I Would Do It All Again: Friedrich Nietzsche, In His Own Words, Mostly

***This piece is a satirical work. Some events are drawn from Nietzsche's real biography; others have been invented, exaggerated, or lightly seasoned with nonsense for comedic effect. (Nietzsche himself would probably consider this an improvement.) Amor fati.

Birth, Röcken, Prussia, 1844 (★★★★★)

Arrived screaming into a cold world with no say in the matter, no knowledge of what was coming, and no exit option. Five stars. This was the necessary precondition for everything else on this list and I would not change a single detail including the screaming. The town was small. The expectations were large. Perfect start. Would be born again.

Father dies of a brain condition. I am four years old. (★★★★★)

Formative. Clarifying. An early introduction to the idea that the universe does not organize itself around your preferences, which is a lesson most people spend their entire lives avoiding and I received at age four, which gave me a considerable head start. I cried. The crying was also five stars. Highly recommend early exposure to the void.

Appointed Professor of Classics at Basel, age 24, before I have even finished my doctorate (★★★★★)

The University of Basel appointed me full professor at 24 on the strength of my reputation alone, waiving the doctoral requirement entirely. I want to be clear that I include this not to brag but because it is the last time in my life that institutions will treat me this way and I want to have it on record. Five stars. Savor the good ones. They are preparing you for the others.

Serve as a medical orderly in the Franco-Prussian War, contract diphtheria and dysentery simultaneously (★★★★★)

I volunteered. I got diphtheria and dysentery at the same time, which my doctor described as "remarkable" in a tone that suggested he did not mean it as a compliment. I was bedridden for weeks. My digestion never fully recovered. This is the event I credit with my later philosophy of suffering as the forge of greatness, so: five stars, would contract both again, do not recommend the dysentery specifically but would not remove it from the itinerary.

Publish "The Birth of Tragedy." It is savaged by every classical scholar in Europe. (★★★★★)

My first book. I was very proud of it. The classical scholarship community responded as though I had personally insulted each of them, their families, and the entire discipline going back to ancient Greece. My mentor Ritschl said it was "brilliant but wrong." A reviewer named Wilamowitz wrote a pamphlet specifically to destroy it. The pamphlet was longer than several of my chapters. I consider this five stars because a response that vicious means you said something that mattered.

Develop debilitating migraines so severe I can only work two hours a day. (★★★★★)

The migraines began in my late twenties and never left. At their peak I was vomiting from pain, unable to tolerate light, spending eighteen hours a day in a darkened room, and producing, in the remaining two hours, some of the most consequential philosophy of the nineteenth century. I want the development team to note that this was not in spite of the migraines. The constraint was the point. Five stars. The darkness made the two hours sacred.

Propose marriage to Lou Salomé. She says no. I propose again. She says no again. (★★★★★)

Lou Salomé was the most intellectually formidable person I had ever met and I proposed to her twice within a week, which in retrospect was a pacing issue. She declined both times with increasing clarity. My friend Paul Rée, who had introduced us, also wanted to marry her. She declined him too. The three of us then spent several months traveling together in a philosophical commune arrangement that I described as "ideal" and which was, upon reflection, not ideal for me specifically. Five stars. The suffering produced three books. She was right to say no. I was right to ask. Everything was correct.

My sister Elisabeth edits my unpublished notes and uses them to found a proto-Nazi commune in Paraguay. (★★★★★)

My sister took my unpublished manuscripts, edited them without my knowledge or consent, and used my philosophical framework to establish a racially motivated utopian colony in South America called "Nueva Germania," which failed within several years due to reasons that could have been predicted by anyone who had read my actual work, in which I am explicitly and repeatedly critical of German nationalism and anti-Semitism. The colony collapsed. She returned to Germany. She continued editing my work. I was by this point unable to object due to circumstances covered later in this review. Five stars because this is so cosmically, specifically wrong that I have to respect the universe for the precision of it. This did not happen by accident. This was designed by fate to test whether I meant what I said. I meant what I said.

Resign professorship due to health. Spend the next decade moving between cheap boarding houses in Switzerland and Italy, almost entirely alone. (★★★★★)

I resigned my position in 1879 with a small pension and spent the following decade as a nomad, moving between Sils-Maria, Genoa, Turin, Nice, and various other locations recommended by doctors who believed the climate would help. It did not help. I lived in single rented rooms, ate simple meals alone, walked for hours in the mountains because it was the only thing that relieved the migraines, and wrote, in this period: Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morality, Twilight of the Idols, and The Antichrist. None of them sold. The landlady in Nice thought I was a retired schoolteacher. Five stars. The solitude was not a side effect. It was the laboratory.

Send a letter to my publisher listing myself among history's greatest geniuses. He does not respond. (★★★★★)

In the final months before my breakdown I sent several letters that, in retrospect, were not entirely calibrated. One described myself as the greatest philosopher who had ever lived. Another suggested I was about to split history in two. My publisher did not respond to any of them. This is five stars because he was wrong and also because the letters were not wrong, technically, which is the most Nietzsche sentence I have ever written and I include it here proudly.

Collapse in a Turin piazza hugging a horse. This is the last thing I do as a sane man. (★★★★★)

January 3, 1889. Turin. I witnessed a coachman whipping a horse in the Piazza Carlo Alberto, so I walked into the street, threw my arms around the horse's neck, and collapsed. I did not recover. I want to be careful about how I rate this one because it is the end of the productive period and the beginning of eleven years of mental incapacitation during which my sister controlled my estate and my reputation and several things happened that I would have found extremely upsetting. And yet: I ended my conscious life embracing a suffering animal in the street because I could not bear that it was hurting. If you have to go, go like that. Five stars. The horse did not ask for any of this either and I hope it is noted that I was on its side.

Spend the final eleven years of my life mentally incapacitated, cared for by my mother and then my sister, who proceeds to make my work famous in all the wrong ways. (★★★★★)

I was not present for this period in any meaningful sense. Elisabeth became my guardian, controlled my image, edited my unpublished notes into a book called The Will to Power which I did not write, and cultivated relationships with figures whose politics I had spent my career opposing. My work became enormously famous. The fame was built partly on a version of my philosophy I would not have recognized. By the time I died in 1900, I was the most famous philosopher in Europe and also completely unable to understand that this was happening. Five stars, because what else is there to say. The universe gave me the last laugh and then hid the punchline until after I was gone. That is, I think, the funniest possible ending. I would not change it. I would not change any of it. That is the entire point. That has always been the entire point.

Amor fati.

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