Why was Nietzsche's life so hard?

Answer 1

I think he found faults in many of the belief systems of his day.
His intellect found religion to be illogical. Perhaps the intellectual capacities of the other men in his time did not measure up and he could not find anyone to talk to, toss around ideas with. He must have felt terribly isolated with just his own thoughts for company.

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Friedrich Immanuel Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 - August 24, 1900)

Life

On October 15, 1844, Friedrich Immanuel Nietzsche was born in Röcken, Prussia as the only son of the Lutheran pastor Karl Ludwig Nietzsche. When Friedrich was 5 years of age, his father passed away after a long illness for one year. (Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species was published in 1859.) Many argue that as a result, Nietzsche was in care of five female relatives, that would affect his life and even his philosophy. They were his grandmother, his mother , his two aunts and his three years younger sister Elizabeth. Being only a male in the family, Friedrich Nietzsche was called Fritzchen (Little Fred), adored, petted and worshipped by them.
As a school boy, Fritzchen already revealed his intellectual gift. He found boring to play with his neighbors' children and despised them with great disdain. They in turn reciprocated the feeling with him, calling him "der kleine Pfahrer!" (The Tiny Minister). At the age of 15, Friedrich was separated from his female relatives and went to the Lutheran boarding school, which however was located 5 miles away from home. Not only at that time, he already well read, but also he was dreaming of becoming a writer. On Easter, 1861, Friedrich Nietzsche was confirmed at the age of 16. Nevertheless, around the time, Nietzsche started having doubt about the existence of God and soon he gave up the idea of becoming a minister.
At the age of 17 Nietzsche went to University of Bonn, where he enjoyed the free, college students' privileged adolescent life more than anything else with beer, wine, sex and tobacco, etc. He even joined a student corps called the Franconia. It is said at this time he was infected syphilis which affected him in his second half of life. His spending exceeded the money sent from his family and he started getting tired of such hedonistic life anyway and transferred himself to University of Leipzig. In Germany, once you obtained Abitur (the high school diploma), you can study at any of the German Universities you like and you can transfer anywhere.


http://www.csudh.edu/phenom_studies/europ19/lect_8.html

Answer 2

Perhaps because Nietzsche thought life was hard on him....

Answer 3

It is funny but when you look into history you will find at most of the great thinker, artest, and any noted people had a hard life. If you read his works it will tell you why.

Live Long Live Free

Answer 4

He was called by his grammar-school classmates, "the little Pastor." He loved to quote Scripture, loved his Pastor father, and when his father was suddenly taken, it rocked his world. When he had a prophetic dream about his younger brother being taken into his father's grave, it was affective. After his younger brother, who was in good health, was suddenly taken, Friedrich suffered mightily.

His youthful poetry, analyzed by philosopher-psychiatrist Karl Jaspers, was found to foreshadow his life's career. Friedrich writes that he is chained to his unknown God, and will serve Him forever.

Friedrich went on to a brilliant career in classical philology. Then he encountered Schopenhauer's "World as Will and Representation," which coalesced FN's inchoate, deep personal suffering.

FN then went into a midlife rant's variations on the "WWR" themes, ending up justifying his "Superman" as sock puppet for his formidable fatherly loss as a young child (and perhaps his allegation of his sister's sexual molestation of him applied). First, he found self-actualization and meaning, as did Schopenhauer, in supersensible artism. Then, he found self-expression with the father-figure hand puppet "Zarathustra." Then, he went off the deep end, proclaiming himself the "antichrist," then weeping over noble horse's suffering in street, then concluded his days as a lamb in white robes, meekly following his mother about her home.

It is a sorrowful thing, to suffer abuse as a child, and when one is as strong-willed and brilliant as FN, a potential preacher of some import, and one has one's father-figure taken away, one must either admit one's own non-Superman status as a male child, or fight. For FN, God died; FN thus said God was dead; FN then looked to artistic creativity, then to a "wise man" archetype, then, his strong soul-ties to Deity and Truth still percolating, found a kind of Kierkegaardian spirituality after meltdown madness, a resignation, a peace that passed his human ranting and understanding.

Friedrich Nietzsche authentically represents the honest agnostic who finds no God within his inner child, nor in the starry heavens, and turns to humanism and artism. His psychology has been superceded by Maslowian insight, i.e., Nietzsche's strong-willed need to self-actualize has been found the birthright of every person, who enjoys affluence beyond the meeting of daily needs. Ironically, self-actualizers do far better with some kind of "Higher Power" than merely finding refuge in the herd mores. Nietzsche's Zarathustra, the archetype of Good winning over evil, approves all such genuine overcoming.

Answer 5

he may have a hard life but he had a very nice philosophy.