Julian Young > Quotes

“In the later part of his creative life Nietzsche suffered acutely from loneliness. Like his alter ego, Zarathustra, he found himself alone on a (Swiss) mountain top. But, intellectually at least, he accepted this condition. Since, he reasoned, a radical social critic, a 'free spirit' such as himself, sets himself ever more in opposition to the foundational agreements on which social life depends, he reduces the pool of possible comrades, and so of possible friends, to vanishing point.”
― Julian Young, Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography

“... Schopenhauer's... vitriolic contempt for the 'professors of philosophy'. Independently wealthy, Schopenhauer scorned those who lived 'from' rather than 'for' philosophy: since he who pays the piper calls the tune, independence of thought, he held, requires independence of means.”
― Julian Young, Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography

“He sank more and more into apathy; little interested him apart from dolls and other children’s toys. He still spoke occasionally, but mainly to produce stock sentences in the style of a brainwashed schoolboy. Franziska made a record of some of them: ‘I translated much’. ‘I lived in a good place called Naumburg’. ‘I swam in the Saale’. ‘I was very fine because I lived in a fine house’. ‘I love Bismarck’. ‘I don’t like Friedrich Nietzsche’. It would be a mercy to think that he experienced at least a kind of vegetative contentment, but this seems not to have been the case. He suffered from his life-long curse of insomnia, and visitors downstairs were often disturbed by groans and howls coming from the upstairs bedroom. Towards the end of Franziska recorded him uttering ‘More light!’ (Goethe’s dying words) and ‘In short, dead!’ suggesting that that is what he wanted to be.”
― Julian Young, Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography

“نیچه چون خجالتی و پرتوقع بود، به‌سختی با کسی دوست می‌شد. اما وقتی هم دوستانی می‌یافت، آن‌ها را عمیقاً قدر می‌نهاد”
― Julian Young, Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography

“A true world is a destination; a destination such that to reach it is to enter…a state of ‘eternal bliss’, a heaven, paradise, or utopia. Hence true world philosophies…give meaning to life by representing it as a journey; a journey towards ‘redemption, towards an arrival that will more than make up for the stress and discomfort of the traveling.”
― Julian Young, The Death of God and the Meaning of Life

“نیچه در سراسر زندگی‌اش از روسو، از سوسیالیسم و در حقیقت از هرگونه انقلابی بیزار ماند. و به تبع سلطنت‌طلبی پدرش، پادشاهی را همواره عالی‌ترین شکل حکومت می‌شمرد”
― Julian Young, Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography

“Mindful of Schopenhauer’s Buddhist affinities, one might venture a summary of the four-booked World as Will and Representation by means of four ‘noble truths’: the world is my representation; its essence is will, that is to say, suffering; temporary release from suffering is possible through art; permanent release is possible through ‘denial of the will’, that is to say, death.”
― Julian Young