0:00:11 > 0:00:15In 1934, a photograph was taken here
0:00:15 > 0:00:17which epitomised the extraordinary influence
0:00:17 > 0:00:22of one of the most provocative and uncompromising thinkers
0:00:22 > 0:00:24of the 19th century.
0:00:25 > 0:00:27It's an image of Adolf Hitler
0:00:27 > 0:00:29standing next to the bust of Nietzsche here
0:00:29 > 0:00:32in Weimar where the philosopher lived.
0:00:32 > 0:00:38- With chilling eloquence, this tells us what many Nazis believed- -
0:00:38 > 0:00:43that Nietzsche was the brilliant mind, the inspiration,
0:00:43 > 0:00:47behind the terrifying ideologies of the Third Reich.
0:00:49 > 0:00:53Yet if Nietzsche had been alive to see it, he would have been appalled.
0:00:54 > 0:00:57His philosophies were being distorted by a regime
0:00:57 > 0:01:00that stood for so much that he'd have loathed.
0:01:02 > 0:01:06Nietzsche was one of the most dangerous minds of the 19th century.
0:01:06 > 0:01:10Nietzsche thinks we have blood on our hands.
0:01:10 > 0:01:12Because we haven't just killed God -
0:01:12 > 0:01:15we've killed that which gave our lives meaning.
0:01:16 > 0:01:19Nietzsche lived in a century in which Europe
0:01:19 > 0:01:22was witnessing unprecedented change.
0:01:22 > 0:01:25Where the authority of Christianity was being challenged.
0:01:26 > 0:01:30Radical breakthroughs in science were redefining belief.
0:01:31 > 0:01:35And thinkers like Freud, Marx,
0:01:35 > 0:01:38and Nietzsche were suddenly free to unleash ideas that
0:01:38 > 0:01:43in previous centuries would have seen them burnt at the stake.
0:01:44 > 0:01:48Yet they heralded nothing less than the modern world.
0:02:01 > 0:02:05In 1882, one of the greatest minds of the 19th century
0:02:05 > 0:02:06predicted a crisis.
0:02:08 > 0:02:12One that he believed would be without equal on Earth,
0:02:12 > 0:02:16and which would be triggered by nothing less than the murder of God.
0:02:18 > 0:02:22"God is dead, and God remains dead, because we have killed him.
0:02:25 > 0:02:27"What was holiest and most powerful
0:02:27 > 0:02:32"of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our eyes.
0:02:34 > 0:02:37"Who will wipe the blood from our hands?"
0:02:40 > 0:02:44These are the visceral, challenging words of Friedrich Nietzsche.
0:02:44 > 0:02:49The crisis that he proclaimed was a wave of disbelief in Christianity
0:02:49 > 0:02:52that he predicted would crash through Europe.
0:02:52 > 0:02:53And the raw,
0:02:53 > 0:02:59brutal language that he chose to describe this death of God
0:02:59 > 0:03:04is a measure of just how terrifying he thought the consequence would be.
0:03:07 > 0:03:11For what Nietzsche saw, with disturbing, prophetic clarity,
0:03:11 > 0:03:14was that without a belief in God,
0:03:14 > 0:03:16there was no authority for the moral values
0:03:16 > 0:03:21that had underpinned European society across 2,000 years.
0:03:22 > 0:03:29He was declaring our freedom from God, our mastery of our own fates.
0:03:29 > 0:03:33No longer controlled by divine laws,
0:03:33 > 0:03:39we were now liberated, or condemned, to create our own values.
0:03:42 > 0:03:47But what haunted and tormented Nietzsche was his realisation that
0:03:47 > 0:03:50this was a freedom that came at a terrible price.
0:03:52 > 0:03:56The loss of religious belief would bring with it nothing less than
0:03:56 > 0:03:59a vacuum of meaning in human existence.
0:04:01 > 0:04:04It was a crisis that Nietzsche would wrestle with
0:04:04 > 0:04:06for the rest of his life.
0:04:10 > 0:04:11BELL RINGS
0:04:17 > 0:04:18MUSIC: Messiah by Handel
0:04:20 > 0:04:24The childhood of the man who would come to call himself the Antichrist
0:04:24 > 0:04:26was, with no little irony,
0:04:26 > 0:04:29one infused with the joy of Christianity.
0:04:31 > 0:04:33When Nietzsche was just nine years old,
0:04:33 > 0:04:36he heard Handel's Messiah for the first time.
0:04:36 > 0:04:41And he said he felt he had to join in the joyful singing of the angels
0:04:41 > 0:04:47on whose billows of sound Jesus ascended to heaven.
0:04:47 > 0:04:53The man who would spend his life as an adult with a mission to attack
0:04:53 > 0:04:55everything that Christianity stood for
0:04:55 > 0:05:00started off in life as the son of a Lutheran pastor,
0:05:00 > 0:05:04here in the very cradle of Protestant Christianity.
0:05:08 > 0:05:12Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche grew up in the village of Rocken in Prussia,
0:05:12 > 0:05:14now northern Germany.
0:05:14 > 0:05:17And as a boy, he was passionately pious.
0:05:19 > 0:05:22This is the parsonage where Nietzsche was born.
0:05:22 > 0:05:25His father, Carl Ludwig, had a very simple faith,
0:05:25 > 0:05:29and the household lived and breathed Christianity.
0:05:32 > 0:05:35Nietzsche's early years were settled and sheltered.
0:05:36 > 0:05:38His parents had two other children.
0:05:38 > 0:05:41When he was two, his sister Elisabeth was born,
0:05:41 > 0:05:45followed a year later by a brother, Joseph.
0:05:46 > 0:05:50But in the autumn of 1848, when Friedrich was only four years old,
0:05:50 > 0:05:53his childhood was ripped apart.
0:05:54 > 0:05:57His father became mentally ill,
0:05:57 > 0:06:01and was diagnosed with a terminal brain disease.
0:06:03 > 0:06:05It was a torturous decline.
0:06:05 > 0:06:09He went blind and eventually was bedridden.
0:06:09 > 0:06:11One year later, he was dead.
0:06:11 > 0:06:16An autopsy revealed that a quarter of his brain was missing.
0:06:16 > 0:06:19This must have been a truly horrific end.
0:06:21 > 0:06:26The suffering of his beloved father marked Friedrich for life.
0:06:31 > 0:06:34As a teenager, he wrote about his father's funeral
0:06:34 > 0:06:37in this church where he had once preached.
0:06:39 > 0:06:43"Oh, never will the deep-throated sound of those bells quit my ear.
0:06:46 > 0:06:50"The organ resounded through the empty spaces of the church."
0:06:55 > 0:07:00For Nietzsche, the death of his father posed a profound question.
0:07:00 > 0:07:02Why had this God,
0:07:02 > 0:07:07whom his father had so loved and to whom he dedicated his life,
0:07:07 > 0:07:11punished a good man with such torment?
0:07:15 > 0:07:19It was the start of a journey into doubt that would come to define
0:07:19 > 0:07:21Nietzsche's life.
0:07:26 > 0:07:31Despite the loss of his father, in 1864, at the age of 20,
0:07:31 > 0:07:35Nietzsche arrived in Bonn to study theology at the university,
0:07:35 > 0:07:38contemplating a future as a Lutheran pastor.
0:07:39 > 0:07:43But it was during his time here that he came under the influence of
0:07:43 > 0:07:47a controversial new method of studying the Bible,
0:07:47 > 0:07:51known as Biblical criticism.
0:07:51 > 0:07:56And it scandalously suggested that this sacred text wasn't a credible
0:07:56 > 0:08:00historical work, but largely myth.
0:08:01 > 0:08:05It was radically undermining the authenticity of the scriptures.
0:08:05 > 0:08:09And for Nietzsche, it had a dramatic impact.
0:08:09 > 0:08:12If his father's death and suffering had made him question
0:08:12 > 0:08:14the idea of God emotionally,
0:08:14 > 0:08:18then this gave him the intellectual grounds on which to
0:08:18 > 0:08:20construct his doubt.
0:08:22 > 0:08:26Nietzsche's loss of belief caused an immediate rift with his family.
0:08:28 > 0:08:31At Easter, he refused to attend church,
0:08:31 > 0:08:33crushing his mother's dreams
0:08:33 > 0:08:36that he would follow his father to the pulpit.
0:08:36 > 0:08:41And his sister, who had always hero-worshipped her brother,
0:08:41 > 0:08:43found her own faith thrown into chaos.
0:08:45 > 0:08:49But for Nietzsche, his journey into doubt wasn't just a source of hurt
0:08:49 > 0:08:50for those close to him.
0:08:50 > 0:08:54It was the start of an all-consuming dissection
0:08:54 > 0:08:58of the moral and religious beliefs with which he had grown up.
0:09:00 > 0:09:05He began to regard Christianity not just as a faith regretfully lost,
0:09:05 > 0:09:08but as a pernicious influence that encouraged
0:09:08 > 0:09:11an unhealthy disengagement from the world.
0:09:12 > 0:09:16Christian teaching, he argued, focused on the next life,
0:09:16 > 0:09:19with disastrous consequences.
0:09:19 > 0:09:23Earth became a place of bleak exile from God.
0:09:23 > 0:09:28Life was a thing of pain and suffering to be endured,
0:09:28 > 0:09:29not celebrated.
0:09:31 > 0:09:35And this emphasis on the life to come robbed the here and now of its
0:09:35 > 0:09:37sublime meaning.
0:09:37 > 0:09:42This was a conviction that would dominate his life and his work
0:09:42 > 0:09:44for the next two decades.
0:09:46 > 0:09:48Rejecting Christianity forced Nietzsche
0:09:48 > 0:09:50to flee his theological studies,
0:09:50 > 0:09:53and to seek out a new direction.
0:09:59 > 0:10:01Right from the start,
0:10:01 > 0:10:04Nietzsche realised that his loss of faith wasn't the path to
0:10:04 > 0:10:06a life of contentment.
0:10:08 > 0:10:12In 1865, Nietzsche wrote to his sister, and said,
0:10:12 > 0:10:17"If you wish to seek peace of mind and happiness, then believe.
0:10:17 > 0:10:22"If you wish to be a disciple of truth, then investigate."
0:10:24 > 0:10:29Nietzsche was living in an age dominated by the rise of science,
0:10:29 > 0:10:34where the search for objective truth was all-consuming.
0:10:36 > 0:10:40But what Nietzsche saw with searing clarity was that the triumph of
0:10:40 > 0:10:46objectivity deprived humanity of something fundamental.
0:10:48 > 0:10:49Without Christianity,
0:10:49 > 0:10:55there was no set of binding moral rules by which we could all live.
0:10:55 > 0:10:58There was no solution to man's fear of death.
0:11:01 > 0:11:03And perhaps most importantly,
0:11:03 > 0:11:08with eternal salvation no longer mankind's prime goal,
0:11:08 > 0:11:13life itself didn't have a higher spiritual purpose.
0:11:15 > 0:11:21It was to finding new meaning in a godless universe that Nietzsche now
0:11:21 > 0:11:22dedicated himself.
0:11:31 > 0:11:35And his first glimpse at an answer came at the age of 21.
0:11:36 > 0:11:40He decided to become a student of philology,
0:11:40 > 0:11:45the study of the ancient civilisations and the philosophies of Greece and Rome.
0:11:45 > 0:11:48And he was in a book shop when he came across a work that would
0:11:48 > 0:11:53influence the way he thought and acted for the next decade.
0:11:55 > 0:11:59It was called The World As Will and Idea,
0:11:59 > 0:12:02and it was written by a German philosopher called Schopenhauer.
0:12:02 > 0:12:05As he read it, Nietzsche was transfixed.
0:12:07 > 0:12:09Schopenhauer was an atheist,
0:12:09 > 0:12:12who had also grappled with the purpose of life.
0:12:12 > 0:12:16But his conclusions were beyond pessimistic.
0:12:18 > 0:12:20Faced with the problem of life's endless sufferings,
0:12:20 > 0:12:22Schopenhauer's bleak conclusion
0:12:22 > 0:12:25was that it was best never to be born at all.
0:12:25 > 0:12:30He argued that human beings were in a state of constant desire.
0:12:30 > 0:12:34If we didn't achieve these desires, then there was discontent,
0:12:34 > 0:12:38and even if we did, then discontent would set in anyway.
0:12:38 > 0:12:44His solution was to face up to the fact that fulfilment is impossible.
0:12:44 > 0:12:46He encouraged us not to strive for happiness
0:12:46 > 0:12:51in order to avoid the anxiety and trouble in trying to achieve it.
0:12:51 > 0:12:53The happiest man, he said,
0:12:53 > 0:12:57is the one who gets through life with the minimum of pain.
0:12:59 > 0:13:02Nietzsche said it was like looking into a mirror
0:13:02 > 0:13:05that reflected the world, life,
0:13:05 > 0:13:09and his own mind with hideous magnificence.
0:13:11 > 0:13:13But whilst he accepted Schopenhauer's diagnosis
0:13:13 > 0:13:16that life was just a cycle of suffering,
0:13:16 > 0:13:19he passionately disagreed with his life-denying,
0:13:19 > 0:13:22nihilistic conclusions,
0:13:22 > 0:13:26the idea of giving up on life and the pursuit of one's desires.
0:13:26 > 0:13:33Instead, he was determined to find a way of affirming existence
0:13:33 > 0:13:35in spite of its pain.
0:13:48 > 0:13:50In 1869,
0:13:50 > 0:13:53the brilliant Friedrich became a professor of philology
0:13:53 > 0:13:57here at Basel University at the age of only 24,
0:13:57 > 0:13:59the youngest in its history.
0:14:02 > 0:14:05With his first book, which he wrote while he was here,
0:14:05 > 0:14:10he began to gain a reputation as a radical and subversive thinker.
0:14:11 > 0:14:14In his work, which he called The Birth of Tragedy,
0:14:14 > 0:14:19he started to grapple with the issue of how to deal with suffering
0:14:19 > 0:14:22in a world devoid of God.
0:14:26 > 0:14:31And for inspiration, he turned to the ideas of the Greeks,
0:14:31 > 0:14:36and a new focus of his devotions - the German composer Richard Wagner.
0:14:45 > 0:14:47On the 22nd of May 1872,
0:14:47 > 0:14:52the foundation stone was laid for Wagner's Festival Theatre.
0:14:54 > 0:14:56One of the guests at the ceremony was Nietzsche.
0:14:56 > 0:15:00The two men had met six years before when Nietzsche was just a student,
0:15:00 > 0:15:04and immediately he was smitten.
0:15:04 > 0:15:09Wagner became both an obsession and an inspiration.
0:15:09 > 0:15:12Nietzsche would come to believe that in Wagner's work,
0:15:12 > 0:15:18he had glimpsed what it was that made life itself worthwhile - art -
0:15:18 > 0:15:22and that the greatest art form of all was music.
0:15:26 > 0:15:28DOOR OPENS
0:15:32 > 0:15:34MUSIC: Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla
0:15:34 > 0:15:36from Das Rheingold by Wagner
0:15:45 > 0:15:48Nietzsche believed Wagner to be an artistic genius
0:15:48 > 0:15:50whose music was going to bring about
0:15:50 > 0:15:56a cultural rebirth based on the classical Greek model of tragedy.
0:16:01 > 0:16:04It was an art form that Nietzsche was convinced could transform
0:16:04 > 0:16:10a world full of suffering into something beautiful and meaningful.
0:16:14 > 0:16:17How did Nietzsche come to write The Birth of Tragedy?
0:16:17 > 0:16:20What was he trying to do with this book, do you think?
0:16:20 > 0:16:23Nietzsche wrote The Birth of Tragedy after a series of incredibly intense
0:16:23 > 0:16:25conversations with Wagner.
0:16:25 > 0:16:28Wagner was developing a revolutionary theory of art,
0:16:28 > 0:16:31where art could transform society.
0:16:31 > 0:16:34Nietzsche wanted to provide the philosophy for that.
0:16:34 > 0:16:38He found in Greek tragedy a model for that thinking.
0:16:38 > 0:16:43Greek tragedy tells these extremely visceral stories of human beings
0:16:43 > 0:16:46in conflict, suffering, destructive.
0:16:46 > 0:16:51Yet it was the dominant genre of thinking about the glory of Greece.
0:16:51 > 0:16:53Consequently, he found in Greek tragedy
0:16:53 > 0:16:56a way of talking about the human being today,
0:16:56 > 0:16:59the human being's suffering, finding meaning in life,
0:16:59 > 0:17:01finding the truth.
0:17:01 > 0:17:04So what is so explosive about what he is putting down on the page?
0:17:04 > 0:17:07Well, Nietzsche structured his book around an opposition
0:17:07 > 0:17:12between two Greek gods - Apollo and Dionysus.
0:17:12 > 0:17:17Apollo stood for light, for the truth of logic, for control.
0:17:17 > 0:17:21And since the beginning of Germans' love of Greek,
0:17:21 > 0:17:23they associated Greece with rationality,
0:17:23 > 0:17:25the beginnings of philosophy.
0:17:25 > 0:17:29But Nietzsche decided he wanted to focus more on Dionysus,
0:17:29 > 0:17:32the figure who confuses boundaries,
0:17:32 > 0:17:36who discovers ecstatic group activity,
0:17:36 > 0:17:38dancing, wildness, the visceral feelings.
0:17:38 > 0:17:42And he made that the centre of his tragedy.
0:17:42 > 0:17:45So he was standing against philosophy, against his own subject,
0:17:45 > 0:17:49against that sense that logic is the way to truth.
0:17:49 > 0:17:54He wanted to find another sort of truth, another transformative power.
0:17:54 > 0:17:57But how did he think that Dionysus,
0:17:57 > 0:18:00with all his darkness, and as you say, chaos, sometimes,
0:18:00 > 0:18:04and loss of control - how is that going to help mankind?
0:18:04 > 0:18:07Nietzsche was reacting against the dominant German intellectual tradition,
0:18:07 > 0:18:13which focused on the individual hero, the Oedipuses, if you like.
0:18:13 > 0:18:17And they saw that the individual who suffered could somehow
0:18:17 > 0:18:20transcend themselves through suffering.
0:18:20 > 0:18:24A very Christian message. Nietzsche reversed that,
0:18:24 > 0:18:29and saw instead that the individual somehow lost themselves in
0:18:29 > 0:18:32the collective, and found in a group experience
0:18:32 > 0:18:36an ecstatic transformational experience.
0:18:36 > 0:18:38That's what he saw in Wagner's music,
0:18:38 > 0:18:41and that's what he saw in tragedy,
0:18:41 > 0:18:45so that somehow the suffering that was everybody's condition
0:18:45 > 0:18:48was transformed through this ecstatic experience
0:18:48 > 0:18:52into an affirmation of life, this life, here and now.
0:18:52 > 0:18:54It's a bit like that sense of a rock concert -
0:18:54 > 0:19:00the idea that you somehow lose yourself in this great, ecstatic, collective experience.
0:19:00 > 0:19:03And one should never forget that opera in the 19th century
0:19:03 > 0:19:08was the rock music of its time, and Wagner was the rock icon of his day.
0:19:08 > 0:19:10And Nietzsche believed
0:19:10 > 0:19:13that was the way that society could be transformed,
0:19:13 > 0:19:17through a sense of the collective experience,
0:19:17 > 0:19:20from which you could go out and change the world.
0:19:22 > 0:19:26Wagner's theatre was a temple to his brilliance.
0:19:26 > 0:19:29But it was also the place where Nietzsche
0:19:29 > 0:19:32fell violently out of love with his hero.
0:19:33 > 0:19:36When Nietzsche came here to watch a performance of Wagner's opera
0:19:36 > 0:19:40The Ring, he hated what he found.
0:19:40 > 0:19:43Rather than a place of revolution,
0:19:43 > 0:19:47the theatre was stuffed with the great and the good of Europe,
0:19:47 > 0:19:50and the man that he'd revered as a radical,
0:19:50 > 0:19:54who he thought would catalyse the birth of a brave new world,
0:19:54 > 0:19:58was just the hero of a self-satisfied festival of opera,
0:19:58 > 0:20:01revelling in his own glory.
0:20:05 > 0:20:08Nietzsche stormed out of the theatre mid-performance.
0:20:08 > 0:20:12It marked the beginning of the end of their friendship,
0:20:12 > 0:20:17and a new phase in Nietzsche's philosophical quest.
0:20:25 > 0:20:27Nietzsche's rejection of Wagner
0:20:27 > 0:20:32coincided with a similarly radical change in his own life and work.
0:20:34 > 0:20:36Whilst he continued to teach in Basel,
0:20:36 > 0:20:40he began to have severe doubts as to whether it was here
0:20:40 > 0:20:41that his future lay.
0:20:42 > 0:20:47He still believed that it was through liberating the creative Dionysian spirit
0:20:47 > 0:20:50that greatness could be achieved.
0:20:50 > 0:20:52But he began to doubt that the answer
0:20:52 > 0:20:57lay with the transformation of the masses.
0:20:57 > 0:21:00Instead, it was the flourishing of great visionary individuals
0:21:00 > 0:21:03that would hold the key to the future.
0:21:03 > 0:21:07And he was convinced that the petty responsibilities of academic life
0:21:07 > 0:21:10were suffocating his own creative genius.
0:21:12 > 0:21:16He conceived a deep dread of coming back here to lecture,
0:21:16 > 0:21:19to what he called the greatest curse of his life.
0:21:21 > 0:21:27Depressed and anxious, he developed what he called Baselophobia.
0:21:27 > 0:21:30Nietzsche longed to break free.
0:21:33 > 0:21:39The key to life, he wrote, was to live dangerously.
0:21:40 > 0:21:45On the 2nd of May 1879, he resigned his professorship.
0:21:49 > 0:21:54As Nietzsche left Basel, he was gripped by debilitating ill-health.
0:21:54 > 0:21:58Since childhood, he had been plagued by violent stomach pains
0:21:58 > 0:22:01and blinding headaches.
0:22:01 > 0:22:04And haunted by the fear that he, too, would be struck down by
0:22:04 > 0:22:07the disease that killed his father.
0:22:07 > 0:22:09Nietzsche's physical challenges had been the final trigger
0:22:09 > 0:22:11for his resignation.
0:22:13 > 0:22:17Although his doctors warned that excessive reading and writing
0:22:17 > 0:22:19would cause him to go blind,
0:22:19 > 0:22:24nothing was going to stop his pursuit of a life of philosophy.
0:22:34 > 0:22:37Nietzsche began to crisscross Europe,
0:22:37 > 0:22:39staying in hotels and guesthouses,
0:22:39 > 0:22:42and climates that alleviated his medical symptoms.
0:22:44 > 0:22:47He would spend the rest of his sane adult life
0:22:47 > 0:22:50in a state of nomadic solitude.
0:22:52 > 0:22:57You can just imagine him, ill, troubled, increasingly isolated,
0:22:57 > 0:23:01and yet with this extraordinary mind for company.
0:23:01 > 0:23:03Over the next decade,
0:23:03 > 0:23:06the ideas and thoughts that poured onto the page
0:23:06 > 0:23:08were simply astonishing.
0:23:11 > 0:23:16His ill-health would mean that he could only write in bursts of 20 minutes at a time,
0:23:16 > 0:23:19so his books were full of incisive aphorisms, pithy statements,
0:23:19 > 0:23:22rather than long philosophical treatises.
0:23:23 > 0:23:25And it was on a train in 1881
0:23:25 > 0:23:28that he was told about somewhere that would
0:23:28 > 0:23:32provide the inspiration for many of these great works.
0:23:34 > 0:23:38A fellow traveller recommended that he visit a place called Sils Maria.
0:23:38 > 0:23:42Just a tiny little farming village in the Swiss mountains.
0:23:42 > 0:23:45He followed their advice and discovered the place
0:23:45 > 0:23:48that would become his spiritual homeland.
0:24:05 > 0:24:09On Monday the 4th of July 1881,
0:24:09 > 0:24:12Nietzsche fell in love at first sight with Sils Maria.
0:24:14 > 0:24:19Its mountains and forests inspired his most life-affirming ideas.
0:24:19 > 0:24:26Its beauty reinforced for him the sheer magnificence of existence.
0:24:26 > 0:24:30And it was on one of his walks here, a month after he'd arrived,
0:24:30 > 0:24:35that Nietzsche had what he believed was the most important thought
0:24:35 > 0:24:37he'd ever conceived.
0:24:38 > 0:24:41He was walking by this lake when he stopped
0:24:41 > 0:24:44next to this rock and suddenly had a vision.
0:24:44 > 0:24:47This was a thought experiment that Nietzsche believed
0:24:47 > 0:24:50would help us all to analyse every action,
0:24:50 > 0:24:52every decision of our lives,
0:24:52 > 0:24:55so that we could live those to the full.
0:24:55 > 0:24:57This was his question -
0:24:57 > 0:25:02if a demon were to whisper in your ear that you had to live your life
0:25:02 > 0:25:06as lived time and time again throughout eternity,
0:25:06 > 0:25:09with all the pain and with all the greatness,
0:25:09 > 0:25:13would you fall to the ground and gnash your teeth and curse that demon,
0:25:13 > 0:25:19or would you say that he was a god and that his utterances were divine?
0:25:24 > 0:25:29It was an idea that became known as the eternal recurrence of the same,
0:25:29 > 0:25:34and it formed the very essence of Nietzsche's attitude to life,
0:25:34 > 0:25:37to both its joys and its hardships.
0:25:39 > 0:25:42Nietzsche believed that even though we all have things that we might
0:25:42 > 0:25:46consider failures - the break-up of a relationship,
0:25:46 > 0:25:52or the death of a loved one - we should be happy to relive those events, too.
0:25:52 > 0:25:57Just as a pianist learns to master improvisations, so we should
0:25:57 > 0:26:01learn to incorporate mistakes and imperfections and sorrows
0:26:01 > 0:26:04into the beauty of the whole.
0:26:04 > 0:26:08We should construct our lives so we are our own heroes.
0:26:08 > 0:26:12Basically, we should decide who we want to be,
0:26:12 > 0:26:16how we want to live our life, and then love the choices that we've made.
0:26:16 > 0:26:21So that the thought of reliving our existence, for good and for bad,
0:26:21 > 0:26:26can be greeted with a life-affirming "Yes".
0:26:29 > 0:26:35The eternal return was an exuberant and optimistic embrace of life.
0:26:36 > 0:26:40Suffering wasn't something that you had to be redeemed from,
0:26:40 > 0:26:43as Christianity taught,
0:26:43 > 0:26:46or avoided at all costs, as Schopenhauer argued.
0:26:47 > 0:26:51Instead, it was to be embraced, mastered.
0:26:51 > 0:26:58To live life most fully, one had to risk suffering and overcome it.
0:27:00 > 0:27:01What doesn't kill you makes you stronger
0:27:01 > 0:27:04is one of Nietzsche's most iconic phrases.
0:27:04 > 0:27:06And it was one that he himself
0:27:06 > 0:27:09was just about to have to put to the test.
0:27:11 > 0:27:15The philosopher was about to face one of the greatest disappointments
0:27:15 > 0:27:17of his life.
0:27:31 > 0:27:35It was in the beautiful town of Lucerne that, in the spring of 1882,
0:27:35 > 0:27:39Nietzsche contemplated abandoning his life of seclusion
0:27:39 > 0:27:44for a life of love with a woman he was entranced by.
0:27:46 > 0:27:48Her name was Lou Salome.
0:27:48 > 0:27:53She was 21, Russian born, clever, beautiful,
0:27:53 > 0:27:56and fascinated by his ideas.
0:27:56 > 0:27:59Nietzsche was lost.
0:28:02 > 0:28:05Nietzsche and Lou spent hours walking together,
0:28:05 > 0:28:10discussing philosophy, absorbed in their own world.
0:28:13 > 0:28:15And Nietzsche brought her here,
0:28:15 > 0:28:20to what was known as Lion Garden, in the centre of Lucerne, to propose.
0:28:22 > 0:28:25He'd already asked for her hand in marriage once before,
0:28:25 > 0:28:29through his friend Paul Ree, and she had refused.
0:28:29 > 0:28:32Convinced that Ree hadn't done the job properly,
0:28:32 > 0:28:35Nietzsche was determined to try again.
0:28:35 > 0:28:40But Salome just wasn't interested in a conventional relationship.
0:28:40 > 0:28:42She was feisty and original,
0:28:42 > 0:28:47and had no intention whatsoever of being trapped in a life of Victorian
0:28:47 > 0:28:52domesticity, and so she'd pledged never to give herself to a man.
0:28:52 > 0:28:55So when Nietzsche proposed for a second time,
0:28:55 > 0:28:57the answer was still no.
0:29:02 > 0:29:06He was devastated by the rejection,
0:29:06 > 0:29:10made worse by the fact that his meddling sister Elisabeth
0:29:10 > 0:29:14was jealous of Lou's youth and wild charm,
0:29:14 > 0:29:18and determined to disrupt any potential romance.
0:29:19 > 0:29:23Elisabeth reported details of Nietzsche's passion for Lou
0:29:23 > 0:29:26to their mother, who responded by spitting out
0:29:26 > 0:29:31that her son was a disgrace to his father's grave.
0:29:31 > 0:29:34Their relationship was shattered,
0:29:34 > 0:29:37and Nietzsche was utterly despondent.
0:29:43 > 0:29:47What followed was one of the most miserable periods in his life.
0:29:48 > 0:29:51But one in which he had the chance
0:29:51 > 0:29:54to test his own philosophy of suffering.
0:30:01 > 0:30:05Nietzsche fled, in bleak mood.
0:30:07 > 0:30:09His books weren't selling.
0:30:09 > 0:30:13He was in bad health, and often suicidal.
0:30:16 > 0:30:21In March 1883, Nietzsche wrote, "In the deepest part of me,
0:30:21 > 0:30:25"an immovable black melancholy holds sway.
0:30:25 > 0:30:29"I cannot see even a reason to live beyond six months."
0:30:30 > 0:30:33He realised that this was a true test of his own ability
0:30:33 > 0:30:36to face suffering and to overcome it.
0:30:37 > 0:30:42"I am exerting every ounce of self-mastery," he wrote.
0:30:42 > 0:30:47"Unless I can discover an alchemical trick to turn this muck into gold,
0:30:47 > 0:30:49"I am lost."
0:30:51 > 0:30:52But in the depths of his misery,
0:30:52 > 0:30:56he poured himself into writing a new book,
0:30:56 > 0:31:00one which would prove him to be just such an alchemist.
0:31:02 > 0:31:05It was the work that he considered to be his greatest.
0:31:05 > 0:31:09MUSIC: Also sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss
0:31:09 > 0:31:11Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
0:31:23 > 0:31:26Zarathustra had huge impact.
0:31:26 > 0:31:30It inspired composers, like Richard Strauss, and writers,
0:31:30 > 0:31:34from Joyce and Kafka to Yeats and Camus.
0:31:34 > 0:31:38A parody of the Bible, that Nietzsche referred to as the fifth gospel,
0:31:38 > 0:31:41it centred around the spiritual journey of a mysterious,
0:31:41 > 0:31:45mystical character called Zarathustra, and in it,
0:31:45 > 0:31:49the philosopher introduced one of his most notorious concepts -
0:31:49 > 0:31:52the Ubermensch, or Superman.
0:32:00 > 0:32:04The book is a parable on the importance of self overcoming.
0:32:06 > 0:32:09The imagery is of the mountains,
0:32:09 > 0:32:13and the figure of Zarathustra echoes Nietzsche himself.
0:32:19 > 0:32:21Two of its four books were written here,
0:32:21 > 0:32:24in the guesthouse where Nietzsche often stayed.
0:32:25 > 0:32:27It is remarkable being here, isn't it?
0:32:27 > 0:32:29Because it's in this room that Nietzsche wrote
0:32:29 > 0:32:33one of his most groundbreaking and influential works.
0:32:33 > 0:32:36This is the place where he first had the ideas
0:32:36 > 0:32:39about Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
0:32:39 > 0:32:42Zarathustra is a prophet who comes down the mountain,
0:32:42 > 0:32:48and he wants to talk to people in the town about this great event,
0:32:48 > 0:32:54that God is dead, that Christianity, with all its certain, universal,
0:32:54 > 0:32:58absolute moral values, is no longer believed in,
0:32:58 > 0:33:02and that the question of what it is to be human,
0:33:02 > 0:33:08and how one is to live as a human, needs to be answered anew.
0:33:08 > 0:33:11But nobody listens to Zarathustra.
0:33:11 > 0:33:15And one of the mechanisms to deliver that is this difficult concept,
0:33:15 > 0:33:18the Ubermensch, the Overman or the Superman.
0:33:18 > 0:33:21Who or what exactly is that?
0:33:21 > 0:33:23It's easier to say what it is not.
0:33:23 > 0:33:26It's not a biological concept.
0:33:26 > 0:33:29It's not some kind of superior human race.
0:33:29 > 0:33:33An Ubermensch is someone who is no longer reliant
0:33:33 > 0:33:39on inauthentic external goals society gives him or her -
0:33:39 > 0:33:41parents, religions.
0:33:41 > 0:33:47It's someone who is able to commit to goals that you set yourself.
0:33:47 > 0:33:49You offer humanity goals,
0:33:49 > 0:33:53and Nietzsche thinks it's a terrifyingly difficult task,
0:33:53 > 0:33:55because the guidelines are missing.
0:33:55 > 0:33:57There are no blueprints.
0:33:57 > 0:34:04And whilst you full well know that whatever task you set yourself isn't
0:34:04 > 0:34:07universal, isn't good for all,
0:34:07 > 0:34:10it's nevertheless one you commit yourself to.
0:34:10 > 0:34:12It's one you strive towards.
0:34:12 > 0:34:15The Ubermensch is someone who can shift
0:34:15 > 0:34:19and see that the responsibility
0:34:19 > 0:34:24and the joy of creating life lies not with some transcendent God,
0:34:24 > 0:34:25but lies within oneself.
0:34:27 > 0:34:30In pouring himself into writing Zarathustra,
0:34:30 > 0:34:35Nietzsche and not only gave his own life meaning in the face of suffering,
0:34:35 > 0:34:40but he also began to see that suffering itself
0:34:40 > 0:34:44was the key to unlocking the elusive secret of happiness.
0:34:45 > 0:34:48So what do you think happiness is for Nietzsche?
0:34:48 > 0:34:52We traditionally see happiness in opposition to pain, exertion,
0:34:52 > 0:34:57suffering, etc. For him, that is not the case.
0:34:58 > 0:35:00It's striving towards something,
0:35:00 > 0:35:05it's suffering through that great task you've set yourself.
0:35:05 > 0:35:10So just flying up onto the summit of a high mountain in a helicopter will
0:35:10 > 0:35:14not give you the kind of feeling of happiness
0:35:14 > 0:35:18that you experience when you have spent 15 days
0:35:18 > 0:35:20walking towards the summit.
0:35:20 > 0:35:25It's overcoming obstacles that resist you achieving that goal
0:35:25 > 0:35:29that is part of the experience of happiness.
0:35:29 > 0:35:32So it's not just pleasure, but pain that can be happiness.
0:35:32 > 0:35:36Pain is almost an enabling condition for happiness.
0:35:41 > 0:35:44Nietzsche never found love again.
0:35:44 > 0:35:49But he'd succeeded in transforming his despair into a work whose vision
0:35:49 > 0:35:53would go on to resonate with generations of artists and thinkers.
0:35:54 > 0:35:58He'd become a living testament to his idea of the eternal return.
0:36:00 > 0:36:04And he now turned his attention away from the loss of the meaning created
0:36:04 > 0:36:09by the murder of God to the crisis of values left in its wake.
0:36:18 > 0:36:21Nietzsche continued his restless journey around Europe.
0:36:23 > 0:36:25Although his health was deteriorating,
0:36:25 > 0:36:29it didn't stop him from writing a subversive work
0:36:29 > 0:36:32called Beyond Good and Evil.
0:36:35 > 0:36:38Nietzsche himself thought the book was terrifying,
0:36:38 > 0:36:40a squid-like work that confronted
0:36:40 > 0:36:45all the dark realities that 19th-century science had laid bare.
0:36:46 > 0:36:49He couldn't find anybody to publish it,
0:36:49 > 0:36:51so he paid for it to be printed himself.
0:36:51 > 0:36:56And when it was released in 1886, the reviewers hated it.
0:36:56 > 0:36:59They described it as dangerous dynamite.
0:37:02 > 0:37:06Both this book and his next, The Genealogy of Morality,
0:37:06 > 0:37:10were fired by Nietzsche's utter dismay at the persistence of
0:37:10 > 0:37:12Christianity's moral values.
0:37:13 > 0:37:16Whilst many 19th-century intellectuals
0:37:16 > 0:37:19had rejected the faith, they maintained its values.
0:37:21 > 0:37:23For Nietzsche, this was a catastrophe.
0:37:25 > 0:37:29For him, they no longer just lacked divine authority -
0:37:29 > 0:37:33they were a threat to the future of humanity itself.
0:37:35 > 0:37:38Why should we try to understand this book of his, Beyond Good and Evil,
0:37:38 > 0:37:40if we're going to try to understand Nietzsche?
0:37:40 > 0:37:43Well, this is the book where he really begins his incredibly intense
0:37:43 > 0:37:46campaign against Christianity.
0:37:46 > 0:37:49And he says, the real logic of Christianity
0:37:49 > 0:37:53is a hatred of our own human, all too human nature.
0:37:53 > 0:37:56That is, we have various drives, according to Nietzsche -
0:37:56 > 0:38:00sexual drives, aggressive drives, drives to dominate.
0:38:00 > 0:38:03And Christianity says those drives are an affront to God.
0:38:03 > 0:38:05We need to push those drives down.
0:38:05 > 0:38:09But for Nietzsche, that means we need to push ourselves down.
0:38:09 > 0:38:14So he thinks that Christianity teaches us kind of a self-evisceration, a self-hatred.
0:38:14 > 0:38:17That is his critique of Christianity.
0:38:17 > 0:38:19And what does he think is wrong
0:38:19 > 0:38:22with a fundamental Christian moral value?
0:38:22 > 0:38:24Well, he looks at Christianity,
0:38:24 > 0:38:26and he very disparagingly calls it slave morality.
0:38:26 > 0:38:29And he calls it slave morality because he thinks it's a morality
0:38:29 > 0:38:31that is focused on the worst off.
0:38:31 > 0:38:35That is, the slaves of ancient Rome, who were the weak ones,
0:38:35 > 0:38:39and needed a religion that gave them a sense of meaning,
0:38:39 > 0:38:41a sense of power.
0:38:41 > 0:38:43But they had no power in this world, so they tried to...
0:38:43 > 0:38:46He says, and he puts it so powerfully,
0:38:46 > 0:38:48they lie their weakness into a strength.
0:38:48 > 0:38:53So he thinks these Christian values - humility, poverty, meekness -
0:38:53 > 0:38:58he thinks these are values that make it safe for the weakest in society,
0:38:58 > 0:39:00but he thinks eventually,
0:39:00 > 0:39:03when these values triumph and become everyone's values,
0:39:03 > 0:39:06they inevitably make for mediocrity.
0:39:06 > 0:39:09But his criticism of the weak really troubles me,
0:39:09 > 0:39:13because these are works that have no time, it seems to me, for the weak,
0:39:13 > 0:39:15- for compassion.- Yeah.
0:39:15 > 0:39:18It's not that Nietzsche thought we should step on the weak.
0:39:18 > 0:39:20What he thought is, we shouldn't be obsessed with the weak.
0:39:20 > 0:39:24And that is so strange to us, because we think, "And what's wrong with compassion?"
0:39:24 > 0:39:26But he did have a problem with compassion.
0:39:26 > 0:39:28Is this one of the reasons that
0:39:28 > 0:39:30he is so anti the emerging isms of the day?
0:39:30 > 0:39:32So socialism, communism...
0:39:32 > 0:39:34Well, a lot of communists,
0:39:34 > 0:39:38a lot of socialists, may no longer believe in God,
0:39:38 > 0:39:42but they still have this core Christian value of compassion.
0:39:42 > 0:39:44And Nietzsche says, when you're obsessed with compassion,
0:39:44 > 0:39:47when you're obsessed with how the worst off are doing,
0:39:47 > 0:39:51that gets you into a mentality where what is valued is contentment.
0:39:51 > 0:39:55He calls that herd happiness, and he says that is only worthy of animals.
0:39:55 > 0:39:57We are worthy of so much more.
0:39:57 > 0:40:01He says, if you gear everything to making the worst off as well as
0:40:01 > 0:40:06possible, you take your eyes off the idea of the great individuals who
0:40:06 > 0:40:10often are extremely egotistical, we would say selfish.
0:40:10 > 0:40:13But he says they need that selfishness to make their achievements,
0:40:13 > 0:40:19because it's their achievements that really drive civilisation and culture at its highest peaks.
0:40:20 > 0:40:23Christian morality was something that Nietzsche believed
0:40:23 > 0:40:27was positively dangerous for the future of mankind.
0:40:27 > 0:40:31If humanity was to survive, it needed the great individuals,
0:40:31 > 0:40:37the very geniuses that he thought the slave morality of Christian culture was holding down.
0:40:40 > 0:40:43But there was a system of values that he did admire.
0:40:44 > 0:40:47He also talks about master morality.
0:40:47 > 0:40:49What's going on there?
0:40:49 > 0:40:53He's harkening back to the world of the ancient Romans and the ancient Greeks.
0:40:53 > 0:40:55They were both massive slave-owning societies.
0:40:55 > 0:40:59He said, these people were masterful in a way that, with their gods,
0:40:59 > 0:41:01they celebrated themselves.
0:41:01 > 0:41:05Someone like Achilles, the great warrior - he could worship Ares,
0:41:05 > 0:41:08the God of War, but in doing that, he was worshipping himself.
0:41:08 > 0:41:13So he says, the masters have a religion that affirms themselves,
0:41:13 > 0:41:17whereas the slaves have a religion of Christianity
0:41:17 > 0:41:20which actually disavows their nature.
0:41:22 > 0:41:25The master morality of the Greeks, as Nietzsche saw it,
0:41:25 > 0:41:31glorified ambition, strength and power, and despised compassion.
0:41:33 > 0:41:36Nietzsche was convinced that a revision of moral values
0:41:36 > 0:41:39was needed for a post-Christian future,
0:41:39 > 0:41:43and that such a morality needed moral legislators.
0:41:45 > 0:41:49In his letters, he announced that his next task was a magnum opus,
0:41:49 > 0:41:55in which he would lay out a new value system to fill the void.
0:41:56 > 0:41:58But it wasn't to be.
0:42:09 > 0:42:12In April 1888, Nietzsche moved to Turin.
0:42:14 > 0:42:18This would be his home for the rest of his sane life.
0:42:18 > 0:42:22When he arrived here, he was at his most brilliantly productive.
0:42:22 > 0:42:24In an almost constant state of euphoria,
0:42:24 > 0:42:27he produced four books in a year,
0:42:27 > 0:42:31and as he walked through the city, he said he felt like a god.
0:42:34 > 0:42:37But it was in the beauty of this Italian city
0:42:37 > 0:42:40that Nietzsche's mind began to decay.
0:42:42 > 0:42:45And it's in the letters he wrote at the start of 1888
0:42:45 > 0:42:48that the very first signs of his madness can be glimpsed.
0:42:53 > 0:42:55These letters give us a troubling insight
0:42:55 > 0:42:58into Nietzsche's state of mind at the time.
0:42:58 > 0:43:02Rather than the brilliance that once poured onto the page,
0:43:02 > 0:43:05these are bizarre and deranged.
0:43:06 > 0:43:08Here he is writing to Bismarck,
0:43:08 > 0:43:10one of the most powerful statesmen in Prussia,
0:43:10 > 0:43:14but he signs himself the Antichrist.
0:43:14 > 0:43:17On others, he calls himself Dionysus, the Greek god.
0:43:17 > 0:43:22And here he simply ends, "the crucified one".
0:43:26 > 0:43:28Nietzsche had megalomaniac tendencies,
0:43:28 > 0:43:32claiming that he was preparing an event which had the potential
0:43:32 > 0:43:36to split the history of humanity into two halves.
0:43:38 > 0:43:41The owners of the house where he was staying were alarmed
0:43:41 > 0:43:43by his ecstatic piano playing.
0:43:43 > 0:43:46Sometimes they could just about make out that he was
0:43:46 > 0:43:49leaping about his room stark naked, yelling,
0:43:49 > 0:43:52as if he was recreating a Dionysian orgy.
0:43:59 > 0:44:03Events came to a climax in one of Turin's piazzas.
0:44:04 > 0:44:08Nietzsche saw a coachman thrashing his horse with a whip.
0:44:08 > 0:44:11He flung his arms around the animal's neck,
0:44:11 > 0:44:14and with tears streaming, collapsed to the ground.
0:44:15 > 0:44:20The final sane act of a man who had spent his life criticising
0:44:20 > 0:44:22the weakness of human compassion
0:44:22 > 0:44:25was one of profound pity.
0:44:29 > 0:44:34Seven days later, he was incarcerated in an asylum in Basel.
0:44:46 > 0:44:48Nietzsche never regained his sanity.
0:44:50 > 0:44:51At the age of 44,
0:44:51 > 0:44:55one of the most searing philosophical minds in human history
0:44:55 > 0:44:57had disintegrated.
0:44:58 > 0:45:03For the next decade, until his death in 1900, he'd write nothing.
0:45:06 > 0:45:09When he arrived at the clinic, the friend who brought him wrote,
0:45:09 > 0:45:12"He suffers from delusions of infinite grandeur.
0:45:12 > 0:45:14"It's hopeless.
0:45:14 > 0:45:18"I've never seen such a horrific picture of destruction."
0:45:28 > 0:45:34No-one knows exactly what caused Nietzsche's descent into madness.
0:45:34 > 0:45:36But while Nietzsche's mind collapsed,
0:45:36 > 0:45:40his work started to take on a life of its own.
0:46:01 > 0:46:06In 1887, Nietzsche was brought here, to his sister Elisabeth's house,
0:46:06 > 0:46:09to live out his remaining years.
0:46:26 > 0:46:30Declared clinically insane, until his death,
0:46:30 > 0:46:32Elisabeth would be his sole carer.
0:46:34 > 0:46:35While Nietzsche lived here,
0:46:35 > 0:46:39Elisabeth treated her brother like an attraction in a sideshow.
0:46:39 > 0:46:41She invited visitors in to stare at him,
0:46:41 > 0:46:44and she held soirees for his disciples,
0:46:44 > 0:46:48while his disturbed groaning could be heard from upstairs.
0:46:50 > 0:46:52Today the house is a shrine to Nietzsche,
0:46:52 > 0:46:54created by his younger sister,
0:46:54 > 0:46:57who dressed him in white as if a prophet.
0:46:57 > 0:47:02Yet its pristine rooms are chillingly devoid of any trace of his personality.
0:47:05 > 0:47:08Elisabeth collected together Nietzsche's writings,
0:47:08 > 0:47:11including notebooks for an unpublished masterwork
0:47:11 > 0:47:16that Nietzsche had planned before his mind shut down.
0:47:17 > 0:47:21Notebooks he'd never intended the world to see.
0:47:24 > 0:47:27What exactly is it that we're looking at here?
0:47:27 > 0:47:30So here we're looking at two notebooks of Nietzsche's,
0:47:30 > 0:47:35in which he is working up to this great work called The Will to Power,
0:47:35 > 0:47:38a work of tremendous ambition, because what he's attempting,
0:47:38 > 0:47:42you can see from this notebook here, is a revaluation of all values.
0:47:42 > 0:47:45I mean, it's extraordinarily exciting to see this,
0:47:45 > 0:47:49because here he is trying to overturn the whole of Western morality,
0:47:49 > 0:47:52because people deep down no longer believe in it,
0:47:52 > 0:47:56though they are going on, like the herd, as he calls most of us,
0:47:56 > 0:48:00living their lives by it, but there is no longer a god to back it up.
0:48:00 > 0:48:03So he's saying, we need to find a new morality,
0:48:03 > 0:48:06and that's his fundamental task.
0:48:06 > 0:48:07Is it as simple as it sounds?
0:48:07 > 0:48:11The Will to Power - is he saying that power is the identifying,
0:48:11 > 0:48:13organising principle for humanity?
0:48:13 > 0:48:15He's saying, actually,
0:48:15 > 0:48:19if we look at how people live and behave and strive,
0:48:19 > 0:48:23really what they're after in life, from infancy onwards, is power.
0:48:23 > 0:48:27And therefore, any morality that's going to fit with human nature needs
0:48:27 > 0:48:32to be a morality that sees power as the goal that we all seek,
0:48:32 > 0:48:34albeit in very different ways.
0:48:34 > 0:48:36So it's more than just something -
0:48:36 > 0:48:40because we've got Darwin at this time, with his survival of the fittest.
0:48:40 > 0:48:43- We do.- But Nietzsche is taking that idea way beyond what Darwin is saying.
0:48:43 > 0:48:46He is. Superficially they sound similar, but in fact,
0:48:46 > 0:48:47they're profoundly different.
0:48:47 > 0:48:51Nietzsche despised Darwin,
0:48:51 > 0:48:57and he has contempt for any way of living life that simply seeks to
0:48:57 > 0:49:00preserve yourself and your progeny.
0:49:00 > 0:49:03And the real difference is that the will to power
0:49:03 > 0:49:05is concerned that human beings should do more than
0:49:05 > 0:49:07merely preserve themselves.
0:49:07 > 0:49:10They should aim for great things.
0:49:10 > 0:49:13They should aim to be great statesmen,
0:49:13 > 0:49:16or to be great philosophers, and design new worlds, as it were.
0:49:16 > 0:49:19And that might involve sacrificing preservation.
0:49:19 > 0:49:20It might involve an early death.
0:49:20 > 0:49:22It might involve leaving no children.
0:49:22 > 0:49:27For him, the will to power is about seeking the exceptional.
0:49:29 > 0:49:33But Nietzsche seems to have recognised the flaw in his own idea.
0:49:34 > 0:49:38Perhaps his last sane act was the decision
0:49:38 > 0:49:41not to publish what he'd written.
0:49:41 > 0:49:44Nietzsche was himself against all philosophies
0:49:44 > 0:49:48that attempted to reduce the world to one principle,
0:49:48 > 0:49:50whatever that principle might be.
0:49:50 > 0:49:55And in a sense, his attempt to reduce the world to the will to power was,
0:49:55 > 0:49:58as he would put it, intellectually unclean,
0:49:58 > 0:50:02and I think that's why this work ultimately failed.
0:50:02 > 0:50:07Because he realised that he was being untrue to himself.
0:50:07 > 0:50:11And what clues are in these notebooks themselves
0:50:11 > 0:50:13that he has given up?
0:50:13 > 0:50:15Well, I mean, there are small signs
0:50:15 > 0:50:17- for example, here, in this version,
0:50:17 > 0:50:22he's written a shopping list over these profound thoughts.
0:50:22 > 0:50:25And here we have the word toothbrush. Zahnburste.
0:50:25 > 0:50:28So I think if you start writing shopping lists over your great
0:50:28 > 0:50:32masterworks, that suggests that you no longer have respect for them.
0:50:36 > 0:50:39But the work he abandoned WAS published,
0:50:39 > 0:50:42with devastating consequences.
0:50:43 > 0:50:46Nietzsche died here of a stroke in 1900.
0:50:47 > 0:50:50But his death gave Elisabeth the opportunity
0:50:50 > 0:50:54to appropriate not just the dog days of his life,
0:50:54 > 0:50:56but his life's work.
0:50:57 > 0:51:00Elisabeth had hero-worshipped her brother,
0:51:00 > 0:51:02and lived her life in his shadow.
0:51:04 > 0:51:06Now, as literary executor,
0:51:06 > 0:51:09she set about publishing Nietzsche's notebooks,
0:51:09 > 0:51:12in a collection entitled Will to Power.
0:51:14 > 0:51:16Although she worked with various editors,
0:51:16 > 0:51:20she simply dismissed them if they disagreed with her.
0:51:20 > 0:51:23Nietzsche's work was edited and manipulated
0:51:23 > 0:51:27to suit her own political ends.
0:51:29 > 0:51:31Elisabeth was a supporter of the Nazis,
0:51:31 > 0:51:35and began to court the party's leaders.
0:51:35 > 0:51:39In 1934, Adolf Hitler visited this house,
0:51:39 > 0:51:42and she even gave him her brother's walking stick.
0:51:45 > 0:51:49Elisabeth was so extraordinarily successful in promoting her brother
0:51:49 > 0:51:53and his works that by the end of the 1930s,
0:51:53 > 0:51:58Nietzschean thought and themes pervaded German society.
0:52:00 > 0:52:03And this was disturbingly reflected in one of the most compelling
0:52:03 > 0:52:06propaganda films of all time.
0:52:18 > 0:52:22In 1934, Nazi supporters gathered in Nuremberg
0:52:22 > 0:52:25to hear their leader speak.
0:52:28 > 0:52:33It was a moment captured in a film commissioned by Hitler himself.
0:52:33 > 0:52:35Terrifying, electrifying,
0:52:35 > 0:52:40the words and rituals of the Nazis echo Nietzschean thought.
0:52:41 > 0:52:44It was called Triumph of the Will.
0:52:50 > 0:52:53The film begins with Hitler descending from the clouds,
0:52:53 > 0:52:55echoing Zarathustra,
0:52:55 > 0:52:58an Ubermensch coming down from the mountains
0:52:58 > 0:53:01with his new morality to be greeted by the herd.
0:53:03 > 0:53:05An Ubermensch offering a system of morality
0:53:05 > 0:53:09in which traditional Christian values are to be inverted.
0:53:17 > 0:53:19Where the state will exert the will of the most powerful,
0:53:19 > 0:53:22and the weak and the helpless will be destroyed
0:53:22 > 0:53:24to generate a greater humanity.
0:53:37 > 0:53:41So closely associated had Nietzsche's ideas become with the aims of
0:53:41 > 0:53:45the National Socialists that one of its most influential thinkers,
0:53:45 > 0:53:50Alfred Baeumler, said, "When we call out heil Hitler,
0:53:50 > 0:53:54"we greet with the same cry Friedrich Nietzsche."
0:53:57 > 0:54:02And yet, had he lived to see this, Nietzsche would have been horrified.
0:54:04 > 0:54:07His Ubermensch wasn't a master of eugenics.
0:54:07 > 0:54:10He was he was a symbol of man's potential.
0:54:10 > 0:54:15His will to power was not a call to nationalism, which he despised,
0:54:15 > 0:54:20but a recognition of our drive to overcome our limitations.
0:54:20 > 0:54:24And he was vocally opposed to anti-Semitism.
0:54:24 > 0:54:28The Nietzsche of the Nazis was a hideous parody.
0:54:34 > 0:54:37Just months before his final collapse, Nietzsche wrote,
0:54:37 > 0:54:41"I confess that the deepest objection to the eternal recurrence,
0:54:41 > 0:54:47"my truly most abysmal thought, is always Mother and Sister."
0:54:49 > 0:54:51How prophetic his words turned out to be.
0:54:54 > 0:54:58And yet perhaps the blame for his misuse is not entirely Elisabeth's.
0:54:59 > 0:55:03Nietzsche would never have advocated Hitler's Final Solution,
0:55:03 > 0:55:09but he was naive if he thought that his work would not be misunderstood.
0:55:09 > 0:55:15Evil loves nothing better than a void, and the philosopher's clever,
0:55:15 > 0:55:20ambiguous aphorisms could easily be put to the service of evil.
0:55:20 > 0:55:21Even when he was entirely sane,
0:55:21 > 0:55:25Nietzsche said that bad would be done in his name.
0:55:26 > 0:55:30The sister and the brother must share responsibility
0:55:30 > 0:55:35for the life that his work took on after his death.
0:55:47 > 0:55:50A century after Nietzsche's death,
0:55:50 > 0:55:52the crisis created by the murder of God
0:55:52 > 0:55:55may seem exaggerated to us today.
0:55:57 > 0:56:00The modern world hasn't collapsed.
0:56:00 > 0:56:04God as the unchallengeable source of moral values seems to have stepped
0:56:04 > 0:56:06aside relatively quietly.
0:56:08 > 0:56:13But maybe that's because we lack Nietzsche's unsettling prophetic vision,
0:56:13 > 0:56:15his wild imagination.
0:56:15 > 0:56:18If we choose to wear the blinkers of the herd,
0:56:18 > 0:56:24could it be that we are staring with unseeing eyes into the very abyss
0:56:24 > 0:56:25that he predicted?
0:56:28 > 0:56:31He believed that what would fill the void was
0:56:31 > 0:56:34a chaos of cultural preferences.
0:56:34 > 0:56:38A mess, an overload of personal choices.
0:56:38 > 0:56:41Pernicious, in Nietzsche's eyes,
0:56:41 > 0:56:43because they perpetuated the empty values
0:56:43 > 0:56:47of the herd that he so despised.
0:56:50 > 0:56:52And perhaps Nietzsche's most chilling vision
0:56:52 > 0:56:57was of the humanity that would populate this post-Christian world.
0:56:59 > 0:57:03These people he called the last men, and for them,
0:57:03 > 0:57:06he reserved his most fervent fury.
0:57:07 > 0:57:09These were men and women
0:57:09 > 0:57:12who'd turned their backs on challenging ideals,
0:57:12 > 0:57:14but felt they were content.
0:57:15 > 0:57:18They had a banal existence.
0:57:18 > 0:57:22They did everything in their powers to limit excesses of joy or sorrow.
0:57:24 > 0:57:28Their concern was the trivial and the narcissistic,
0:57:28 > 0:57:32and so they lived lives of timid mediocrity,
0:57:32 > 0:57:34fooling themselves that they were happy.
0:57:36 > 0:57:39They bought into what Nietzsche described
0:57:39 > 0:57:42as the religion of comfortableness.
0:57:44 > 0:57:48Could this be a devastating description of the modern world?
0:57:48 > 0:57:52A world that shies from the risk of striving for greatness.
0:57:52 > 0:57:57A world that shuns higher values and celebrates the mundane.
0:57:57 > 0:58:00The last men are Nietzsche's greatest fear.
0:58:01 > 0:58:03They look at a star,
0:58:03 > 0:58:08by which he means the fiery potential of beautiful lives fully lived,
0:58:08 > 0:58:10the meaning of all existence,
0:58:10 > 0:58:14and they have no desire even to pursue it.
0:58:15 > 0:58:17They merely blink.
0:58:19 > 0:58:22Before Nietzsche fell into madness he wrote,
0:58:22 > 0:58:25"If you stare long enough into the abyss,
0:58:25 > 0:58:28"the abyss will stare back into you."
0:58:31 > 0:58:36The chaos that confronted Nietzsche in his final moments of sanity is
0:58:36 > 0:58:37arguably our own.
0:58:38 > 0:58:42The question of not just how we should live,
0:58:42 > 0:58:44but the point of our lives,
0:58:44 > 0:58:49is still one of the greatest challenges of the modern world.
0:58:59 > 0:59:01If the mind of Nietzsche has made you think,
0:59:01 > 0:59:03then explore further with the Open University
0:59:03 > 0:59:07to discover how other great minds have influenced our world today.
0:59:07 > 0:59:09Go to the address at the bottom of the screen
0:59:09 > 0:59:12and follow the links to the Open University.