The Rudolf Steiner Archive

17. Friedrich Nietzsche in the Light of Spiritual Science

[ 1 ] Today I would like to begin with a personal experience. I once had the opportunity to visit a man in the afternoon, around two o’clock. He was lying on a reclining chair and at first seemed so lost in his own thoughts that he did not notice that I and another person had entered the room. He continued to ponder and did not seem to take any notice of those around him. One might—and I ask that you weigh every word carefully—get the impression that one is standing before a person who had been intensely occupied with serious questions and problems all morning, then had lunch, and is now using this time to let what he has been working on pass through his soul once more. One gets the impression of this figure, who is wrapped up to the chest in a blanket, as an extraordinarily fresh person whose mental vitality is also reflected in his fresh complexion. One might get the impression of a truly rare human forehead—which is actually a combination of a beautiful artist’s forehead and a thinker’s forehead—the impression of a person who is contemplating the great problems of humanity with complete freshness. This person, who could have made such an impression on anyone who saw her, had already been insane for more than three years at the time she presented this image. Moments like the one described alternated with terrible ones, but let us hold on to this moment.

[ 2 ] The person was Friedrich Nietzsche, whom I had not seen before and could not see afterward. You can appreciate that, from the standpoint of the humanities, such a sight is in itself something deeply significant. Because the description actually contradicts the true facts, I said: One could have had this impression. One must bear in mind a peculiar phenomenon: that a contradiction arises between the inner and the outer. At that time, Nietzsche knew nothing more of his own work. He did not know that he had written his works, was unaware of his surroundings, and so on. And yet there he lay on his bed, looking as fresh as if imbued with a profound thought, and one could have come away with a strange sensation—one that will be better understood by those who have long been engaged with intellectual problems—namely, the sensation: How is it that this soul still hovers around this body?

[ 3 ] A deep exploration of Nietzsche’s personality and his intellectual work can, in a certain sense, provide an answer to this question. Indeed, Nietzsche is a truly unique personality. Hardly anyone will succeed in penetrating his essence if they take the stance of “I either accept or reject”—if they cannot selflessly engage with what this personality was in and of itself. It may be that anthroposophists, in particular, take offense at my book Friedrich Nietzsche, a Fighter Against His Time. For it is in the nature of our time to say: “Well, anyone who speaks of Nietzsche in this way must also be a Nietzschean.”—But I can say this: If I had not succeeded in making it a reality—that is, in immersing myself in a personality without regard for my own experiences—I would not be speaking of it today as I am able and permitted to do.

[ 4 ] There is a perspective of independent objectivity. It is as if one were the mouthpiece of another being. For Friedrich Nietzsche, this kind of perspective is necessary in and of itself. If Nietzsche were able to perceive things from within his own mind today, what his followers and opponents write would likely make a strange impression on him. Both would strike him as highly peculiar. He would feel revulsion toward all his actions. His own words would stand before his soul: “What is the use of all believers …; only when you have all denied me will I return to you.” And now, having set aside the feeling we might have experienced at Nietzsche’s sickbed, let us try to form a picture of Nietzsche as he appears through himself and through modern intellectual life.

[ 5 ] Nietzsche stood out during this period in a way quite different from many other thinkers. We can perhaps best grasp the uniqueness of his soul by saying that much of what for other people was a concept, a notion, an idea, or a conviction became, for him, a sensation, a feeling, or an innermost experience. Let us allow the images of modern intellectual life over the last fifty to sixty years—which also passed him by—to flash before our minds. The materialism of the 1850s, which had its adherents in nearly all civilized countries, declared: Nothing is real except matter and its motion. It is motion that causes matter to take the form in which we see it. In the brain, motion gives rise to thought. — We recall the time when it was said that language was a development of animal sounds. We also remember that experience and sensation were regarded as higher instincts. We remember that it was not the least intelligent minds who articulated such ideas. The most dignified and consistent among them even found a certain satisfaction in them. There was not a single one who would have thought: “I do not view the dominion of matter with satisfaction.” Most said: “I find the highest bliss in the thought that everything is destined to dissolve.”—Many could revel in this. We recall the fact that a systematic structure also emerged within this worldview, and that it thereby reached its highest flowering.

[ 6 ] And then let us imagine a different picture—the picture of the conception of the soul held by such a person, one who turns his gaze toward the great ideals of humanity, who looks back to Buddha, Hermes, Pythagoras, and Plato, and who was able to find inspiration in the figure of Christ Jesus, the bearer of human spiritual states, the bearer of all that uplifts the human heart. We imagine a person who was able to empathize with all of this. In doing so, we consider that this person said to himself: “Ah, all those Buddhas, Hermes, Pythagoras, Plato—they were all just dreaming of lofty spiritual ideals, of something that could uplift them.”

[ 7 ] I am not describing anything made up. I am describing to you the soul of many people of the 1860s. Among people who were, as it were, overwhelmed by materialism, who regarded ideals as mere illusions, these thoughts were present. And a deep tragedy weighed upon the souls of such people. It was during such a time that Friedrich Nietzsche lived as a student and as a young professor. It was during such a time that he developed his thinking. He was unlike any of the other thinkers of his time. His character was entirely different from that of his contemporaries. One can understand him from a spiritual-scientific perspective. If one takes into account that a human being consists of several bodies, then one can see that even the young Nietzsche was an exception in terms of the interplay between his etheric body and his physical body. In Nietzsche’s case, there was a much weaker connection between the etheric body and the physical body, so that what this personality experienced inwardly and emotionally was experienced in a much more spiritual way, much more independently of the physical body than is the case with other people.

[ 8 ] At first, it was the student Nietzsche who was introduced to the world of the Greeks. For him, there were now two currents in his inner life. We shall call one of them something innate, something inherent in his karma. This was a deeply religious trait, a mood-like quality of his being—a trait that must revere something, that must look up to something. Religious feeling was present; and because of the peculiar way in which this etheric body was connected to the physical body, the prerequisite for this was present in him: an immense receptivity to what could be read between the lines of books and heard between the words of teachers—to what could be felt and sensed there. Thus an image of the ancient Greek world took shape within him that completely filled his soul—a unique image that lived more in feeling than in clear conception. If we are to truly bring this image before our minds as it was experienced by the young Nietzsche, we must consider him and his time.

[ 9 ] Nietzsche had only a loose connection to the materialism of his time. He could understand it, but this materialism was something that hardly affected him. Since his etheric body was only loosely connected to his physical body, the materialistic era affected him only about as much as when a floating figure barely touches the ground with the hem of its garment. Only one thing was present in him as a vague feeling: the sense of deep dissatisfaction with such a worldview. The feeling that a person who holds such a worldview faces the desolation and emptiness of life—that was what touched his soul like a faint breeze. Above this rose what lived in his soul as a vision of Greek civilization. We understand this when we learn to grasp what lived in his soul. This image was not one for which one can choose harsh words. Let us try to portray it as it can be revealed to us through spiritual science.

[ 10 ] The scholar of the humanities looks back on an ancient phase of human development of which history knows nothing. Only clairvoyance can shed light on these times, when wisdom was lived quite differently than later, on the era of the Mysteries, when people who were ready for it were initiated into the Mysteries and, through the initiates, were led to a vision of human evolution. If we wish to form a picture of the lower mysteries, we must bring a particular process to mind. This initiation or instruction did not take place as it does today. The learning consisted of something entirely different. Let us suppose that the idea—which people today grasp so dryly—that spiritual beings descended into the material world, while the material world itself ascended and developed into modern humanity; let us suppose that this idea, which is so sober, was presented at that time through a powerful image. One could literally see the descent of the spirit and the ascent of the material. This took place quite literally; and what the student saw there was wisdom for him; it was science for him—not expressed in concepts, but perceptible to him through direct experience. There was something else involved as well. The scene the student witnessed was such that he sat before it filled with deep, devout feelings. There he received wisdom and religion as one. Moreover, the entire scene was beautiful. It was true, genuine art. The student was enveloped by art, wisdom, and religion, all united as one.

[ 11 ] It is inherent in the course of human development that what was once united has been separated: art, science, and religion. For there could have been no progress in human development if people had kept all of these united. In order for each to be perfected individually, what was once united—science, art, and religion—had to be separated, so that they might later converge at a higher level of perfection. Imagine a veil spread over what now appears in sharp contours, so that one blends into the other. And consider that in Greek cultural life, an echo of humanity’s ancient development is playing out, and only a dim inkling, a feeling of it, has remained in Greek cultural life.

[ 12 ] This gives you a sense of what lived within the young Nietzsche; that was the fundamental tone of his soul. The desolation of sensory existence is suffering; art, science, and religion are given to us to endure it. To spread redemption over this suffering—that is the fundamental mood of his soul. The image of Greek art increasingly came into his field of vision. Art became for him the great means of enduring life in the realm of the senses. This is how he grew up. He was in this frame of mind as a high school graduate. It was as is often the case with such natures: with great ease, he mastered everything that others can master only with difficulty. Thus it was easy for Nietzsche to acquire the external tools of the philologist and thereby bring order to his fundamental disposition. Then came the time when he perfected himself more and more. Now we see how a sense of the ancient spiritual connection between the various currents of humanity gradually dawned on him. He sensed this connection as an indefinite darkness. He sensed a higher power at work within individual personalities. When he delved into authentic Greek thought—into what Thales, Anaxagoras, and Heraclitus had conceived—a remarkable idea took shape within him, one that sets him so distinctly apart from others. He himself once said: “When I delve into the Greek philosophers, I cannot do so in the same way as others; for me, that is merely a means.”—Now what distinguishes him so markedly from other thinkers begins to take shape within him. We can best understand this through an example. Let’s take Thales. An ordinary scholar absorbs Thales’s teachings, but for him, Thales is more or less a historical example. He studies in him the spirit of the times. For Nietzsche, all of this philosopher’s thoughts are merely a point of entry, merely a path to the soul of Thales himself; Thales stands before him in the flesh, vividly and tangibly. He forms a friendship with him; he can interact with him; he has a purely personal, friendly relationship with him. Every figure becomes real for Nietzsche; they stand in a genuine relationship with him. Look at what he wrote; look at that essay: “Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks,” 1872/73—there you will find it. His purpose is to form friendships, through philosophy, with those he describes. But when one enters into such intimate relationships, it means something entirely different for the heart and soul than our dry science. Just think how dreary the writings of a scholarly historian are! That can only be a scholarly hypothesis.

[ 13 ] Love, sorrow, and pain—the full range of the soul’s emotions—can, for ordinary people, only be fully expressed toward the people who surround us in everyday life. Everything—from the deepest pain to the highest bliss, the entire spectrum of feelings—could play out in Nietzsche’s experience with the souls that arose for him from the gray depths of the spirit. The beings to whom he felt drawn dwell in realms entirely different from his daily environment. What ordinary people experience in everyday life unfolds for Nietzsche in relation to the friends who have emerged for him from the spiritual world. Thus, a spiritual world existed for him in which he experienced suffering, joy, and love. He was always, as it were, hovering somewhat above reality, the sensory world. That is the great difference that sets him apart from other people of his time.

[ 14 ] And now let’s see how this life unfolded! Above all, we see his remarkable ease of comprehension. He hadn’t even earned his doctorate yet when the University of Basel sent a request to his teacher Ritschl, the great philologist, asking if he could recommend a student for a professorship. He recommended Nietzsche, and when, in view of Nietzsche’s youth, they asked whether he was truly qualified, Ritschl wrote: “Nietzsche will be able to do anything he wants.” And so the young scholar became a professor in Basel. He was awarded his doctorate after he had already become a professor—without taking an exam—since the gentlemen before whom he was to take the exam said: “But, colleague, we cannot possibly examine you.”—These things take their easy course, floating above reality, in a perfectly understandable way.

[ 15 ] A twofold event takes place for him. He comes to know the inner life of a person who has already died and of a living person. In Schopenhauer, he encounters a soul that he cannot regard merely as a person whose philosophical system he examines and admires, and whose teachings he would like to swear by; rather, he feels toward him as if he wanted to say to him: “Father!” And he comes to know Richard Wagner, who had remarkable spiritual experiences that resonated with what Nietzsche felt when contemplating Greek culture. We need only sketch Richard Wagner in a few strokes. We need only recall that Richard Wagner said: There must be a primal source of culture where all the arts were united. - He himself felt the great ideal of humanity: as an artist, to bring the arts together again, to unify them, and to imbue them with a religious sense of consecration. - Now let us consider how something came alive within Nietzsche that conjured into his soul that primordial state of humanity, when the arts were still united. We recall his words: “If you wish to portray the true human being, you must take into account that something higher lives within every human being. If you wish to portray true humanity, you must turn to the forms that transcend the sensual.” - He was always somewhat suspended above the reality of the sensory world. Because he sought that Higher, because he sought the figures that transcend sensuality, he was led to the “Superman,” the spirit-filled Superman. Thus he created his pure, serene, mythical figures.

[ 16 ] With this sentiment, he was led to the higher language—to music—to the language of the orchestra, which could become the expression of the soul. Let us recall what lived in Richard Wagner’s soul: before him stood the figures of Shakespeare and Beethoven. In Shakespeare, he saw characters in action. He saw figures whose actions unfolded when their souls were stirred, when they experienced feelings of pain and suffering and feelings of the highest bliss. According to Richard Wagner, Shakespeare’s dramas reveal the result of the characters’ inner experiences. This is a form of drama that seeks solely to externalize and illustrate the inner world. And in Shakespeare, one can sense the inner experiences of the characters. Alongside this, the figure of Beethoven the symphonist appeared to him. In the symphony, Wagner saw the expression of what lives in the soul—the entire spectrum of feeling between suffering and bliss. In the symphony, the soul’s feelings find their full expression, yet they do not become action; they do not enter the physical space. At one point, this inner experience seemed to him to be striving with all its might to manifest itself outwardly in Beethoven’s music—in the finale of the Ninth Symphony. That is where Wagner wanted to step in. He wanted, in a certain sense, to carry on Beethoven’s work. He wanted to bring about a synthesis, a reconciliation between the art of Shakespeare and that of Beethoven. Something of that primordial human culture was alive in Wagner. What lived within him as an impulse must have appeared to Nietzsche as the realization of his most significant dreams.

[ 17 ] Nietzsche had a different relationship with Schopenhauer. He read Schopenhauer with fervor. As with every school of thought, he also had his reservations about Schopenhauer. This made him all the more eager to call him “Father.” He had a deep connection with him. Schopenhauer did not carry the same weight for him as Richard Wagner did. He felt Schopenhauer’s purifying, ennobling influence. This is how we see the genesis of his work Schopenhauer as Educator. All of this sprang from the feeling of calling him “Father.” One cannot imagine a more vivid bond between the living and the dead.

[ 18 ] But there was one question that remained for Nietzsche, one that Schopenhauer did not clarify for him. The question of cultural contexts constantly pressed upon him. He had intuitively grasped the primal state of humanity, in which great individual spirits—the initiates—instructed and guided people in the mysteries. Thus he arrived at the concept of the “Overman,” who, as he believed, must necessarily emerge from the history of natural development. This is his concept of the Overman, as the following statement already shows: “By elevating itself to the great human being, nature fulfills its highest goal: the great personality.” Thus, for him, nature and humanity are united. And now everything he experiences becomes anything but theory. It all becomes a deeply personal spiritual experience. It becomes something in which his pain, his joy, and his zest for action blaze forth. What he says matters less than the fact that, for us, his words point to what glowed in his heart. And from the resonance of what he experienced in his soul in this way emerges his first significant work: The Birth of Tragedy. Here he literally stumbles upon how Greek culture developed from ancient Greece, from the state of the united arts. And one may say: Here something of the deep truth resonates. He knows nothing of that primordial culture that one comes to know through spiritual science. He merely senses it. He believes that the very beginnings of art played themselves out in grotesque, paradoxical forms; that people expressed themselves through wild, grotesque figures. And he depicts this as if it had taken place in an instinctive state, whereas this art of the mysteries was, in fact, the highest expression of the spiritual. The way human beings stood within the mysteries appeared to Nietzsche as if they had made themselves into works of art, as if they had imitated the rhythm of the stars and the events of the world in dance, as if they had sought to express the law of the world. But Nietzsche regarded all of this as instinctive feeling. He did not know that the laws of the universe were given to humanity by initiates in the Mysteries in the purest and noblest symbolic forms. That is why all of this takes on that wild expression in Nietzsche. But it is a glimmer of the reality.

[ 19 ] But how, then, does Nietzsche view later tragedy? He said that it was all an expression and product of a later era; by then, man had already lost his connection with the divine; in his dance, he no longer imitated the laws of the world; he imitated them only in image. He saw in it a serene image of the primordial, but not the primordial itself. Thus, even in Sophocles we already encounter an Apollonian art that expressed the primordial through a static image. [Gaps in the postscript.] And through Richard Wagner, Nietzsche was led back to the ancient Dionysian element. You can see how the conclusion of his work The Birth of Tragedy is a mixture of longing, intuition, and confusion.

[ 20 ] Now, however, he was increasingly confronted with external reality. He came to understand what modern culture had put in place of the old. What he had been unable to recognize in the first period of his life—what modern materialism had brought about—he now came to understand. And he now came to understand, in his own way, the sentiment I described—that many of the noblest minds found a veritable bliss in materialism. Now all ideals faded from his view. As if “put on ice,” as he once put it, all these old ideals became to him. Now they appeared to him as a natural evil, arising from human weakness. The work Human, All Too Human was written.

[ 21 ] Now comes the second period of his life. He lived out the materialistic worldview in such a way that, in his own way, he had to immerse his heart in it. It was his fate that he had to enclose everything he wanted to think within his soul. And it was precisely from this worldview—from Darwinism—that something like a redemption dawned upon him, which in turn led him out of materialism. He viewed the evolution of humanity through a Darwinian lens. He told himself: Human beings have evolved from the animal kingdom. Yet he also drew the consequences of this view. He had to draw them because he wanted to see clearly with regard to materialism. For he had to live with it. Thus he came to the conclusion: When I look at animal forms, I see in them the remnants of an earlier culture. When I look at human beings, I must say that they contain, as a possibility, the state of perfection of the future. I may call the ape a bridge between human beings and animals. What, then, is a human being? A bridge between the animal and the superhuman. Thus the Übermensch slumbers within man—Nietzsche felt, had to feel, what it means to live in such a way that what can become appears. That was the lyrical mood of his Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in the song of the Übermensch, the song that depicts the future. Emotion bound him to this thought; emotion was what filled him.

[ 22 ] And now we see how another thought is linked to this one. All lyrical moods resonate in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. But Nietzsche had no such points of reference as we have in theosophy. For him, that did not exist. The idea of reincarnation—the notion that the “Overman” lives within the human being as a higher divine self in the human body—did not enter his field of vision. We see the “Overman” returning, so that we can view with hope the upward trajectory of evolution, not the repetition of the same. Nietzsche knew nothing of this. Yet there is a mysterious connection between what he said and our spiritual-scientific perspective. For Nietzsche, the idea of the “Superman” was now linked to another: the idea of the eternal recurrence of the same. This idea struck him as remarkable and presented itself to him in such a way that all things had already existed countless times. This idea was Nietzsche’s true, most essential thought. Just as you all think and feel now, so have you thought and felt countless times before, and so will you think and feel countless times in the future. This idea now merged with that of the Übermensch. He had to immerse himself in both of these ideas.

[ 23 ] Now imagine Nietzsche’s organism; think of the loosening of his etheric body, which was always ready to separate itself from the physical body. Imagine a person who takes the thoughts he forms terribly seriously, and imagine the mood: As I am, as I feel, so shall I be and feel for all eternity. — And now consider how he experienced the loosening of his etheric body. He experienced it in such a way that he suffered the most excruciating headaches for a hundred days a year. Then you can understand how this came to life in his soul: this has been here countless times, and it will return countless times. - On the one hand, we find comfort in the thought of the Übermensch; on the other, we find despair in the thought of the eternal recurrence of the same. And we understand sentiments such as: “Blessed is he who still—has a homeland!” We feel much of what is connected with the sense of homeland. In Friedrich Nietzsche’s uniqueness, we sense something connected to the fate of the 19th-century worldview. He must have felt a sense of homelessness. It is a testament to how the worldviews of his time live on in a deeply sensitive soul, and how a longing for a spiritual home arises within it.

[ 24 ] Thus we see how it is only through theosophy that it becomes possible to arrive at a synthesis of wisdom, art, and religion, which are to be reunited into a great culture through spiritual science. If you take the idea of the eternal recurrence of the same and develop it further so that it signifies reincarnation—through which this idea first attains its true meaning—you will be filled with the hope that this union of wisdom, art, and religion will be reborn. It is not the recurrence of the same, but a constant process of perfection.

[ 25 ] We may say that one major question stands out to us in Nietzsche’s life: How is it possible for a truly profound soul to live within a materialistic worldview? In Nietzsche’s soul, we are faced with a soul that was incapable of finding the answers to the anxious questions of our culture. It lacked what we find through the anthroposophical worldview. And let us imagine another soul that has the possibility of finding these answers through anthroposophy, which gives us answers to the questions that the deepest souls must feel. Nietzsche posed the questions, but he could not answer them. Longing filled him; longing destroyed him. He is proof that the great problems the spirit must pose must be answered through anthroposophy. Nietzsche’s cry seeks a remedy for this longing. And that remedy lies in anthroposophy. Longing was the force of Nietzsche’s soul, which remained so alive that it sustained the outward appearance of this personality as a reflection of inner vitality. It was as if, beyond the death of the spirit, the soul wanted to remain with the body in order to catch a glimpse of the answers that Nietzsche could not attain—answers he yearned for and that ultimately shattered him. From Nietzsche’s soul, we can sense the necessity of anthroposophy. Let us imagine him as the great questioner, the one who posed the questions of humanity, the answers to which necessitate an anthroposophical spiritual science.