(Non-)Ancient Man: Philosophical Anthropology of the Young Nietzsche

Abstract

This article analyses the philosophical and anthropological views of Friedrich Nietzsche in the early period of his writing (1869–1873). The paper aims to identify the origin, genesis and transformations of those ideas with which Nietzsche’s philosophy would subsequently be associated: overman, the death of God, and the eternal return. The methodology of the study is based on the fundamental principles and ideas of comparative philosophy as well as historical and philosophical reconstruction. The article focuses on the interpretation of man in young Nietzsche’s philosophy and compares it with the ideas in his later works. The paper argues that his doctrine of the overman is preceded by the idea of considering man within the framework of such concepts as proto-man, total man, total artist and tragic man. Apparently, early Nietzsche’s philosophical and anthropological views were conditioned by two contexts: ancient philosophy and culture of the pre-Socratic period (“the tragic era”) on the one hand, and A. Schopenhauer’s metaphysics and the aesthetics in R. Wagner’s works on the other. The article substantiates the thesis that the determining factors in the genesis of young Nietzsche’s ideas were the assimilation and rethinking of Schopenhauer’s and Wagner’s views. Schopenhauer’s metaphysics and Wagner’s aesthetics act as the starting point and a conceptual horizon for the reception of the “tragic era” of antiquity, not vice versa. In addition, the paper emphasizes that to understand the crisis of European metaphysics Nietzsche turned to the philosophical reception of antiquity. A parallel is drawn between Nietzsche’s interpretations of the crisis of ancient culture and the crisis of modern Christian culture.