Nietzsche - Jaspers

Nietzsche claimed to be a philosopher of the future but was appropriated as a philosopher of Nazism. His work inspired a long study by Martin Heidegger and essays by a host of other disciples attached to the Third Reich. In 1935 however, Karl Jaspers set out to "marshall against the National Socialists the world of thought of the man they had proclaimed as their own philosopher". The year after publishing "Nietzsche", Jaspers was discharged from his professorship at Heidelberg University by order of the Nazi leadership.;Jaspers sought to avoid the trap of citing pieces of Nietzsche's work to support and reinforce already-held opinions. Instead, he shows the range of Nietzsche's views - including his endorsement of war and warriors, his prophecies of world struggle and "new masters" and the arrogance of the supermen. Yet Jaspers finds Nietzsche's philosophy to be extraordinary, not only because he foresaw all the monstrosities of the 20th century, but also because he saw through them.