Rudolf
Steiner and Friedrich Nietzsche
Probably the best source for
understanding Nietzsche's influence on Steiner
is Rudolf Steiner's book Friedrich Nietzsche,
Ein Kämpfer Gegen Sein Zeit (a title
I would translate as: Friedrich Nietzsche:
a Fighter Doing Battle against his Times)
published 1895. Lest his readers mistake
him for
a disciple of Nietzsche, Rudolf Steiner says
on the very first page:
"In
the words in which he expressed his relationship
to Schopenhauer, I would like to describe
my relationship to Nietzshe: "I belong
to those readers of Nietzsche who, after
they have read the first page, know with
certainty that they will read all pages,
and listen to every word he has said. My
confidence in him was there immediately...
I understood him as if he had written just
for me, in order to express all that
I would
say intelligibly but immediately and foolishly."
One can speak thus and yet be far from
acknowledging oneself as a "believer" in
Nietzsche's world conception. But Nietzsche
himself
could not have been further from wishing
to have such "believers." Did
he not put into Zarathustra's mouth these
words:
"You say
you believe in Zarathustra, but of
what account is Zarathustra? You are
my believer,
but of what account are all believers?
"You have
not searched for yourself as yet; there
you found me. Thus do all believers,
but,
for that reason, there is so little
in all believing.
"Now I advise
you to forsake me, and find yourselves;
and only when you have denied me will I
return to you.
Nietzsche is no Messianic founder of
a religion; therefore he can wish for
friends who support his opinion, but he
can not wish for confessors to his teaching,
who give up their own selves to find his."
Rudolf Steiner, Friedrich Nietzsche:
A Fighter for Freedom
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This theme Steiner repeated
frequently when referring to Nietzsche. In a memorial
address given September 13th, 1900, Steiner speaks
of himself in the following way:
"It is strange
that with the infatuation for Nietzsche
in our day, someone must appear whose
feelings, no less than many others, are
drawn to the particular personality, and
yet who, in spite of this, must constantly
keep before him the deep contradictions
which exist between this type of spirit,
and the ideas and feelings of those who
represent themselves as adherents of his
world conception."
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Or in an article in the Wiener
Klinischer Rundschau (14th year, No. 30, 1900):
"For Nietzsche
does not work upon his contemporaries
through the logical power of his arguments.
On the contrary, the wide dissemination
of his concepts is to be traced to the
same reasons which make it possible for
zealots and fanatics to play their role
in the world at all times."
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Hardly the words of a man "under
the sway of" Nietzsche. We find Steiner repeatedly
distancing himself from the "zealots and
fanatics" or even ordinary "adherents"
of Nietzsche's world conception.
The book Friedrich Nietzsche,
Ein Kämpfer Gegen Sein Zeit is divided
into three sections, 1. a critical analysis of
Nietzsche's character, 2. an exploration of the
idea of the Superman, and 3. an attempt to trace
Nietzsche's path of development. Rather than the
fawning applause of an acolyte, we find a profound
effort to place Nietzsche in the context of various
directions in the philosophy of his times, an
effort that to this day ranks as one of the more
insightful attempted.
In his book, Steiner praised
Nietzsche's stance against nationalism:
"The patriotic feelings of
his German compatriots are also repugnant
to Nietzsche's instincts. He cannot
make his feelings and his thinking
dependent upon the circles of the
people
amid whom he was born and reared,
nor upon the age in which he lives. "It
is so small-townish," he says
in his Schopenhauer als Erzieher (Schopenhauer
as an Educator) to make oneself
duty-bound to opinions which no
longer bind one
a few hundred miles away. Orient
and Occident are strokes of chalk
which
someone draws before our eyes to
make fools of our timidity. I will
make
the attempt to come to freedom,
the young soul says to itself;
and then
should it be hindered because accidentally
two nations hate and fight each
other, or because an ocean lies
between two
parts of the earth, or because
there a religion is taught which
did not
exist a few thousand years previously?" The
soul experiences of the Germans
during the War of 1870 found so
little echo
in his soul that "while the
thunder of battle passed from Wörth
over Europe," he sat in a
small corner of the Alps, "brooding
and puzzled, consequently most
grieved, and at the
same time not grieved," and
wrote down his thoughts about the
Greeks."
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So we see Rudolf Steiner
as an early scholar of Nietzsche; someone
who made great efforts to understand Nietzsche's
thought, but at the same time someone
who
distanced himself from Nietzsche's conclusions,
and from the bands of enthusiasts who
took
up the cause in Nietzsche's name.
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