A book review about Friedrich Nietzsche

Cate, Curtis. Friedrich Nietzsche (Woodstock: Overlook Press, 2005), p. 689.

Many history students usually cross paths with Nietzsche’s name, at one point or another. In a university setting, for example certain ideas may be described as “Nietzschean,” even though his intellectual creativity ranged widely from musical composition to poetry to philosophy and culture. Truly, he possessed an amazing intellect. After his death, German Nazis are said to have appropriated his sharply worded assertions of man’s ability to forge his own destiny, assertions that were revolutionary in many ways. He wrote at a time when democracy, capitalism and socialism were virtually unknown. In fact, he was an early critic of Christianity and other forms of organized religion, encouraging his detractors to label him as nihilistic and anti-authoritarian.  

Cate’s work gave me a glimpse of his humanity and how Nietzsche gradually formed the philosophy that bears his name. He enlightens the reader about the limited means that Friedrich’s mother and sister could command and why they became beholden to relatives in raising him. It could be said that in the absence of a father Friedrich grew up hen-pecked by them and this may have had something to do with the fact that he was unable to form a normal relationship with women. He suffered from headaches so severe that they literally incapacitated him for days. Still, he excelled in school, benefitting from Germany’s best teachers in a way that brought him to the attention of luminaries like Richard Wagner, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He died in a storm of headaches.

I came across Nietzsche’s name at the university too, both as a graduate student and later as a professor. I wanted to have a better grasp of him. It was a good read, though tedious at times, depending on the amount of detail I wanted to soak up. Cate is credited with writing the biographies of other distinguished European writers and so this volume obviously enjoys proper company on library shelves.