Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- PART ONE Youth
- Chapter 1 Da Capo
- Chapter 2 Pforta
- Chapter 3 Bonn
- Chapter 4 Leipzig
- Chapter 5 Schopenhauer
- PART TWO The Reluctant Professor
- PART THREE The Nomad
- Chronology
- Notes
- Bibliography of Secondary Literature
- Index
- Plate section
Chapter 5 - Schopenhauer
from PART ONE - Youth
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2011
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- PART ONE Youth
- Chapter 1 Da Capo
- Chapter 2 Pforta
- Chapter 3 Bonn
- Chapter 4 Leipzig
- Chapter 5 Schopenhauer
- PART TWO The Reluctant Professor
- PART THREE The Nomad
- Chronology
- Notes
- Bibliography of Secondary Literature
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
One day, towards the middle of November, 1865, shortly after arriving in Leipzig, Nietzsche succumbed, in spite of his straitened student means, to a sudden impulse:
I came across this book in old Rohn's second-hand bookshop, and taking it up very gingerly I turned over its pages. I know not what demon whispered to me: ‘Take this book home with you’. At all events, contrary to my habit of not being hasty in the purchase of books, I took it home. Back in my room I threw myself into the corner of the sofa with my booty, and began to allow that energetic and gloomy genius to work upon my mind. In this book, in which every line cried out renunciation, denial and resignation, I saw a mirror in which I espied the whole world, life, and my own mind depicted in frightful grandeur.
The ‘gloomy genius’ was Schopenhauer and the book The World as Will and Representation. (Since it had been published in Leipzig but sold extremely badly, numerous copies were probably still to be found in local second-hand bookshops.) As noted in the previous chapter, Nietzsche immediately became a ‘Schopenhauerian’. What, we must now ask, did that entail?
The World as Will and Representation
Arthur schopenhauer (1788–1860) had private means, which he cultivated astutely. He had inherited from his father, who (before jumping to his death from the attic of his house) had been a successful Hamburg businessman.
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- Friedrich NietzscheA Philosophical Biography, pp. 81 - 96Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
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