Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900; Philosophers -- Germany -- Biography; Philosophy, German -- 19th century
In his contempt for woman and his abuse of her efforts for emancipation
Nietzsche again agrees with Hartmann, though only in so far as both
here recall Schopenhauer, whose echo Hartmann is in this connection.
But whereas Hartmann is here only a moralising doctrinaire with a
somewhat offensive dash of pedantry, one can trace beneath Nietzsche's
attacks on the female sex that subtle sense of woman's dangerousness
which points to painful experience. He does not seem to have known
many women, but those he did know, he evidently loved and hated, but
above all despised. Again and again he returns to the unfitness of the
free and great spirit for marriage. In many of these utterances there
is a strongly personal note, especially in those which persistently
assert the necessity of a solitary life for a thinker. But as regards
the less personal arguments about woman, old-world Germany here speaks
through the mouth of Nietzsche, as through that of Hartmann; the
Germany whose women, in contrast to those of France and England, have
for centuries been relegated to the domestic and strictly private life.
We may recognise in these German writers generally that they have an
eye for the profound antagonism and perpetual war between the sexes,
which Stuart Mill neither saw nor understood. But the injustice to
man and the rather tame fairness to woman, in which Mill's admirable
emancipatory attempt occasionally results, is nevertheless greatly to
be preferred to Nietzsche's brutal unfairness, which asserts that in
our treatment of women we ought to return to "the vast common sense of
old Asia."
Finally, in his conflict with pessimism Nietzsche had Eugen Dühring
(especially in his _Werth des Lebens_) as a forerunner, and this
circumstance seems to have inspired him with so much ill-will, so much
exasperation indeed, that in a polemic now open, now disguised, he
calls Dühring his ape. Dühring is a horror to him as a plebeian, as
an Antisemite, as the apostle of revenge, and as the disciple of the
Englishmen and of Comte; but Nietzsche has not a word to say about
Dühring's very remarkable qualities, to which such epithets as these
do not apply. But we can easily understand, taking Nietzsche's own
destiny into consideration, that Dühring, the blind man, the neglected
thinker who despises official scholars, the philosopher who teaches
outside the universities, who, in spite of being so little pampered by
life, loudly proclaims his love of life--should appear to Nietzsche as
a caricature of himself. This was, however, no reason for his now and
then adopting Dühring's abusive tone. And it must be confessed that,
much as Nietzsche wished to be what, for that matter, he was--a Polish
_szlachcic_, a European man of the world and a cosmopolitan thinker--in
one respect he always remained the German professor: in the rude abuse
in which his uncontrolled hatred of rivals found vent; and, after
all, his only rivals as a modern German philosopher were Hartmann and
Dühring.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account