ABSTRACT
The typical story that Nietzsche chanced upon Schopenhauer’s writing almost magically in the Antiquar Rohn bookstore on Blumengasse 4 in Leipzig in October of 1865 is an apocrypha begun by Nietzsche himself. 1 Nietzsche actually encountered Schopenhauer in Karl Schaarschmidt’s lecture course “ Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie ” at the University of Bonn the previous summer, wherein the professor’s syllabus indicates a lengthy reading of Schopenhauer’s criticism of Kant. 2 Nietzsche’s notes on this lecture records on its fifty-ninth page: “ Kritik der Kantische Philosophie / von A. Schopenhauer .” 3 No less a self-constructed apocrypha is Nietzsche’s abrupt and complete break with Schopenhauer. In December 1876, Nietzsche writes to Cosima Wagner: “Would you be amazed if I confess something that has gradually come about, but which has more or less suddenly entered my consciousness: a disagreement with Schopenhauer’s teaching? On virtually all general propositions I am not on his side; when I was writing on Schopenhauer, I already noticed that I had left behind everything concerning dogma; for me what mattered was the human being .” 4 Although Nietzsche would doubtless retain at least a measured respect for Schopenhauer the person throughout his life, the sincerity of this passage is questionable for three reasons. 5 First, it is plain that Nietzsche already had important doubts about Schopenhauer’s dual-aspect metaphysics and his reliance upon ‘poetic intuition’ to prove it, doubt that is expressed in his never-published essay “ Zur Schopenhauer ” nearly a decade earlier. Second, seeing that the Wagners and their friends were themselves well-known and longtime Schopenhauerians, it would be more probable that Nietzsche’s confidential declamation to Cosima was realized long before it was spoken. 6 Finally, the story depends upon Nietzsche’s early writing actually being Schopenhauerian (in the words of his close friend Erwin Rohde, “a worthy expansion and further development of Schopenhauer’s work” 7 ) and his later writing actually being anti-Schopenhauerian.
