Poor Nietzsche
This was a response to a question some1 asked- did Nietzsche's lousy luck with women influence his philosophy. i found it interesting...
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), one of the seminal modern philosophers and a forefather of existentialism, seems to have had a pretty sucky personal life. In chronic poor health, he was a lifelong but apparently unwilling bachelor. He made two marriage proposals that we know about, both of which were shot down.
In 1876, when he was 32, he popped the question to Mathilde Trampedach, a pretty, self-assured 21-year-old. It's a measure of Nietzsche's cluelessness in these matters that (a) he proposed to Mathilde mere days after meeting her and (b) he sent his rather breathless letter in the care of her boyfriend, conductor Hugo von Senger, whom she later married. Having been rejected, Nietzsche wrote Mathilde an apology, no doubt sensing that his performance had been less than totally cool.
He didn't improve with practice. Six years later he did the same thing with Lou Salome, a Russian-German writer who apparently turned the heads of quite a few male intellectuals in her day. This time he sent his proposal by way of philosopher Paul Ree, who had already proposed to Lou himself. She turned both men down but did suggest a menage a trois. Scholars somewhat prissily assume she was talking about an intellectual rather than a sexual arrangement, but in any case nothing came of it. Lou later married a professor, then had a celebrated affair with the poet Rainer Maria Rilke--she must be the woman you heard about in that lecture.
Nietzsche's philosophy has been tied to the rise of Nazism--unfairly, I might add, though his talk of supermen, slaves, the will to power, etc., sure lent itself to misinterpretation. The question is whether Nietzsche's lousy luck with women influenced his philosophy. Hard to say, but I bet his philosophy probably had something to do with his lousy luck. This is, after all, the man who inspires books like Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. Here are some of his thoughts on the female of the species: "When a woman has scholarly inclinations, there is usually something wrong with her sexually." "Woman has so much reason for shame; so much pedantry, superficiality, schoolmarmishness, petty presumption, petty licentiousness, and immodesty lies concealed in woman." "Everything about woman has one solution: that is pregnancy."
You can see where a guy like this might have trouble getting a date, much less a wedding band. Indeed, so far as we know, Nietzsche never had a genuine romance. He did manage to get laid but probably wished he hadn't; his mental derangement after 1889 and his death in 1900 were supposedly caused by an advanced case of syphilis contracted in a brothel. But what the hell. At least he could be philosophical about it.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), one of the seminal modern philosophers and a forefather of existentialism, seems to have had a pretty sucky personal life. In chronic poor health, he was a lifelong but apparently unwilling bachelor. He made two marriage proposals that we know about, both of which were shot down.
In 1876, when he was 32, he popped the question to Mathilde Trampedach, a pretty, self-assured 21-year-old. It's a measure of Nietzsche's cluelessness in these matters that (a) he proposed to Mathilde mere days after meeting her and (b) he sent his rather breathless letter in the care of her boyfriend, conductor Hugo von Senger, whom she later married. Having been rejected, Nietzsche wrote Mathilde an apology, no doubt sensing that his performance had been less than totally cool.
He didn't improve with practice. Six years later he did the same thing with Lou Salome, a Russian-German writer who apparently turned the heads of quite a few male intellectuals in her day. This time he sent his proposal by way of philosopher Paul Ree, who had already proposed to Lou himself. She turned both men down but did suggest a menage a trois. Scholars somewhat prissily assume she was talking about an intellectual rather than a sexual arrangement, but in any case nothing came of it. Lou later married a professor, then had a celebrated affair with the poet Rainer Maria Rilke--she must be the woman you heard about in that lecture.
Nietzsche's philosophy has been tied to the rise of Nazism--unfairly, I might add, though his talk of supermen, slaves, the will to power, etc., sure lent itself to misinterpretation. The question is whether Nietzsche's lousy luck with women influenced his philosophy. Hard to say, but I bet his philosophy probably had something to do with his lousy luck. This is, after all, the man who inspires books like Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. Here are some of his thoughts on the female of the species: "When a woman has scholarly inclinations, there is usually something wrong with her sexually." "Woman has so much reason for shame; so much pedantry, superficiality, schoolmarmishness, petty presumption, petty licentiousness, and immodesty lies concealed in woman." "Everything about woman has one solution: that is pregnancy."
You can see where a guy like this might have trouble getting a date, much less a wedding band. Indeed, so far as we know, Nietzsche never had a genuine romance. He did manage to get laid but probably wished he hadn't; his mental derangement after 1889 and his death in 1900 were supposedly caused by an advanced case of syphilis contracted in a brothel. But what the hell. At least he could be philosophical about it.