The Legacy of Controversy and Mystery

The date of August 25th, 1900 marked the end of a tragic, decade long decline in sanity for the great Western philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. While it was a combination of pneumonia and a stroke that directly incurred his death on that day, his passing was the cause of a creeping dementia whose symptoms worsened over ten years. Symptoms of his mental affliction first revealed themselves on January 3rd, 1889, whilst he was in Turin. There, upon witnessing the whipping of a horse, he suffered a mental breakdown, throwing himself at the horse and subsequently collapsing. He never returned to full sanity after this occurrence, instead slipping deeper and deeper into dementia.

In 1888, after a brief stay in a hospital, he was placed in a sanatorium until 1890, when his mother took him under her care in the home of his childhood. in 1897, his mother died and his sister then shouldered the burden. While doing so, she invited many of Nietzsche contemporaries to come visit and observe the then mentally degraded philosopher, in an attempt to popularize his works (Wicks). Thus the fifty six year life of a controversial and unarguably influential figure in western thought ended with a legacy tainted by what many perceived as insanity.

The Villa Silberblick where Nietzsche spent many of his final years, and now holds archives of all of his works. (Klassic Stiftung Weimar)

There are many theories as to the source of crippling and infamous dementia and the true cause remains unknown today. That being said, two of the possible afflictions often debated have particular relevance to modern society, that is, they are not diseases which are rare or specific to Nietzsche. Rather, Friedrich Nietzsche may have been the victim of a disease which still plagues our modern society, and might still do so for a long time to come.

His contemporaries first diagnosed him with tertiary syphilis, a disease which he might have reasonably contracted during his time as a medical aid during the Franco-Prussian war. However, the predominant modern hypothesis is that the true cause of his cognitive and nervous degeneration was from the growth of a frontal cranial base tumor (Wicks). Evidence towards both of these positions exists primarily in anecdotal accounts of Nietzsche's symptoms provided by those, both trained and untrained, who observed him over the years.

With that being said, the title of this blog might now be a misnomer. I set out trying to find conclusive evidence towards any specific condition in Nietzsche and instead found that the scientific community as a whole has yet to, and might never, conclusively diagnose the controversial figure. Understanding this, I now endeavor to understand the nature of brain cancer and syphilis in our contemporary society, hoping to learn the extent to which such drastic and crippling dementia might effect the members of our society and society as a whole, and what, if anything, is being done to correct this. In this regard, things seem hopeful, as my other entries will explain.

Works Cited:
Wicks, Robert, "Friedrich Nietzsche", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/nietzsche/>.