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Nietzsche

Nietzsche & Schopenhauer On Compassion

Timothy J. Madigan explains the crucial distinction between compassion and pity.

“You want if possible – and there is no madder ‘if possible’ – to abolish suffering; and we? – it really does seem that we would rather increase it and make it worse than it has ever been!”
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Friedrich Nietzsche was destined, like his father and grandfather before him, to become a Lutheran minister. From his earliest days he was steeped in a Christian setting, growing up in a household of sanctimonious women who encouraged him to read the Bible and the works of Protestant theologians. He even acquired the nickname “the little pastor” because of his obvious piety. Who could have predicted that this devout young man would grow up to become the most ferocious opponent of Christianity, and author of a book with the provocative title The Antichrist?

While it was Nietzsche’s own restless searching for knowledge which ultimately led to his breaking away from his pious upbringing, one seminal cause of his rejection of religion was his chancing upon the writings of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). While a student at Leipzig University in the autumn of 1865, Nietzsche purchased a copy of Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation at a second-hand bookstore.

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