We have all said an unfortunate phrase at some point. A word that, taken out of its context, can be understood in a radically different way. Let’s say that was what happened to Nietzsche, but the consequence of being misunderstood was not a minor argument, but rather becoming considered the promoter of the Third Reich. The cause of this misunderstanding was not random either, she had a first and last name, and she was his sister.

Now, Nietzsche returns through the front door. His writings entered the UNESCO Memory of the World registry 125 years after his death. And with this new protection It is expected that the philosopher’s texts will be restored to the original texts he left us before Sister Elizabeth manipulated them.

complicated family relationships

It is difficult to understand the work of any thinker without knowing its context. In Bodymind we have talked about it on occasions, for example, to understand the origin of Stoic thought. With Nietzsche and the famous ‘superman’, the ‘God is dead’ and the ‘eternal return’ the same thing happens. To understand these three great ideas of the German thinker we must go to his origins.

Friedrich Nietzsche was born in 1844, in Röcken, a small town in Germany. His father was a Lutheran pastor, and died when he was only 5 years old. She grew up in a very religious and feminine environment, with her mother, her grandmother, her two aunts and her younger sister, Elizabeth.. This environment would undoubtedly mark his thinking. Later, the philosopher would describe it as “stifling and self-righteous,” and would add: “Moving away from my family has been a true blessing for me.”

Time would end up proving him right. In 1899, Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown and became incapacitated: He never spoke again since then.. His mother cared for him until his death, and then Elizabeth assumed his guardianship.

But what could be understood as a story of brotherly love ended up becoming an ontological nightmare. Elizabethwho had failed in the attempt to found an “Aryan” colony in Paraguay, called New Germanyhad returned to put his brother’s work at the service of the Führer.

He edited and reorganized his writings, censored fragments, altered the meaning of his sentences and public The vwill to powera book that Nietzsche never wrotewith notes and paragraphs taken out of context. Elizabeth presented this posthumous volume as her brother’s main work, created the Nietzsche Archive and put it at the service of Nazi Germany.

That sister, from whom she had tried to distance herself since she married the anti-Semitic fanatic Bernhard Föster, returned to her side solely to take advantage of her. “Elizabeth’s moral turpitude was such,” writes Tomás Morales on his blog, “that even He even charged admission so that devotees of his brother’s work could see him in bed.when he was reduced to disability.”

But what did Nietzsche want to tell us?

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The main idea that Nazism rescues from Nietzsche’s work, with the unpublished collaboration of his sister Elizabeth, is that of übermensch. The ‘superman’. But with this term, the German philosopher He did not speak to us about a superior race, as the Nazis wanted to interpret, but rather about an ideal of spiritual and moral evolution. A person who is capable of transcending the limitations of the current human being, who is freed from the values ​​imposed by society, religion or traditional morality.

Let us remember that it was also Nietzsche who said “God is dead,” which for him means that the absolute values ​​of Christian morality, the universal truths accepted by society, had lost their power in the modern world. Faced with this void, human beings had to create their own values, instead of following the inherited ones.. The ‘superman’ was, precisely, the one who managed to create a new meaning for his life, without depending on external morality.

Nietzsche also rejected “equality of spirit,” something that the Nazis also used to justify their actions. However, The philosopher did not seek to do any kind of legal reflection. His was a critique of modern society’s tendency to level down.

The philosopher, who positioned himself equally against nationalism and socialism, explained in The genealogy of morality how the morality of the lords (affirmative, creative, typical of those who value action, strength and life), and the morality of the slaves (resentful, born of fear, weakness and the desire to equal the strong by lowering them) were separated. For him, this “slave morality” condemned mediocrity to humanity, as it rejected strength and self-improvement..

Nietzsche’s lesson

Nietzsche’s life leaves us great lessons that continue to make more sense than ever in the 21st century. On the one hand, his is a life that shows that it is not always blood ties that determine who your family is. Without a doubt, being away from his sister and mother for a good part of the years of his life was what allowed those original texts to exist that his sister later tried to manipulate. Without them, history would have remembered a very different Nietzsche..

On the other hand, His story reminds us of the importance of questioning ourselves, even what seems unquestionable.. Assuming that the truth is found in another’s mouth condemns us to suffer the manipulation of those who try to change history, alter memory.

Because we cannot talk about Nietzsche without also talking about the eternal return. The philosopher, who defended that happiness was found in living life, in accepting it in its complexity, also explained that this is an eternal return.

You will suffer again the pain you suffered, you will again feel the happiness you felt. And you will see again how there are those who, with ignorance, the absence of critical thinking, populism, nationalism and fear, once again take the lead with other people’s words, knowing that the flock will not bother to check if what is said is true. The eternal return. The same rules of the game. Manipulation is back in fashion.