Part II. The Psychology of Friedrich Nietzsche as a Psychopathological Problem

The more intimately one occupies oneself with Nietzsche's thought development, the more one comes to the conviction that everywhere there are digressions from that which is still explainable through psychology. The impulse to isolate himself, to separate himself from the outer world, lies deeply rooted in his spiritual organization. He expresses himself characteristically enough in his Ecce Homo: “I am gifted with an utterly uncanny instinct of cleanliness, so that I can ascertain physiologically, that is to say, that I can smell the proximity of, I may say, the innermost entrails of every human soul. ... This sensitiveness has psychological antennae, with which I feel and handle every secret; the hidden filth at the root of many a human character, which may be the result of base blood, but which may be superficially overlaid by education, is revealed to me at first glance. If my observation has been correct, such people, unbearable to my sense of cleanliness, also become conscious on their part of the cautiousness resulting from my loathing; and this does not make them any more fragrant. ... This is why social intercourse is no small trial to my patience; my humanity does not consist in the fact that I sympathize with the feelings of my fellows, but that I can endure that very sympathy. My humanity is a continual self-mastery. But I need solitude, that is to say, recovery, return to myself, the breathing of free, light, bracing air. ... The loathing of mankind, of the ‘rabble,’ was always my greatest danger.” (M. G. Conrad, Ketzerblut, p. 183) Such impulses are fundamental in his teaching in Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, and in quite a number of his other ideas. He wants to educate a caste of prominent people who establish their life aims outside the realm of their complete arbitrariness. And the whole of history is only a means of training a few master natures, who make use of the remaining mass of humanity for their own personal purposes. “One completely misunderstands the predatory animal and the predatory human being (for example, Cesare Borgia), one misunderstands nature so long as one looks for something abnormal at the root of these healthiest of all tropical monsters and growths, or, indeed, searches for an inborn ‘hell,’ as almost all moralists have done up to now.” ( Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, p. 197) Nietzsche regards it as essential that a real artistocracy accept “with good conscience the sacrifice of innumerable human beings, who for their sakes had to be reduced to incomplete human beings, to slaves, to tools, and even had to be degraded.” ( Ibid, p. 258). From this comes Nietzsche's criticism of the social question, a criticism bordering upon narrow-mindedness. According to him, workers must remain cattle; they may not be trained to regard themselves as having any purpose. “In the most, irresponsible: and thoughtless way, one has destroyed the instincts which made It possible to be a worker, and to be one's self. One has made the worker militaristically efficient, one has given him the coalition right, the political vote; is it any wonder that today the worker fears his existence as a critical situation (morally expressed as injustice)? But what does one want? is asked again. If one wants a purpose, then one must also want the means; one wants slaves, then one is a fool if one educates them to be masters.” (Nietzsche's Works, Volume VIII, Page 153)