Nietzsche’s mind collapsed into dementia before his ideas spread

Evidence

Nietzsche was unable to put his ideas into much effect in his own life, not because he lacked the courage, but because his body betrayed him. In his forties, he fell victim to a disease, possibly syphilis or a brain tumour, which destroyed his faculties. After a distraught episode on the streets of Turin in January 1889, during which (the story goes) he weepingly threw his arms around the neck of an abused horse, he fell into irreversible dementia and spent the rest of his life an invalid. He died in 1900, having no idea of the impact his vision of human existence would one day have on the existentialists and others. Probably it would not have surprised him: while his own time failed to understand, he always felt his day would come. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 65

Categorization

• CANDY: The Turin horse episode is a vivid, tellable anecdote, though here it needs the surrounding dementia context to land.
• XREF: connects to: Nietzsche’s dementia prevented him from living out his own philosophy — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 65

Broader Connections

• Nietzsche’s dementia prevented him from living out his own philosophy #qualifies (0.90) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 65