Schopenhauer and Our Love and Hate for Culture

The appraisal of Nietzsche’s early reading of Schopenhauer from 1865 on and the extent of the initial impact has been investigated as to its philosophical influence and from the adoption, for example, of the role of the metaphysics of the will—remnants which can be partially seen in The Birth of Tragedy but, more tellingly, in other unpublished notes. The scholarly research has been able to trace direct and less obvious points of contact. Any immediate influence, philosophically speaking, on Nietzsche’s thinking is no longer obvious only a few years later and during the time when he was organizing the essays of the Untimely Mediations. A relationship and a transference has persisted; but it is not, in “Schopenhauer as Educator,” one would expect from one philosopher to another, on the nature of specific concepts as they inform a system of thought. Other, much more personal impressions can be intuited in the writings after the one on tragedy and for reasons that (as the quotes from the early 1870s show) are essential to his character. There has been no modification of his struggle as a teacher or as a philosopher. The extreme emotions are stated in the most visceral language possible, as love and hate, and as different “circle of duties” owing to his personal, individual encounter with Schopenhauer and his confrontation with culture.