Anyone who takes Nietzsche for the prophet of the Ubermensch has read only headlines. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844—1900) was above all a diagnostician: a thinker who described the forms of decline in his culture. Popularisation has made him into a philosopher of power, a forerunner of individualism, at times a cynic. Nietzsche wrestled with the question of why an entire civilisation had lost its instinctual certainty — and what might take the place of the shattered order.
#The Phenomenology of a Sufferer
In Daybreak (1881) Nietzsche describes the condition of the profoundly suffering person: “The profoundly suffering person looks out from their condition with a dreadful coldness upon things: all those small lying sorceries in which things usually swim when the healthy eye gazes upon them have vanished” (Nietzsche, 1881, Daybreak, section 114). Gwendolin Kirchhoff calls the depth and the precision of this phenomenology in the first person Nietzsche’s “greatest achievement” (Kirchhoff, G., Everlast AI, 2026, 2:18:23–2:18:30).
Nietzsche calls the condition of sick people who are long and terribly tormented by their suffering and whose understanding nevertheless does not cloud over “not without value for knowledge” (cf. Nietzsche, 1881, Daybreak, section 114). Gwendolin Kirchhoff sees Nietzsche’s insights of a sufferer as “very parallel to Grof’s perinatal birth matrices”, that is, “confirmed once again in a different way” from transpersonal psychology (Kirchhoff, G., Everlast AI, 2026, 2:18:48–2:18:56; cf. 2:18:45–2:18:56). How such insights are gained from self-observation is described in the entry Introspection.
Egon Friedell draws on Nietzsche’s high regard for the value of illness for the self-discipline of the mind in his excursus on the value of illness, quoting the preface to The Gay Science (cf. Friedell, 1927, vol. 1, p. 67); the entry on Egon Friedell follows that excursus.
#Will to Power — More Than a Concept of Domination
In Beyond Good and Evil (1886) Nietzsche ventures the hypothesis that all effective force is will to power and concludes, on that assumption: “The world seen from within, the world determined and designated according to its ‘intelligible character’ — it would be ‘will to power’ and nothing else” (Nietzsche, 1886, Beyond Good and Evil, section 36).
Here Nietzsche touches upon natural philosophy. In the conversation “Nietzsche als Wissenschaftskritiker” (2022) Gwendolin Kirchhoff presents the list of the lasting values of Nietzsche’s natural philosophy that Alwin Mittasch (Friedrich Nietzsche als Naturphilosoph, 1952) gives at the end of his book; the first thing one can learn from Nietzsche, she says, is that the world has an interior and that force, seen from within, is will (cf. Kirchhoff, J., 2022, Nietzsche als Wissenschaftskritiker, 1:27:19–1:28:14). Nietzsche took that from Schopenhauer, Jochen Kirchhoff says (cf. ibid., 1:29:08–1:29:30). Jochen Kirchhoff argues there that Nietzsche is closer to Schelling than one thinks, although he mocks him, and that his will to power can be brought together with the concepts of natural philosophy (cf. ibid., 1:36:05–1:38:07).
#The Hammer That Tests Hollow Idols
In Twilight of the Idols (1889) Nietzsche performs his famous reckoning with the philosophical tradition. He writes that he recognised Socrates and Plato “as symptoms of decline, as instruments of the Greek dissolution, as pseudo-Greek, as anti-Greek” (Nietzsche, 1889, Twilight of the Idols, The Problem of Socrates, section 2). Nietzsche, by his own preface, uses the hammer with which he philosophises like a tuning fork: eternal idols are struck here “with the hammer as with a tuning fork”, and whoever asks questions with the hammer may hear in answer “that famous hollow sound” (cf. Nietzsche, 1889, Twilight of the Idols, preface).
This diagnostic stance extends to natural science as well. Insofar as the senses show becoming, passing away and change, Nietzsche says, they do not lie: “The ‘apparent’ world is the only one: the true world is merely added by a lie” (Nietzsche, 1889, Twilight of the Idols, “Reason” in Philosophy, section 2). It is not sensory experience that deceives but abstraction that passes itself off as reality. In six numbered steps he condenses the “History of an Error”: how the “true world” became a fable from Plato through Kant (“königsbergisch”) to the “cockcrow of positivism” — and how, with the true world, the apparent one was abolished too (Nietzsche, 1889, Twilight of the Idols, How the “True World” Finally Became a Fable). What remains is the task of rethinking reality without metaphysical backworlds and without positivist reductionism.
#Bach Reads Nietzsche as an Artist, Gwendolin Kirchhoff as a Phenomenologist
In the Everlast AI Debate (2026) the difference between the readings shows with rare sharpness. Joscha Bach says there that Nietzsche is someone “who recognised how it is”, namely from the point of view of someone who says that nothing is fun for him any more; that is a valuable insight, but in a certain way “more art than philosophy” (Bach, J., Everlast AI, 2026, 2:15:29–2:15:41; cf. 2:15:27–2:15:41). The artist, he says, is the one “who captures his state of consciousness, not only his insight”, and that is no disparagement of Nietzsche (ibid., 2:15:42–2:15:47; cf. 2:15:41–2:15:52). Later in the debate Bach calls Nietzsche, in a certain way, a “father of the Dark Enlightenment in his own era” (ibid., 2:21:53–2:21:58; cf. 2:21:49–2:21:58).
Gwendolin Kirchhoff says in the same debate: “Nietzsche’s greatest achievement is the depth and the precision of his phenomenology in the first person.” (Kirchhoff, G., Everlast AI, 2026, 2:18:23–2:18:30) Anyone who wants to read something brilliant, she says, should read the insights of a sufferer in Daybreak (cf. ibid., 2:18:30–2:18:37). Nietzsche is “to be taken seriously above all where he is a phenomenologist and where he gets on the track of certain things in himself” (ibid., 2:19:33–2:19:40), and where, on the basis of his phenomenology, he even makes predictions about political and social developments “which as a rule have come true” (ibid., 2:19:47–2:19:49; cf. 2:19:40–2:19:49).
Where Nietzsche is weak or did not get further lies, for Gwendolin Kirchhoff, in the fact “that he was unable to integrate love into his system” (ibid., 2:19:53–2:19:58; cf. 2:19:49–2:19:58). “Love was missing.” (ibid., 2:19:57–2:19:59) He stopped at a striving for autonomy, she says; his will to power is pure autonomy (cf. ibid., 2:19:58–2:20:04). Not everything is merely overpowering, she says; much of what happens in the web of nature is also communication and contact: “That finds no representation in him.” (ibid., 2:20:13–2:20:16; cf. 2:20:06–2:20:16) This also has something biographical to do with him, she thinks, with how he lived and what he experienced, as someone who suffered from migraine for a long time (cf. ibid., 2:20:16–2:20:24).
In the Everlast debate Gwendolin Kirchhoff commends Nietzsche’s poem To the Unknown God to anyone who takes him for nothing but the philosopher of the death of God: it shows an inner altar that is still there (cf. Kirchhoff, G., Everlast AI, 2026, 2:22:38–2:22:53).
Where the sentence about the death of God stands in Nietzsche’s work and what came after is traced in the essay God Is Dead.
#What is eternal recurrence?
Eternal recurrence, also rendered in English as eternal return, is Friedrich Nietzsche’s thought that everything that happens comes back countless times in the same sequence and order; in Ecce Homo he calls it “the thought of eternal recurrence, this highest formula of affirmation that can ever be attained” (Nietzsche, 1888, Ecce homo, “Also sprach Zarathustra” 1). There he dates it to August 1881: the thought came to him, he writes, by a towering pyramid-shaped rock at Lake Silvaplana (cf. ibid.).
In The Gay Science of 1882 Nietzsche introduces the thought with a question: what if a demon crept after you into your loneliest loneliness and told you that you would have to live this life once more and countless times more, every pain and every joy in the same sequence and order (cf. Nietzsche, 1882, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, § 341). “The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again — and you with it, speck of dust!”, Nietzsche has the demon say (ibid.). The section asks whether you would curse him or answer him, “You are a god, and never have I heard anything more divine!”; if that thought gained power over you, Nietzsche writes, it would “change you as you are, and perhaps crush you” (ibid.). In Thus Spoke Zarathustra Zarathustra stands before a gateway with “Moment” written above it and asks: “must not all of us have been here before?” (Nietzsche, 1884, Also sprach Zarathustra, Third Part, “Vom Gesicht und Räthsel” 2). In the section “The Convalescent”, Zarathustra’s animals say to him: “you are the teacher of eternal recurrence” (ibid., “Der Genesende” 2).
Jochen Kirchhoff reads a longer excerpt from “On the Vision and the Riddle” aloud in the conversation “Was wollte Nietzsche?”, up to Zarathustra’s speech at the gateway (cf. Kirchhoff, J., 2019, “Was wollte Nietzsche?”, 58:51–1:05:08); the quotations above follow Nietzsche’s text, not the reading.
#How do Jochen and Gwendolin Kirchhoff read eternal recurrence?
Jochen Kirchhoff explains eternal recurrence in the conversation “Was wollte Nietzsche?” (2019) from Nietzsche’s affirmation: “He saw in it an extreme thought of affirmation.” (Kirchhoff, J., 2019, “Was wollte Nietzsche?”, 1:08:20–1:08:26; cf. 56:02–56:54); Gwendolin Kirchhoff objects in the same conversation that if everything repeated itself exactly the same, one would be back at a concept of being and at something static, “then becoming would in principle be cancelled” (ibid., 1:07:29–1:07:31; cf. 1:07:24–1:07:31).
Jochen Kirchhoff calls eternal recurrence in Nietzsche “something quite strange” (ibid., 54:41–54:43; cf. 54:38–54:44). Nietzsche knew the idea from antiquity, he says; it was thought there, also in the sense of the great Platonic year (cf. ibid., 54:49–55:14); in Nietzsche, however, it is “conceived completely differently”: everything literally comes back just so, again and again (ibid., 58:10–58:13; cf. 58:13–58:23). Nietzsche believes, according to Jochen Kirchhoff, that the total force is finite and that all possible constellations are run through, and Nietzsche means “absolutely identical” (ibid., 1:06:21–1:06:23; cf. 1:05:35–1:05:54 and 1:06:20–1:06:33). When Jochen Kirchhoff first read it, he thought it was simply not true, the constellations are eternally different, and he asks straight away: or is it after all, or only something similar (cf. ibid., 1:05:54–1:06:20). Whether that is not “the pure nightmare, pure damnation”, he also thought back then; a person longing for redemption, be it a Buddhist, a Hindu or a Sufi, would experience it as a nightmare (ibid., 1:06:58–1:07:04; cf. 1:06:53–1:07:11).
In an infinite world “that is always new and different”, the thought cancels itself, Jochen Kirchhoff says with a view to Giordano Bruno, and Nietzsche knew that (ibid., 1:07:58–1:08:03; cf. 1:07:55–1:08:09). Later he says he has often asked himself whether this thought of absolute affirmation is not simply an “ecstatic attitude” that dissolves when you look at it more closely and sharply (ibid., 1:12:06–1:12:09; cf. 1:11:47–1:12:15). Gwendolin Kirchhoff adds that she finds an absolute becoming within a finitude, “a self-circling idea”, “not very congruent with the thought of a real becoming” (ibid., 1:12:19–1:12:27; cf. 1:12:15–1:12:27), of a real aliveness (cf. ibid., 1:12:27–1:12:30).
In the conversation “Nietzsche und die Große Gesundheit”, Jochen Kirchhoff says that one then really has to affirm everything; that is how Nietzsche arrives at the “insane thought of eternal recurrence”, as one can also call it (Kirchhoff, G., 2024, “Nietzsche und die Große Gesundheit”, 18:53; cf. 18:47–18:55). Gwendolin Kirchhoff sums up in the same conversation that Nietzsche sets the great affirmation and amor fati against the nihilistic will, the will directed against life, also in the extreme image of eternal recurrence (cf. ibid., 24:29–24:54). How recurrence connects with the love of fate is traced in the entry Amor Fati.
#Which Nietzsche books should you read?
Among Nietzsche’s books, Gwendolin Kirchhoff recommends a passage from Daybreak of 1881 in the Everlast debate (2026): “if you ever want to read something brilliant, read the insights of a sufferer in Daybreak” (Kirchhoff, G., Everlast AI, 2026, 2:18:30–2:18:37). Aphorism 114 of Daybreak bears the heading “On the knowledge of the sufferer” (Nietzsche, 1881, Morgenröte, § 114).
In the conversation “Was wollte Nietzsche?” (2019), Jochen Kirchhoff roughly distinguishes three phases: the early Nietzsche, the ardent Wagnerian and admirer of Schopenhauer, then a middle Nietzsche who, as he says, is very close to him, a brilliant essayist (cf. Kirchhoff, J., 2019, “Was wollte Nietzsche?”, 16:31–17:13 and 19:20–19:33). “The most beautiful book is Daybreak”, he says of these middle books (ibid., 17:14–17:18; cf. 17:14–17:19). With the primal intuition of August 1881 in Sils-Maria, when the thought of Zarathustra came to him, Nietzsche, according to Jochen Kirchhoff, moves into quite different waters (cf. ibid., 17:48–19:47).
The Nietzsche passages quoted in this entry and in the entries on Nietzsche’s concepts come from these works:
- Daybreak (Morgenröte, 1881): aphorism 114, “On the knowledge of the sufferer”.
- The Gay Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882, expanded 1887): § 341, “The greatest weight”, with the thought of recurrence; § 276 with the formula amor fati, traced in the entry Amor Fati; § 382, “The great health”, traced in the entry Great Health.
- Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Also sprach Zarathustra, 1883–1885): Zarathustra’s speech on the Übermensch, traced in the entry Übermensch, and “On the Vision and the Riddle”.
- Beyond Good and Evil (Jenseits von Gut und Böse, 1886): § 36 on the will to power.
- On the Genealogy of Morality (Zur Genealogie der Moral, 1887): ressentiment, traced in the entry Ressentiment.
- Twilight of the Idols (Götzen-Dämmerung, 1889): “The Problem of Socrates” and “How the ‘True World’ Finally Became a Fable”.
- Ecce Homo (written 1888, published 1908): in the chapter “Why I Write Such Good Books” Nietzsche goes through his own books one by one, from The Birth of Tragedy (1872) to The Case of Wagner (1888).
The Will to Power (Der Wille zur Macht, 1901) is not a book Nietzsche published himself but a compilation from his unpublished notes that appeared after his death.
#Nietzsche’s Place in the Intellectual Tradition
Nietzsche belongs to those thinkers who cannot be definitively categorised. Gwendolin Kirchhoff takes him seriously above all where he is a phenomenologist and gets on the track of certain things in himself (cf. Kirchhoff, G., Everlast AI, 2026, 2:19:33–2:19:40); Jochen Kirchhoff considers it possible to bring his philosophy together with natural philosophy (cf. Kirchhoff, J., 2022, Nietzsche als Wissenschaftskritiker, 1:36:05–1:38:07). The thought that progress itself could be a symptom is traced in the entry Pathogenesis, Not Progress.
Gwendolin Kirchhoff finds it difficult to criticise Nietzsche because he is too good for that; one cannot stop with him as a sufferer, she says, but one can let him stimulate one in many ways (cf. Kirchhoff, G., Everlast AI, 2026, 2:19:05–2:19:19).
#Sources
- Nietzsche, F. (1881). Daybreak. Chemnitz: Ernst Schmeitzner.
- Nietzsche, F. (1882). The Gay Science. Chemnitz: Ernst Schmeitzner.
- Nietzsche, F. (1886). Beyond Good and Evil. Leipzig: C.G. Naumann.
- Nietzsche, F. (1889). Twilight of the Idols. Leipzig: C.G. Naumann.
- Nietzsche, F. (1883). Also sprach Zarathustra. Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen. Parts One and Two Chemnitz: Ernst Schmeitzner, 1883; Part Three ibid., 1884; Part Four as a private printing Leipzig: C. G. Naumann, 1885. Quoted from Project Gutenberg (Third Part, “Vom Gesicht und Räthsel” 2); English renderings are our own.
- Nietzsche, F. (1887). Zur Genealogie der Moral. Leipzig: C. G. Naumann.
- Nietzsche, F. (1888). Ecce homo. Wie man wird, was man ist. Written 1888, first published Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1908. Quoted from Projekt Gutenberg-DE (“Also sprach Zarathustra” 1; “Warum ich so gute Bücher schreibe”); English renderings are our own.
- Nietzsche, F. (1901). Der Wille zur Macht. Leipzig: C. G. Naumann. Posthumous compilation from the unpublished notes.
- Kirchhoff, J. (2022). Nietzsche als Wissenschaftskritiker — Mit dem Hammer philosophieren [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP9zNqZG5pI (in conversation with Gwendolin Kirchhoff).
- Mittasch, A. (1952). Friedrich Nietzsche als Naturphilosoph.
- Kirchhoff, J. (2019). “Was wollte Nietzsche?” [Video]. Philosophische Gespräche mit Jochen Kirchhoff, episode 21. YouTube, 14 April 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EcVGcw8LlI (in conversation with Gwendolin Kirchhoff).
- Kirchhoff, G. (2024). “Nietzsche und die Große Gesundheit – Ein Gespräch mit Jochen Kirchhoff – SYMPOSIUM” [Video]. YouTube, 19 October 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS8vCl4BkvI (in conversation with Jochen Kirchhoff).
- Kirchhoff, G. & Bach, J. (2026). Streitgespräch: “Der Mensch soll abgeschafft werden!” Wohin steuert uns KI wirklich? [Video]. Everlast AI, YouTube, 21 May 2026. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSwmJDMw4xY
Related entries: Nihilism, Pathogenesis, Not Progress, Natural Philosophy, Übermensch, Amor Fati, Great Health, Ressentiment
