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Friedrich Nietzsche: Philosopher of Culture
- GenresPhilosophy
273 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1958
3 people are currently reading
57 people want to read
About the author
Frederick Charles Copleston
309 books299 followersFrederick (Freddie) Charles Copleston was raised an Anglican and educated at Marlborough College from 1920 to 1925. Shortly after his eighteenth birthday he converted to Catholicism, and his father subsequently almost disowned him. After the initial shock, however, his father saw fit to help Copleston through his education and he attended St. John’s in Oxford in 1925, only managing a disappointing third in classical moderations. He redeemed himself somewhat with a good second at Greats in 1929.
In 1930 Copleston became a Jesuit, and, after two years at the Jesuit novitiate in Roehampton, he moved to Heythrop. He was ordained a Jesuit priest at Heythrop College in 1937 and soon after went to Germany (1938) to complete his training. Fortunately he made it back to Britain before the outbreak of war in 1939. The war made it impossible for him to study for his doctorate, as once intended, at the Gregorian University in Rome, and instead Copleston was invited to return to Heythrop to teach the history of philosophy to the few remaining Jesuits there.
While in Heythrop Copleston had time and interest to begin the work he is most famous for, his "A History of Philosophy" - a textbook that originally set out to deliver a clear account of ancient, medieval and modern philosophy in three volumes, which was instead completed in nine volumes (1975). To this day Copleston’s history remains a monumental achievement and stays true to the authors it discusses, being very much a work in exposition.
Copleston adopted a number of honorary roles throughout the remainder of his career. He was appointed Visiting Professor at Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, spending half of each year lecturing there from 1952 to 1968. He was made Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 1970, given a personal professorship from his own university (Heythrop, now re-established in the University of London) in 1972 and made an Honorary Fellow of St. John’s College, Oxford, in 1975. He was Visiting Professor at the University of Santa Clara between 1974 and 1982, and he delivered the Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen between 1979 and 1981. His lectures were published under the title Religion and the One, and were largely a metaphysical tract attempting to express themes perennial in his thinking and more personal than in his history. Gerard J. Hughes notes Copleston as remarking "large doses of metaphysics like that certainly don’t boost one’s sales".
He received honorary doctorates from a number of institutions, notably, Santa Clara University, California, University of Uppsala and the University of St. Andrews (D.Litt) in later years. He was selected for membership in the Royal Institute of Philosophy and in the Aristotelian Society, and in 1993 he was made CBE.
Copleston’s personality saw him engage in the many responsibilities bestowed upon him with generous commitment and good humour.
In 1930 Copleston became a Jesuit, and, after two years at the Jesuit novitiate in Roehampton, he moved to Heythrop. He was ordained a Jesuit priest at Heythrop College in 1937 and soon after went to Germany (1938) to complete his training. Fortunately he made it back to Britain before the outbreak of war in 1939. The war made it impossible for him to study for his doctorate, as once intended, at the Gregorian University in Rome, and instead Copleston was invited to return to Heythrop to teach the history of philosophy to the few remaining Jesuits there.
While in Heythrop Copleston had time and interest to begin the work he is most famous for, his "A History of Philosophy" - a textbook that originally set out to deliver a clear account of ancient, medieval and modern philosophy in three volumes, which was instead completed in nine volumes (1975). To this day Copleston’s history remains a monumental achievement and stays true to the authors it discusses, being very much a work in exposition.
Copleston adopted a number of honorary roles throughout the remainder of his career. He was appointed Visiting Professor at Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, spending half of each year lecturing there from 1952 to 1968. He was made Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 1970, given a personal professorship from his own university (Heythrop, now re-established in the University of London) in 1972 and made an Honorary Fellow of St. John’s College, Oxford, in 1975. He was Visiting Professor at the University of Santa Clara between 1974 and 1982, and he delivered the Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen between 1979 and 1981. His lectures were published under the title Religion and the One, and were largely a metaphysical tract attempting to express themes perennial in his thinking and more personal than in his history. Gerard J. Hughes notes Copleston as remarking "large doses of metaphysics like that certainly don’t boost one’s sales".
He received honorary doctorates from a number of institutions, notably, Santa Clara University, California, University of Uppsala and the University of St. Andrews (D.Litt) in later years. He was selected for membership in the Royal Institute of Philosophy and in the Aristotelian Society, and in 1993 he was made CBE.
Copleston’s personality saw him engage in the many responsibilities bestowed upon him with generous commitment and good humour.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 12, 2022
Birth
On October 15, 1844, in a small Prussian village, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born, the first of three children of a Lutheran pastor. He died when Nietzsche was just two years old. His little younger brother died six months later. For monetary reasons, his family then moved to Naumburg. Nietzsche earned the nickname "the little shepherd" at school because he opposed social life and devoted himself to studies. Since then, little Nietzsche has shown a desire for self-control far beyond that of his friends; this severity with himself will extend throughout his life. As he greatly admired poetry and music, he began to write and compose. When he finished his secondary studies, influenced by his family, he enrolled at the University of Bonn to study theology but, to his mother's dismay, decided to drop out of studies to graduate in philology. After completing his training, he is invited to teach philology at the University of Basel due to his considerable knowledge and respect from his superiors. He is only 24 years old.
Young Nietzsche
Nietzsche met Schopenhauer's work by chance, finding his books on the shelf in a small bookstore. His thinking tremendously influenced him. He was also a personal friend of Richard Wagner, for whom he had great admiration. In 1871 he launched his first work, The Birth of Tragedy, still under the influence of Wagner's music and Schopenhauer's pessimistic philosophy, which he would later break with. His life as a young university professor passes smoothly. They say he was a good teacher, despite speaking very softly, and he improvised his classes gracefully from notes he made after dedicated research. In 1879, the headaches worsened due to Nietzsche's bad sight. These pains had accompanied him since 1873 and led him to distance himself from writing several times; reading and writing was increasingly painful task. The philosopher resigns the Basel University to spend the rest of his life as a wandering philosopher with a salary of 4,000 francs for services to the community. For ten years, nowhere is more than six months. His constant travels are guided by the search for climates that allow him better health conditions. It usually spends winters in the south and summers in the north. This nomadic lifestyle takes him to know Sils Maria, a small village to which he would return annually until 1888. There, he will have what he called his most abyssal thought: the Eternal Return.
Adult Nietzsche
At the age of 37, through a mutual friend, Nietzsche meets Lou Salomé, a brilliant and beautiful young Russian woman, then 21. He falls in love and asks her to marry him. She refused three times. This love disillusionment had a significant impact on Nietzsche's life. He breaks up with his friend and Lou, also with his family, who hated the "sassy little Russian". At this time, The Gay Science was writing, where the phrase that later made him famous (God is dead) was formulated for the first time. It was a time of high production, and although desperate, he had the strength to write what he recognized as his most famous book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Still, he already finds it difficult to find anyone who publishes and reads his works. Even so, he continues his studies and his wandering way of life. Naumburg, Leipzig, Basel, Genoa, Nice, Venice, Turin. He usually lives on simple pensions. His routine consists of reading and writing his ideas in the morning, having lunch, taking long walks in the afternoon, having dinner and working a little more before going to sleep when his illness allows it. Their restrained habits do not allow alcohol or coffee. He dedicated his favourite philosophers: Epicurus, Montaigne, Espinosa, and Heraclitus; it also seeks to study the cultural influence of Platonism and Christianity. He enjoys reading novels by writers like Balzac, Goethe, Stendhal and Dostoiévski. In 1885, despite all the revisions and changes in his texts, Nietzsche ended up publishing Beyond Good and Evil, an original book of aphorisms that exposes in greater detail his previous work, which had a more poetic and fictional character. As he doesn't get the answer he expected for his publications, he writes The Genealogy of Moral, whose subtitle is a supplement to Beyond Good and Evil. But the silence is almost absolute. People don't seem to understand it.
The last days
His later writings were elaborated during the year 1888. The philosopher, in some way, was always sick: headaches, vomiting, stomach problems, nausea, violent migraines and insomnia. Doctors do not know how to diagnose the source of the symptoms. Nietzsche made the disease a condition, a stimulus for his thinking. To philosophize is to triumph, overcome himself, think and live with suffering. Constant pain leads Nietzsche to formulate his formula for man's greatness: Amor-Fati. Turin has excellent effects on Nietzsche's health. It is there that he lives his last moments of clarity. As early as 1888, Nietzsche sent letters signed as Jesus, Caesar, and Dionysus. On January 3, 1889, Nietzsche was withdrawn from the street, reportedly creating a public scandal. The legend says he fell into a square with muscular psychic tension after hugging a horse to defend himself from a coachman's blows. His family advised him to admit him. He spent a year at the Basel psychiatric clinic, close to his family. In a state of apathy, she goes to the care of her mother. When she died she lived with her sister until she died at 54 in August 1900. Even before her death, Nietzsche's sister worked with her work, gathering her writings by falsifying a supposed result, "Will to Power", giving rise to anti-Semitic interpretations. It will take years before Nietzsche's work finally moves away from this ideology.
On October 15, 1844, in a small Prussian village, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born, the first of three children of a Lutheran pastor. He died when Nietzsche was just two years old. His little younger brother died six months later. For monetary reasons, his family then moved to Naumburg. Nietzsche earned the nickname "the little shepherd" at school because he opposed social life and devoted himself to studies. Since then, little Nietzsche has shown a desire for self-control far beyond that of his friends; this severity with himself will extend throughout his life. As he greatly admired poetry and music, he began to write and compose. When he finished his secondary studies, influenced by his family, he enrolled at the University of Bonn to study theology but, to his mother's dismay, decided to drop out of studies to graduate in philology. After completing his training, he is invited to teach philology at the University of Basel due to his considerable knowledge and respect from his superiors. He is only 24 years old.
Young Nietzsche
Nietzsche met Schopenhauer's work by chance, finding his books on the shelf in a small bookstore. His thinking tremendously influenced him. He was also a personal friend of Richard Wagner, for whom he had great admiration. In 1871 he launched his first work, The Birth of Tragedy, still under the influence of Wagner's music and Schopenhauer's pessimistic philosophy, which he would later break with. His life as a young university professor passes smoothly. They say he was a good teacher, despite speaking very softly, and he improvised his classes gracefully from notes he made after dedicated research. In 1879, the headaches worsened due to Nietzsche's bad sight. These pains had accompanied him since 1873 and led him to distance himself from writing several times; reading and writing was increasingly painful task. The philosopher resigns the Basel University to spend the rest of his life as a wandering philosopher with a salary of 4,000 francs for services to the community. For ten years, nowhere is more than six months. His constant travels are guided by the search for climates that allow him better health conditions. It usually spends winters in the south and summers in the north. This nomadic lifestyle takes him to know Sils Maria, a small village to which he would return annually until 1888. There, he will have what he called his most abyssal thought: the Eternal Return.
Adult Nietzsche
At the age of 37, through a mutual friend, Nietzsche meets Lou Salomé, a brilliant and beautiful young Russian woman, then 21. He falls in love and asks her to marry him. She refused three times. This love disillusionment had a significant impact on Nietzsche's life. He breaks up with his friend and Lou, also with his family, who hated the "sassy little Russian". At this time, The Gay Science was writing, where the phrase that later made him famous (God is dead) was formulated for the first time. It was a time of high production, and although desperate, he had the strength to write what he recognized as his most famous book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Still, he already finds it difficult to find anyone who publishes and reads his works. Even so, he continues his studies and his wandering way of life. Naumburg, Leipzig, Basel, Genoa, Nice, Venice, Turin. He usually lives on simple pensions. His routine consists of reading and writing his ideas in the morning, having lunch, taking long walks in the afternoon, having dinner and working a little more before going to sleep when his illness allows it. Their restrained habits do not allow alcohol or coffee. He dedicated his favourite philosophers: Epicurus, Montaigne, Espinosa, and Heraclitus; it also seeks to study the cultural influence of Platonism and Christianity. He enjoys reading novels by writers like Balzac, Goethe, Stendhal and Dostoiévski. In 1885, despite all the revisions and changes in his texts, Nietzsche ended up publishing Beyond Good and Evil, an original book of aphorisms that exposes in greater detail his previous work, which had a more poetic and fictional character. As he doesn't get the answer he expected for his publications, he writes The Genealogy of Moral, whose subtitle is a supplement to Beyond Good and Evil. But the silence is almost absolute. People don't seem to understand it.
The last days
His later writings were elaborated during the year 1888. The philosopher, in some way, was always sick: headaches, vomiting, stomach problems, nausea, violent migraines and insomnia. Doctors do not know how to diagnose the source of the symptoms. Nietzsche made the disease a condition, a stimulus for his thinking. To philosophize is to triumph, overcome himself, think and live with suffering. Constant pain leads Nietzsche to formulate his formula for man's greatness: Amor-Fati. Turin has excellent effects on Nietzsche's health. It is there that he lives his last moments of clarity. As early as 1888, Nietzsche sent letters signed as Jesus, Caesar, and Dionysus. On January 3, 1889, Nietzsche was withdrawn from the street, reportedly creating a public scandal. The legend says he fell into a square with muscular psychic tension after hugging a horse to defend himself from a coachman's blows. His family advised him to admit him. He spent a year at the Basel psychiatric clinic, close to his family. In a state of apathy, she goes to the care of her mother. When she died she lived with her sister until she died at 54 in August 1900. Even before her death, Nietzsche's sister worked with her work, gathering her writings by falsifying a supposed result, "Will to Power", giving rise to anti-Semitic interpretations. It will take years before Nietzsche's work finally moves away from this ideology.
December 23, 2025
This is a strange mixture of biographical content, philosophical analysis and an apologetical treatise; written after (or during?) the Second World War, it is preoccupied with clearing Nietzsche of any anti-Semitic leanings and charitably examining his doctrine from the perspective of the Catholic faith. Granted, it is a laudable effort, and a didactic way to expound a Philosophy as pernicious as Nietzsche's, especially for the faithful, but I personally would rather read an impartial exposition followed by one or two chapters comprising an entire critique of his thought. Though in Nietzsche's case, his ideas were so extreme that it is quite clear when he is right, wrong, blasphemous, or simply delusional— sometimes, all in a single paragraph.
It is fascinating to compare Nietzsche to Marx. Nietzsche had an aristocratic mindset and believed in the Übermensch, while Marx was all about compassion for the proletariat and a future equalitarian society achieved through revolution. Both would despise each other, but, paradoxically, Nietzsche seemed much more morally sound (as a person) than Marx; but, as we know, Nietzsche died as a lunatic, while Marx brought hell to earth and made our lives as Christians a lot more difficult. It speaks to the thought of each man: Nietzsche corrupted a few minds, but Marxism is still haunting the world. As even Fr. Copleston recognizes, they are both Antichrists.
Nietzsche can be seen as a philosopher of culture inasmuch as he idealized a cultural context where the "Superman" could not only be born, but thrive and, in a way, reign above inferior men. This would be something akin to pre-Socratic Greece (or what he would consider so), where men accepted the tragic sense of a life without transcendence and sought to embrace natural values to the extent of their capacities—art, fortune, power, pride, self-actualization, what he named "will to power". It is a depressive way to see reality, and it dooms culture, as it denies the need for religion and sound metaphysics.
As Fr. Copleston concludes: "Those who strive to turn men from this path [of Christian truth] and to delude man with the dream of something still higher, which shall be exclusively man's creation, are seducers of mankind and, even if unconsciously, instruments of Satan. When a man brings to this work of seduction outstanding talent and earnestness, a naturally noble character and a hatred of sham and pretence, the tragedy is all the greater. Such is the tragedy of Friedrich Nietzsche, in whom the world gained perhaps a great writer and a goad to its conscience, but in whom the world lost—what it might otherwise have gained (had Nietzsche so willed)—a true guide and friend."
It is fascinating to compare Nietzsche to Marx. Nietzsche had an aristocratic mindset and believed in the Übermensch, while Marx was all about compassion for the proletariat and a future equalitarian society achieved through revolution. Both would despise each other, but, paradoxically, Nietzsche seemed much more morally sound (as a person) than Marx; but, as we know, Nietzsche died as a lunatic, while Marx brought hell to earth and made our lives as Christians a lot more difficult. It speaks to the thought of each man: Nietzsche corrupted a few minds, but Marxism is still haunting the world. As even Fr. Copleston recognizes, they are both Antichrists.
Nietzsche can be seen as a philosopher of culture inasmuch as he idealized a cultural context where the "Superman" could not only be born, but thrive and, in a way, reign above inferior men. This would be something akin to pre-Socratic Greece (or what he would consider so), where men accepted the tragic sense of a life without transcendence and sought to embrace natural values to the extent of their capacities—art, fortune, power, pride, self-actualization, what he named "will to power". It is a depressive way to see reality, and it dooms culture, as it denies the need for religion and sound metaphysics.
As Fr. Copleston concludes: "Those who strive to turn men from this path [of Christian truth] and to delude man with the dream of something still higher, which shall be exclusively man's creation, are seducers of mankind and, even if unconsciously, instruments of Satan. When a man brings to this work of seduction outstanding talent and earnestness, a naturally noble character and a hatred of sham and pretence, the tragedy is all the greater. Such is the tragedy of Friedrich Nietzsche, in whom the world gained perhaps a great writer and a goad to its conscience, but in whom the world lost—what it might otherwise have gained (had Nietzsche so willed)—a true guide and friend."
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