The German philosopherFriedrich Nietzsche owned an extensive private library, which has been preserved after his death. Today this library consists of some 1,100 volumes, of which about 170 contain annotations by him, many of them substantial. However, fewer than half of the books he read are found in his library.[1]
Nietzsche, who had been a student and a professor ofphilology, had a thorough knowledge of theGreek philosophers. Among modern philosophers, his reading includedKant,Mill andSchopenhauer,[1] who became major targets of criticism in his philosophy. He also mentions readingHegel at the age of twenty.[2] Late in life he readSpinoza, whom he called his "precursor", in particular for his criticisms offree will,teleology and his thoughts on the role of affects, joy and sadness.[3] Nietzsche, however, opposed Spinoza's theory ofconatus, for which he substituted the "will to power" (Wille zur Macht); and he replaced Spinoza's formula "Deus sive Natura" (God or Nature) by "Chaos sive Natura".
Philipp Mainländer'sThe Philosophy of Redemption, can still be found in the library.[4] Nietzsche read the work, of which a large part is a criticism of Schopenhauer's metaphysics, while he was parting ways with Schopenhauer.[5] Nietzsche kept an interest for the philosopher: among his books wasMainländer, a new Messiah, written byMax Seiling, published a decade later.[6]
Nietzsche admiredMontaigne, as well as theFrench moralists of the 17th century such asLa Rochefoucauld,La Bruyère andVauvenargues, whose books he received from his sister in 1869.[7] He also admiredPascal,Voltaire, and, most of all,Stendhal.[8] He also read Eduard von Hartmann's "Philosophy of the Unconscious", and alludes to it in some of his works.Nietzsche read in 1883Paul Bourget'sEssais de psychologie contemporaine, from which he borrowed the French termdécadence.[9]Bourget had anorganicist conception of society. Nietzsche had already encountered organicist theories inRudolf Virchow'sDie Cellularpathologie (1858) and inAlfred Espinas'sDes sociétés animales (1887;Die thierischen Gesellschaften, Braunschweig, 1879).[10]Nietzsche's 1888 notebooks also contain references toVictor Brochard'sLes Sceptiques grecs (1887);[8] toCharles Féré, who had concerns about "degeneration" issues; and toLouis Jacolliot'sLes Lois de Manou, which became for Nietzsche the "classical [case] ofpia fraus, thepious lie of religion"[11]In his notebooks, Nietzsche copied several passages of Féré, later included, without quotation marks, inThe Will to Power published byElisabeth Förster-Nietzsche andPeter Gast.[12][13]Finally,Wolfgang Müller-Lauter showed that Nietzsche also read the embryologistWilhelm Roux.[14]In a letter of 26 February 1888 toPeter Gast, Nietzsche mentions his reading of the posthumous works ofCharles Baudelaire (published in 1887).[11][15]
Nietzsche also became familiar withDarwinism through his early reading ofFriedrich Albert Lange'sGeschichte des Materialismus (1865), which criticizedDarwin's gradualism.[16]Lange alluded toStirner in this book, whom he (incorrectly) identified with Schopenhauerian positions.[17]He also mentionedBlanqui'sL'Eternité par les astres, which discussed the thesis of aneternal return.[16] Besides Lange, he read the anti-Darwinist botanistCarl Nägeli'sMechanisch-physiologische Theorie der Abstammungslehre (1884) in the period ofBeyond Good and Evil, which became his main source concerningphysiology. Nietzsche targetedSocial Darwinism, in particularHerbert Spencer,John Stuart Mill andDavid Strauss (he read all of them, and titled the firstUntimely Meditation "David Strauss: the Confessor and the Writer").[18]
He also readTolstoy'sMy Religion (Paris, 1885), the Jewish historianJulius Wellhausen onArab antiquities and hisProlegomena zur Geschichte Israels (Berlin, 1882), the first volume of theJournal of theGoncourt brothers, thoughts ofBenjamin Constant on German theater,Ernest Renan'sLife of Jesus — whom he opposed —, andDostoevsky'sThe Possessed (Paris, 1886 – read in 1887).[11][19]Julius Wellhausen became famous for his critical investigations intoOld Testament history and into the composition of theHexateuch, the uncompromising scientific attitude he adopted in testing its problems bringing him into antagonism with the older school of biblical interpreters. He became arguably best known for theDocumentary hypothesis on the origin of thePentateuch. Wellhausen influenced Nietzsche in his writing ofThe Antichrist and in his musings on theinternal discrepancies of the Bible.
Nietzsche was also an admirer and frequent reader ofRalph Waldo Emerson.[20]
It was in a letter to Cosima Wagner, 19 december 1876, that is, while reading Mainländer, that Nietzsche for the first time explicitly claimed to have parted ways with Schopenhauer. It may be worth mentioning that Mainländer's book ends with a long section (more than two hundred pages) consisting mainly of a critique of Schopenhauer's metaphysics
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