“He who has a why can bear any how,” once cried Friedrich Nietzsche. But the cry, while certainly not wrong, held a great irony when gazing upon his life: A life shattered by a why that simultaneously helped him bear any how–except the how of his why.
The Human Who Was Too Human:
The “why” Nietzsche mentioned lies in self-justifications, the necessary cycle of finding an identity, meaning, or purpose to live by. This is found in abundance everywhere: love, community, and morality—these are the justifications of the predominant. It is what makes any two people behave similarly: a shared justification. But unlike Nietzsche, most people don’t collapse—and that ends at self-awareness. The deeper your awareness is, the more likely your behavior leaves normality.
Nietzsche, ever the free spirit, had an acute sense of self-awareness. He couldn’t simply lean on conventional justifications without tearing them apart. Yet, he couldn’t simply live without justification; any human would break under such merciless weight. But even the most formidable of predators are prey to something, and Nietzsche’s mind was consumed by justifications of prophecy, destiny, and immeasurability—all birthing a sense of superiority.
“Oh, how misunderstood I am!” He thought, “I am not wrong; they are just never right. I have exploded through time itself: I am dynamite! My philosophy isn’t merely an abstract theory or thought experiment: it is destiny itself! I am not a mere man; I am an unparalleled phenomenon! The prophet of destiny. I preach not to any man alive—but to the future men to come. The better men. Men like me. And this makes all this pain, all this suffering—all these ceaseless, purposeless barrages of tragedy—meaningful!”
Those were the words Nietzsche whispered loudly to himself—those were the thoughts that forged both him and his path of descent. Without these whispers, we wouldn’t just lose Nietzsche; he would lose himself. But these thoughts weren’t weightless, and the limit wasn’t far.
It started subtly: he would bury his face in books; he would tag letters with the names of murderers or ancient gods such as Dionysus; he wouldn’t answer even when he was in his room. But that subtlety became bold: he would think himself a king; he would dance in his room naked; he would stand watching crowds for hours with an unbroken grin. His friend’s concern grew over weeks until it reached its climax at his repeated refusal to return to Basel. And eventually, the weight of these thoughts broke the very ground they built, and Nietzsche collapsed—losing his only footing.
Nietzsche lost himself.
The Tightrope Over An Abyss:
Yet, questions continue to gnaw: was the collapse destined to happen? Many would argue no—but they wouldn’t be talking about Nietzsche. They would be talking about an alternative version of him. Nietzsche went insane because of his justifications, yes, but he only lived long enough to be destroyed because of them. But that raises another question: why did he collapse, yet not I? And that lies in unconventionality paired with self-doubt.
Insanity is a tightrope over an abyss, and the worst place to be is always in the middle. On one side of the rope there is the cold warmth of delusion, and on the other side the scorching cold of self-denial. In the middle is both, and most importantly, neither. Nietzsche resided in the middle: a place where a mind is both delusional and self-aware enough to always question itself.
Nietzsche didn’t collapse because he was delusional; he collapsed because he was one of the few sane ones, and in the process of dancing on the tightrope towards insanity, he tripped into an abyss boiling with it.
The Twilight Of A Mind:
And here we witness the twilight of a mind—a mind on a tightrope not made for it, a mind trying to survive itself: the mind of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. Like Dostoevsky’s “Underground Man,” it wasn’t self-justifications that deteriorated him; it was self-justification mixed with self-awareness and doubt that did. And maybe the most unsettling part of this is the same self-awareness that led him to his demise is within us all. Ours is simply deeper in its slumber.
EXTRA CONTEXT/INFORMATION:
The Life of Tragedy:
Nietzsche’s life was one steeped with suffering: born October 15, 1844, it was a short life filled with traumas, illness, neurosis, loneliness, and extremity. At 5, his father became ill and later died in a state of insanity; this stuck with him until the end, always fearing he would suffer the same fate as his father. At 9, his incapacitating migraines began—making him take weeks to months off school. They never left him until his death. At 25, he served in the Franco-Prussian War as a medical orderly—witnessing horrific scenes and contracting a plethora of illnesses. He almost died when he came back.
At 33, his closest friend, whom he saw as a father figure—Richard Wagner—had a conversation with Nietzsche’s doctor, saying he was convinced Nietzsche was a chronic masturbator. This rumor spread, isolated him further. This was because in the 19th century, masturbation was equated with many illnesses and moral corruption, even attributing Nietzsche’s vision problems to it. By 35, he left his professorship at Basel to embark on a nomadic and predominantly isolated life, and he did so until his breakdown at Turin.
At the age of 37, he met Lou Salomé, being introduced to her via Paul Ree. But at 38, becoming the first man ever literally ghosted, Lou and Ree abandoned him at a hotel in Tautenburg. He looked for them when he woke up and couldn’t find them. That same week he told Ida Overbeck—Franz Overbeck’s wife—“I guess I really am going into utter solitude.” By the age of 38, he was on opium—even faking signatures to get them; he was also suicidal, contemplating overdosing on them. Around this time, he wrote Thus Spake Zarathustra, his despair motivating the first 2 parts. By the third part, he was more stable.
At the age of 41, he had published “Beyond Good and Evil” and was called a “dangerous thinker” by a journalist, which immensely exhilarated him. By the age of 44, he manages to get Georg Brandes—a prominent literary critic—to give a class on his thought, which Nietzsche was thrilled at. He seemed like he was happier and more stable… or so we thought. On January 3rd, 1889, at the young age of 44, after the exhausting task of churning out 3 books the year before, he collapsed in Turin and woke up mentally insane. He never regained sanity after. After 11 years of being mentally incapacitated and a similar time physically, he died by the age of 55 on August 25, 1900.
This is, of course, a sweeping generalization of his life. There was more. His physical pain was more brutal: almost blind, constant migraines and vomiting, and being bedridden for days to weeks. His life wasn’t all drama and tragedy; it was very quiet. But not the peaceful quiet—it was the empty one. The misunderstood one. The lone one. And that’s what made his life so tragic: it was ceaseless pain filled with gnawing silence. And in the end, it wasn’t misunderstanding that killed him; it was understanding followed by indifference that did.
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SOURCES:
1. “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how,” — “Twilight of the Idols,” by Friedrich Nietzsche (1889).
2. ““Oh, how misunderstood I am!” He thought, “I am not wrong; they are just never right…”—paraphrased accurately from “Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is,” by Friedrich Nietzsche (1888).
3. most of the claims about Nietzsche’s life— “I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Nietzsche,” by Sue Prideaux (2018).
4. “such as with Dostoevsky’s Underground” Man”—“Notes from Underground,” by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1864).
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