CHAPTER 11
Nietzsche and Sartre:
Naturalism and Existentialism
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Friedrich Nietzsche was bom in Rocken, Saxony. After the
death of his father, in 1849, the family moved to Naumburg.
There he was educated in the best schools and attended
Schulpforta, a famous Protestant boarding school, where he
founded an artistic society called Germania. He studied at the
Universities of Bonn and Leipzig, and at the age of twenty-four
he became professor of classics at the University of Basel in
Switzerland.
The Birth o f Tragedy from the Spirit o f Music, Nietzsche’s
first book, written in 1872, dealt with Greek tragedy. He ex
plored the two basic desires in man, the conflict they produce,
and how tragedy must be understood in the terms he called
Apollonian and Dionysian. Apollo, the sun god, represented the
force of order, while Dionysus, the god of wine, represented the
irrational forces in the universe which drive man. Nietzsche saw
the union of these two forces as a means to propel man into a new
morality.
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, Geneal
ogy o f Morals, and The Antichrist, Nietzsche attacked the
religious foundations of morals, the conduct of Europeans, and
the Judeo-Christian heritage, and called for a re-evaluation of
traditional morality. The Will to Power, his last work, also dealt
with the philosophy that is clearly enunciated in the title.
In 1880 his mental and physical health began to deteriorate,
and in 1888 he suffered a severe mental breakdown. It is ironic
that Nietzsche, the creator of the “Superman,” spent the last
twelve years of his life in a childlike state, totally unable to
communicate, fingering the keys of a piano, alone and docile.
Nietzsche’s basic premise is based on a philosophy called
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