Understanding People (Brentano and Nietzsche)

Personalities such as Franz Brentano, whose life's work was touched upon in the last essay, give cause to turn our attention to the cultural forces of the entire age. For that which develops in the lives of such people emerges from the cultural currents of that age. In a sense, these people feel more intensely what is also happening more or less unconsciously in their fellow human beings. But in the end, the whole of social life is made up of these unconscious processes.

Now one of the most striking phenomena in Brentano's life is his contrast to Friedrich Nietzsche. This also comes to light quite clearly in Brentano's “The Teaching of Jesus.” There is a very short chapter in this book in which the question is asked as to how Nietzsche compares to the personality of Jesus. The fact that Brentano raises such a question is characteristic. Anyone who has the same relationship to Jesus the Christ as—according to the explanations in the last essay—Brentano could not have, but which arises from an anthroposophical understanding, will certainly not pose this question as Brentano does. That such a serious seeker of truth even comes to this question shows a deeply held antipathy towards Nietzsche's whole way of thinking. This is also betrayed by the fact that Brentano calls Nietzsche a belletristicly dazzling mayfly.

Here we shall not go into the relationship that Brentano, in his way, finds between Jesus and Nietzsche, but only into Brentano's absolute rejection of the whole of Nietzsche's way of thinking.

As understandable as this rejection may be for someone who knows the natures of both personalities, it is just as significant as an expression of a significant phenomenon of our time: the lack of understanding in general with which people today can face each other, who draw their education from the culture of the time.

Some will say that such a phenomenon is self-evident and has been so at all times. For man develops according to his individuality; and so what is the fashion of the times must appear in one person in one way and in another in another. That is true; and it is certainly not the philistine point of view that it would be best if people were the faceless imprints of a general cultural template. But anyone who looks at certain social facts of today's life with an open mind can see that an immense amount will depend on an understanding accommodation of the most diverse individual views for the progress of civilized humanity, especially in the near future. And such a man will have the gravest misgivings about this progress if he has to observe how a sharply defined individuality not only vigorously defends its own, but also fills itself with mere rejection of another sharply defined individuality, instead of the understanding that is so necessary today, even for the most opposing schools of thought.

One can see how Nietzsche's inner direction of life emerges from very similar foundations as Brentano's. The latter starts from Catholicism and turns his thinking in such a way that he ends up in a scientific attitude. From this he finds no way out into an understanding of the spiritual world-being. Nietzsche starts from Greek culture, whose artistic impulse he finds again in Richard Wagner. Philosophically, he organizes what he has formulated as a world view by drawing on Schopenhauer. It can be said that Nietzsche, who is only a few years younger than Brentano, stands at the beginning of the 1770s of the last century before the emerging scientific way of thinking, as Brentano did a few years earlier. The latter as a devoutly doubting Catholic, the former as a devoutly doubting advocate of an antique-style artistic wisdom. And Nietzsche falls for the scientific view that does not want to ascend to the spirit by embracing knowledge, just like Brentano.

In “Human-All-Too-Human,” in “Morgentöte,” Nietzsche descends from the soul to the physiological for the knowledge of the human being, which the natural scientific direction of the times allows. Only the personal orientation is different for the two. Brentano wants to scientifically establish all truth according to the model of contemporary natural knowledge. In doing so, he cannot reach the region of spiritual world-being, which he nevertheless strives for. This region, as it were, withdraws before what he can grasp scientifically. Nietzsche has before his soul the moral ideals of man. He learns to think scientifically. What had previously appeared as purely spiritual-soul ideal becomes the result of what arises out of the powers of the body. The human body works physiologically in the most comprehensive sense. It also forms the ideas and ideals as a result. For Nietzsche it becomes a life-lie if one regards the matter in this way, that the ideals are rooted in an independent spiritual world. This spiritual world is the fog that appears as independent to the blinded man, but to the knower it is a physiological striving for power that masquerades as an independent spiritual world.

Brentano forges his cognitive tool with the scientific methodology of his time. It becomes fine in the dissection of the soul, but it becomes dull in the face of the great world facts of mental life. Nietzsche forms his tool with the scientific way of thinking; it becomes robust to tap the soul everywhere in its bodily-physiological disguise; but it becomes a hammer that crushes the independent world of the spirit.

The effect of the scientific age was so personally different in Brentano and Nietzsche. But the cause for both was the submerging into the contemporary scientific way of thinking.

Two personalities, each of whom has made a significant impression on other people, show what is a general phenomenon of today: people do not live together, but apart. Only a conscious ascent into the spiritual worlds can have a healing effect. These are uniform for all people. They do not suppress individuality. People can, however, speak of them in the most diverse ways, according to their personal impressions. And prejudiced minds then say that because different people say different things about spiritual worlds, everything is uncertain. But the diversity stems only from the points of view from which they are seen. The spiritual reality that is recognized is a unity. And that is why the person who ascends to the spirit finds the other person in his soul. Brentano has only rejection for Nietzsche, although he is so close to him through the fate that befalls both of them through their immersion in the scientific way of thinking.

Recognition of the spiritual world will bring understanding of the human being; doubt in the paths of knowledge into the spiritual breaks the bridges from soul to soul.