzsche used hashish while writing Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Some claim this was when his "madness" began (Marín Gutiérrez, 2003). "Through the influence of the intoxicating drink, of which all men and all primitive peoples speak in their hymns [...] those Dionysian emotions are awakened, through the elevation of which the subjective disappears in complete self-forgetfulness [...] Under the magic of the Dionysian not only does the bond between humans close up again; also, subjugated nature celebrates its reconciliation with its lost son: man" (Nietzsche, 1995).
Hashish also induced visions in him. While writing Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where he presented his theories on the Übermensch, Nietzsche's fascination with the Persian prophet was due to a dream he had in his youth. In his correspondence with his sister Elizabeth and Lou Andreas Salomé, Nietzsche described Zarathustra as capable of founding a new morality and as a destroyer or transmuter of established values. With cannabis, Nietzsche achieved laughter, a symptom of having regained innocence once one moves beyond the dividing line of good and evil and discovers the frailty and emptiness of social beliefs (Marín Gutiérrez, 2016).
Nietzsche had few friends. His works were rarely read and had little impact on society at the time. In 1885, he published only 40 copies of the fourth part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In 1886, his sister Elisabeth married the anti-Semite Bernhard Förster and went with him to Paraguay to found a German colony, a plan Nietzsche disliked. Their relationship continued in the same vein it always had, of conflict and reconciliation, as seen in their correspondence (Nietzsche, 2005a). By late 1888, Nietzsche's writings and letters began to reveal serious problems that led to his "madness." On his 44th birthday, Nietzsche had a mental collapse. He was arrested after causing public disturbances in Turin. Nietzsche was walking through Piazza Carlo Alberto when a commotion caused by a horse tripping and falling with the cart it was pulling caught his attention. Nietzsche ran to the horse, threw his arms around its neck to protect it from the onlookers, and then collapsed beside it. Many believe he was under the influence of hashish. In the following days, he wrote brief letters to some friends, including Cosima Wagner and Jacob Burckhardt, displaying signs of dementia and megalomania (Nietzsche, 2004).
In Ecce Homo (1889), Nietzsche wrote: "If a man wants to free himself from an unbearable feeling of oppression, he can take hashish." In Twilight of the Idols (1889), he wrote: "For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication. In advance, intoxication must have heightened the sensitivity without this happening. All kinds of intoxication, however different their origins may be, have this power."
In 1889, Nietzsche was brought from Turin to Basel to a psychiatric clinic, deeply mired in "madness." In 1893, Elisabeth Nietzsche returned from Paraguay after her husband's suicide. In 1897, Nietzsche lived in Weimar, where Elisabeth cared for him. On August 25, 1900, Nietzsche died after contracting pneumonia. The cause of Nietzsche's collapse has been a topic of speculation and remains uncertain. One diagnosis was a syphilis infection, but some of Nietzsche's symptoms were inconsistent with typical cases of syphilis. Another diagnosis was a form of brain cancer. He was also diagnosed with progressive cerebral paralysis. If our philosophy teachers in high school had told us that Nietzsche used cannabis, perhaps we would have paid more attention.