Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography (review)

There is a kind of madness, said Plato in the Phaedrus, that confers the gift of prophecy and that is “the source of the greatest blessings” for humanity. Twenty-two hundred years later, Friedrich Nietzsche not only echoed Plato’s claim by noting that the mad have traditionally been regarded as the “mouthpieces” of truth, but tried to fashion his own life and work for just such a role.

Many would agree today that he was highly successful. Although Nietzsche was not declared clinically insane until the age of 44, 11 years before his death in 1900, most of the works for which he is famous today, from Thus Spoke Zarathustra to Ecce Homo, were written in a state of mind that was lucid but not especially sane. Out of the mouth of this foremost of modern madmen came “truths” to which the world has listened with rapt attention.