Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- PART ONE Youth
- PART TWO The Reluctant Professor
- PART THREE The Nomad
- Chapter 15 The Wanderer and His Shadow
- Chapter 16 Dawn
- Chapter 17 The Gay Science
- Chapter 18 The Salomé Affair
- Chapter 19 Zarathustra
- Chapter 20 Nietzsche's Circle of Women
- Chapter 21 Beyond Good and Evil
- Chapter 22 Clearing the Decks
- Chapter 23 T he Genealogy of Morals
- Chapter 24 1888
- Chapter 25 Catastrophe
- Chapter 26 The Rise and Fall of The Will to Power
- Chapter 27 The End
- Chapter 28 Nietzsche's Madness
- Chronology
- Notes
- Bibliography of Secondary Literature
- Index
- Plate section
Chapter 27 - The End
from PART THREE - The Nomad
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- PART ONE Youth
- PART TWO The Reluctant Professor
- PART THREE The Nomad
- Chapter 15 The Wanderer and His Shadow
- Chapter 16 Dawn
- Chapter 17 The Gay Science
- Chapter 18 The Salomé Affair
- Chapter 19 Zarathustra
- Chapter 20 Nietzsche's Circle of Women
- Chapter 21 Beyond Good and Evil
- Chapter 22 Clearing the Decks
- Chapter 23 T he Genealogy of Morals
- Chapter 24 1888
- Chapter 25 Catastrophe
- Chapter 26 The Rise and Fall of The Will to Power
- Chapter 27 The End
- Chapter 28 Nietzsche's Madness
- Chronology
- Notes
- Bibliography of Secondary Literature
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
In the Basel Clinic
On january 11, 1889, Franz Overbeck informed Nietzsche's only other remaining human contact, Heinrich Köselitz, that the previous day he had delivered Nietzsche,
or more exactly the rubble of what only a friend would recognise as him, to the psychiatric clinic [in Basel]. He suffers from delusions of infinite grandeur, but also from much else – it's hopeless. I have never seen such a horrific picture of destruction.
He delivered his friend to the care of Dr. Ludwig Wille, whom Nietzsche recognised immediately. ‘I believe we have met’, he greeted Wille with the urbane dignity of a Basel professor, ‘but I am sorry to say that I have forgotten your name. Would you –’ ‘Wille, I am Wille’, replied the doctor. ‘Ah yes, Wille’, Nietzsche agreed. ‘You are a psychiatrist. Some years ago we had a conversation about religious insanity’. Clearly, though the recollection was perfectly correct, Nietzsche had no idea of where he was or why.
Wille diagnosed ‘progressive paralysis’, in other words, neurosyphilis, a diagnosis that was possibly encouraged by the fact that this was his research speciality. (To those good at hammering, it is said, everything is inclined to look like a nail.)
According to the patient records, Nietzsche's voluble conversation during his week in the asylum was a ‘colourful confusion of former experiences’ jumbled together ‘without logical connexion’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Friedrich NietzscheA Philosophical Biography, pp. 550 - 558Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010