19th Century German Philosophy: Nietzsche, Wagner & Historicism

19th Century Germany: Nationalism and Intellectual Ferment

The Germany in which Nietzsche lived, and his friend Wagner, was the result of nationalist sentiment that took shape during the nineteenth century in Europe, due to the expansion of liberal thought and propagated by the Napoleonic invasions. Each nation sought a constitution that established the division of powers and political pluralism. In Germany, supporters of union with Austria fought against those who preferred a Germany under the rule of Prussia. With the new project, an expansionist Germany appeared. It set up the North German Confederation, annexed Alsace, Lorraine, and the German states in the South, and the Second Reich was founded. In the second half of the nineteenth century, industrial capitalism developed.

Following the 1848 revolution and worker rebellion in the Paris Commune, there was a move towards greater social control, whose image was greatly enhanced by the missions performed in the colonies. The ideas of Marx, Nietzsche, and Hegel were used to justify ideologies of mass destruction, brutality, and domination. In the field of culture, in 1848, a pictorial movement: realism developed. Modernism took hold of literature and other arts. In music, Romanticism gave way to Impressionism. Works were composed by figures such as Wagner and Debussy.

Philosophical Context: Vitalism and Historicism

As for the philosophical context, vitalism sought the transformation of human action through aesthetic experience and the critique of tradition and morality. Against the idealism of Hegel and Comte's positivism as the only ways of understanding the world, a new school of thought appeared which praised the vital and emotional as a way to capture the romance in the strict sense. This movement began in Germany, notably influenced by idealism.

Schopenhauer argued that reason is not able to understand the true nature of existence. The vitalist philosophers maintain positivity: they are based on the observation of facts and also try to understand the reality of becoming. Thus, philosophy is historical. Historicism reflects the second trend of thought. It should be pointed out Dilthey, who proposed the theory of worldviews and gave great importance to experiences, psychology, and poetry to understand the human sciences. Ortega y Gasset, with his ratiovitalism, is also considered within the historicist philosophers. Nietzsche's vitalism covers the two dimensions, since the concept of life that appears is biological-cultural. We can also bring in American pragmatism, especially the psychologist William James and Miguel de Unamuno.