Nietzsche was most assuredly very ingenious; he was unusually talented but he was not a genius in the full sense of the word. He was abnormal, titanic in his pretensions and aims, and erratic. Breaking down under the burden of his own thought, he ended his tragical career in an insane asylum.
The mental derangement of Nietzsche may be an unhappy accident but it appears to have come as the natural result of his philosophy. Nietzsche, by nature modest and tractable, almost submissive, was, as a thinker, too proud to submit to anything, even to truth. Schopenhauer had taught him that the intellect, with its comprehension of truth, is a mere slave of the will, ancilla voluntatis. Our cognition of the truth has a purpose; it must accommodate itself to our own interest. But the self is sovereign; the self wants to assert itself; the self alone has a right to exist; and the self that does not dare to be itself is a servile, menial creature. Therefore Nietzsche preaches the ethics of self-assertion and pride. He is too proud to recognize the duty of inquiry, the duty of adapting his mind to the world, or of recognizing the cosmic order of the universe as superior to his self. He feels bigger than the cosmos; he is himself; and he wants to be himself. His own self is sovereign; and if the world is not satisfied to submit to his will, the world may go to ruin. If the world breaks to pieces, it will only cause him to laugh; on the other hand, if his very self is forced to the wall in this conflict, he will still, from sheer pride, not suffer himself to abandon his principle of the absolute sovereignty of selfhood. He will not be a man, human and humane, but an overman (Uebermensch), a superhuman despiser of humanity and humaneness. The multitudes are to him like cattle to be used, to be milked, fleeced and butchered, and Nietzsche calls them herds, animals of the flock, Heerdentiere.
Nietzsche's philosophy is unique in being throughout the expression of an emotion—the proud sentiment of a self-sufficient sovereignty of self. It rejects with disdain both the methods of the intellect, which submit the problems of life to an investigation, and the demands of morality, which recognize the existence of duty.
Other philosophers have claimed that rights imply duties and duties, rights. Nietzsche knows of rights only. Nietzsche claims that there is no objective science save by the permission of the sovereign self, nor is there any "ought," except for slaves and fools. He prides himself on being "the first Unmoralist," implying the absolute sovereignty of man—of the overman—and the foolishness as well as falsity of moral maxims.
[DEUSSEN'S RECOLLECTIONS]
Professor Paul Deussen, Sanskritist and philosopher of Kiel, was Friedrich Nietzsche's most intimate friend. They were chums together in school in Schulpforta, and remained friends to the end of Nietzsche's life. Nietzsche had come to Schulpforta in 1858, and Deussen entered the next year in the same class. Once Nietzsche, who as the senior of the class had to keep order among his fellow scholars during working periods and prevent them from making a disturbance, approached Deussen while he sat in his seat peacefully chewing the sandwich he had brought for his lunch and said, "Don't talk so loud to your crust!" using here the boys' slang term for a sandwich. These were the first words Nietzsche had spoken to Deussen, and Deussen says:[1] "I see Nietzsche still before me, how with the unsteady glance peculiar to extremely near-sighted people, his eye wandered over the rows of his classmates searching in vain for an excuse to interfere."