Introduction:

A hundred years ago when Karl Jaspers was introducing psychological understanding to psychiatry the founder of the school of Heidelberg spoke of Friedrich Nietzsche as one of the “greatest” psychologists Reference Jaspers(1, Reference Bormuth2). Especially his theory of resentment with its core thesis unconscious prejudices were influencing our thoughts, feelings and acts was able to illuminate the complex structure of human will. The freedom was not only dependent on natural reasons but had also to be thought as influenced by its biographical and cultural conditions. With the help of Nietzsche's viewpoint on personal value-judgements it was possible to put into perspective the biological determinism which was the leading trend of psychiatry at that time. At the same time arises the question which psychodynamic meaning the cultural and biographical impressions do have when being related to personal value-judgements of the scientist.

That the young Jaspers took an eye on Nietzsche whether the philosopher stood academically in the twilight of his late mental illness and whether the most of the psychiatrists just took his works as pathographic material Reference Bormuth, Bormuth, Podoll and Spitzer(3, Reference Hilken, Bormuth, Schmidt-Degenhard, Bormuth, Podoll and Spitzer4) is astonishing and can only be understood by the influence of Max Weber Reference Bormuth and Weidmann(5)). The methodological teacher of Jaspers who was one of the founders of cultural sciences had introduced the theory of resentment as an important element of scientific understanding Reference Weber(6)). He himself was inspired by the American psychologist and philosopher William James who had already established the interdisciplinary dialogue between natural and cultural sciences. His Gifford-lectures The variety of religious experiences were counting on Nietzsche's insight that unconscious motives of biographical and cultural kind were influencing the personal value-judgements Reference James(7)). The third inspiration which was forcing Jaspers to be keenly aware of Nietzsche was Max Scheler with his impressing little work On Resentment and moral judgement Reference Scheler(8)) and the greater essay Resentment in the Structure of Morals Reference Scheler(9)). From Scheler it is not far to Kurt Schneider who had written his philosophical dissertation Pathopsychological Tribute to the Psychological Phenomenology of Love and Sympathy Reference Schneider(10)) under his observation and who felt at the same time as a psychiatric scholar of Jaspers. The study was published in 1921 in a psychiatric journal unrolling his theory of understanding in case studies and keeping relatively distant to Nietzsche.

Taking into account this horizon of psychiatric history of ideas the presentation wants to persecute the following three questions: 1) Why the postulate which Nietzsche was giving on cultural prejudices of our thoughts, feelings and acts was so provocative and touching so that many of the classical thinkers of psychological understanding were taking it up according to the needs of their disciplines sociology, psychology, psychiatry and philosophy? 2) What were the results of this inspiring theory which could be especially seen in the works of Karl Jaspers and Kurt Schneider? In other words: What were the aspects in which they agreed in their reception of Nietzsche and what were the points in which the two psychiatrists of the school of Heidelberg differed in the way they took the theory of resentment into account for their psychological understanding? 3) What could be the actual significance of the historical fact that Nietzsche and in his footsteps Max Weber were taking deep influence on psychiatric thinking around 1900?

Historical outline:

In order to be able to understand the meaning which Nietzsche had for cultural sciences and psychiatry one cannot hinder firstly to speak of Charles Darwin. As it has often been said and written – especially in this year of his remembrance – the private scholar Darwin was bringing a revolution to scientific thinking by inventing the theory of evolution. For by his sharp and deep insights the great hypothesis of the Creator was crashing down and the human being seemed to be just by accident a chain link in the development of living beings in the same way forced to obedience to natural laws of selection in the struggle for existence as every other animal. Freud's enthusiastic cry which claimed in the year 1875 Darwin to be the “most modern saint” Reference Freud(11)) of natural sciences can be taken as a significant example for the mood in which the disenchantment of the world – to speak with Max Weber – had set most scientists of the time.

Whether the young Nietzsche also showed himself deeply impressed by the thoughts of Darwin speaking in the year 1877 of the possibility that he might have the opportunity to meet the famous scientist in England he was really shocked by the disenchanting result of the theory of evolution Reference Nietzsche(12)). In opposite to Freud he spoke of the “horrible consequence of the Darwinism” which was responsible for the great loss of absolute values Reference Nietzsche(13)). Very clearly Nietzsche recognized that the theory of evolution implicitly was showing the philosophical pattern of biological perspectivism. This form of bringing higher ideas down to relativism by showing their natural genealogy was also the reason why Darwin himself was driven to the decision as he wrote in his autobiography My life to give up his religious believe of a creating God and to interpret the Christian ethics only as a useful tool in the struggle for existence Reference Darwin(14)). But Nietzsche was taking a sceptical view on the “genealogy of human being” of which Darwin spoke in On the Origin of Man Reference Darwin(15)) because the standpoint of the book seemed to him to be taken from the position of biology. Therefore he was criticising his close friend Paul Ree who showed himself totally inspired by Darwin while searching for a natural origin of moral emotions Reference Nietzsche(16)).

Nietzsche took an alternative path. According to his book Genealogy of Morality he was searching for the “real history of morality''. This historical investigation was supposed to be totally different from the biological perspective of the Darwinian “genealogist of morality” whether her character should not be less disenchanting. On the contrary: Nietzsche's hermeneutical ambition which wanted to bring the “hardly readable hieroglyphs of the moral history of mankind” to a clear sense also was following a radical claim of criticism in order to destroy illusionary thoughts on godly values Reference Nietzsche(17)). The only difference to Darwins approach was that the higher ideas should be shown in their nakedness as psychologically born out of the certain interests to be used as moral weapons against stronger enemies in the cultural struggle for existence. In other words: Nietzsche wanted to amplify the biological viewpoint of Darwin by the cultural dimension being even more ambitious in disenchanting the Christian god and his absolute morality by scientific arguments.

This special reception of Darwin can be seen in Nietzsche's core statement of anthropology. It can also be found in the Genealogy of Morality where Nietzsche declares that man is an “animal without definite determination” and that therefore his behaviour cannot be understood alone by interpreting him in terms of instincts which give other animals a definite structure: “Man is more sick, more insecure, more irritable, less determined as any other animal, no doubt, – he is the sick animal.” Reference Nietzsche(16)) Man as a cultural being which is privileged by a widely opened horizon of possible thoughts, feelings and actions is even able to draw extreme decisions, so one has the relatively free choice for suicide or a meaningful conduct of life. According to Nietzsche these opposite patterns of behaviour bring strongly and exemplarily to evidence that man is able to live in a consequent – joyful or desperate – search for a higher meaning of life. This view was not part of the perspective of the biological utilitarism of Darwin and his time forcing Nietzsche to a polemic aphorism: “Does one have a why to live one can endure every how. – Man does not pursuit happiness; only English men do so.” Reference Nietzsche(17)) The anthropological viewpoint that man is an “animal without definite determination” was taken by Karl Jaspers as a premise of his psychology of understanding. Therefore he saw the philosopher as an outstanding philosopher of exposing human value-judgements who was able like nobody else to demonstrate how human ideas were rooted in biographical and cultural interests Reference Nietzsche(18)). The theory of resentment can be seen as a special history of exposing. Therefore the Christian idea of altruism and justice are shown as results of the unconscious wish to fight successfully as a poor slave against the powerful roman oppressors by postulating these ideals Reference Nietzsche(16)). Jaspers was fascinated like Weber, James and Scheler before him by this outline of deep psychology although for him Nietzsche's interpretation of the genealogy of Christian ideas was just one possible interpretation of this moral phenomenon.

The attraction of Nietzsche and his theory of resentment since 1900 can be summed up as follows: His critical genealogy of morality has to be seen in the tradition of scientific disenchantment which strongest impulse was Darwin's theory of evolution. The special attention which Nietzsche found in the humanities and cultural sciences was a result of the complexity of his horizon of thinking. The perspective of biological functionality is combined by him with the anthropological viewpoint of man as an “animal without definite determination”. This means: A human being is able to create higher ideals in order to compensate personal weaknesses in the struggle for existence. Therefore the disenchantment of the world and the human necessity of developing moral ideas were both part of his anthropological thinking. Therefore his theory of resentment was so attractive to liberal thinkers which were not living anymore in peace with the traditional believes but were still convinced that one still must have a viewpoint beyond biology.

Nietzsche's reception by Jaspers and Kurt Schneider:

Now we want to answer more closely the question how this theory of resentment which claimed to expose the Christian morality by psychological means was adapted in the fields of cultural sciences and psychiatry around 1900. While Freud – forced by his atheistic believe – was driving the strategy of exposing forward showing psychoanalytically that all religious believe and moral values were wishful projections of powerless people beaten by misery Reference Freud(19)). Max Weber, William James, Jaspers and Kurt Schneider were reading Nietzsche differently. The cultural scientist Weber was judging the theory or resentment as a revolutionary insight into the unconscious roots of human thought, feeling and acts which could find different interpretations according to the cultural horizons of the understanding person. Against Freud and his school he was claiming that human beings could not be caught in the net of one single theory which demands to bring exclusively the explanation for the human psychodynamics of creating meaning in life Reference Weber(6)). The view which William James developed in his famous lecture The Variety of Religious Experiences on Nietzsche can be read as close to Weber's sight. The pragmatic psychologist and philosopher also took the evidence of unconscious prejudices for granted declaring that they were rooted also in patterns of character, biology, biography and cultural surroundings. Therefore the critical interpretation of the Christian ressentiment was just one possibility for him. Also it could be thinkable that the ideal of altruism and justice was held up by a strong personality in an impressing life conduct of holiness Reference James(7)).

Jaspers is taking the perspective of Weber and James in general by pointing out how important the theory of resentment is for all psychology of understanding and by focussing their criticism that the narrow view on Christian morality is just one possible way of understanding next to other interpretations of the genealogy of Christian ideas. As a concrete correction of Nietzsche's standpoint he mentions Max Scheler and his impressing essay On Resentment and Moral Value-judgement (1, 8). In later years his philosophical studies deepen his psychiatric reception. Nietzsche is seen by Jaspers as a psychologist of suspicion who sheds twilight of psychological genesis on all values of absolute meaning. Although he estimates like Weber and James the plurality of perspectives he ends up with a more conservative idea of Nietzsche. So Jaspers claims that the relativity of all value-judgements were not the ultimate opinion of Nietzsche. He postulates that the attitude of exposing everything is just the outside of the deeper search for something like a hidden god or a form of transcendence which both cannot be expressed in cultural terms of a certain “Weltanschauung”. Consequently Jaspers is interpreting Nietzsche's radical criticism of Christianity psychologically as an unconscious notion of hating himself Reference Nietzsche(18)).

Also Kurt Schneider is holding in his philosophical dissertation a more conservative position than Weber or James. In opposite to Jaspers he is not showing any sympathy with Nietzsche's thinking of plurality. On the contrary: He is criticising this modern attitude with Max Scheler. Taking the Christian phenomenology of altruism and sympathy for granted Schneider gives some casuistic demonstrations so that one may recognize the pathological aspects in each of them. According to this program Schneider draws the consequence and neglects any need of the genetic understanding as Jaspers proclaims it as necessary. So he keeps a greater distance to Nietzsche pointing out that psychology should be limited by the “static understanding” which means pure description of psychic experiences Reference Schneider(10)).

The relatively close views which Jaspers and Schneider take in their receptions of Nietzsche's theory of understanding reflect also their personal and scientific dialogue which was initiated by changing words of sympathy in this topic. So Schneider asked in January 1921 Jaspers successfully whether he could dedicate to him his philosophical dissertation on the Christian ideals which had led to Nietzsche's analysis on resentment Reference Jaspers, Bormuth and Engelhardt(20)). How much Jaspers who was already famous as a psychiatrist and now on his way to establish himself in Heidelberg as a philosopher was estimating Schneider as a coming psychiatrist can be seen by the sentence of Nietzsche which he quoted in his answer: “I listen for resonance but all I hear is affirmation.” Also he seemed to have known already by intuition that Schneider would step later in his footpath by leading the psychopathologic school of Heidelberg: “The greatest joy of a working spirit is in thinking of the work which the others will do in later times.” Reference Nietzsche(16)) Maybe not just by accident this quotation is taken out of the works of Hippolyte Taine. Hence with the French historian of culture one can close the circle of arguments which connects Darwin and Nietzsche since Taine was combining the biological and historical viewpoint on human freedom Reference Jaspers, Bormuth and Engelhardt(20)).

Current dimension:

At the end it has to be asked what may be the current use of such a short outline of history of ideas which wants to show how the beginning of the psychiatric school of Heidelberg is connected to Nietzsche's theory of resentment? Without doubt: a person with a historical interest could be satisfied with this depiction since it may give him some new ideas and more details on their genealogy. But this antiquarian interest – to speak with Nietzsche – will surely not be enough for one who is taking the viewpoint of a conference of neuropsychiatry. The only way the critical function of writing psychiatric history may be useful is in provoking methodological suggestions. These are bound to the question which implication the psychological understanding as a tool of cultural sciences could have in contrast to the common opinion all knowledge should certainly be “objective” which means not bound to the historical change of subjective standpoints and personal value-judgements.

The presentation started with the historical fact that especially the theory of resentment belongs to a tradition of enlightenment which was mainly pushed by the theory of evolution and whose aim was the disenchantment of the world. Darwin was destroying by his biological genealogy the religious belief that man is a determined entity because human beings were shown as being just a chain link in the series of changeable animals. Nietzsche was more than just Darwin's successor. In taking away the deep conviction that there are absolute values by developing his genealogy of morality he did something different in the field of the humanities. He could lift the perspective beyond the horizon of biology and open the eyes for the fact that man created ideas in order to have cultural weapons in the struggle for existence. In other words: The biological perspectivism of Darwin as well as the historical perspectivism of Nietzsche lead to the deeper insight that human freedom is limited and relative since it is depending on nature and history. Hereby Nietzsche's insights can be seen as a critical addition to the biological viewpoint.

The notion that man and his morality are relative and changeable according to their genealogy does also affect the status of cultural understanding itself. Jaspers was still taking for granted that the psychological approach admitted to take a standpoint above the changing of the moral standards of the time. He was not fully aware of the insight of Nietzsche's theory of human resentment which meant that all scientific understanding is impressed by unconscious prejudices. His believe was still that there is a scientific objectivity even in describing psychopathological phenomena. Only as philosopher of existence Jaspers was reflecting on the impossibility to bypass the problem of moral plurality and historical perspectivism in cultural life. Therefore he was giving some deep considerations in the last edition of the General Psychopathology concerning the fact that the borderline between disease and health is often drawn by subjective notions Reference Jaspers(1)). One can say: The late Jaspers is taking into account the dilemma of value-judgements which arises in every understanding science. But he was relegating the problem from the core of psychiatry when postulating that it were just a question of private and existential interest not worthwhile to be discussed as a matter of serious science.

Kurt Schneider took the same decision even stronger and banished all forms of genetic understanding since his beginnings from the psychopathological approach to disease. For him the reflections on moral plurality and historical perspectivism which Jaspers gave in the General Psychopathology were not necessarily part of the book. Schneider remained with his first intuition that it would have been the right decision not to trespass the border of static understanding. According to his teacher Max Scheler and in contrast to Nietzsche he was assuming that there is a sphere of absolute values. Therefore the theory of resentment was just acceptable for him in the revised version of Scheler. And hence it is not surprising that Schneider was cultivating since his early years in Cologne the friendship with Nicolai Hartmann, a philosopher who also had developed a philosophy of absolute values which cannot be touched by natural or historical conditions. Accordingly Schneider was taking psychiatry all in all as an objective science whose subjective aspects could only be managed partly by a close form of psychopathological descriptions. All cultural aspects were out of bounds for the serious scientist. Nietzsche's insight that personal value-judgements influence our way of understanding caused Schneider to the ascetic decision to close up the path of understanding from any genealogical perspective.

The fact that Jaspers was taking Nietzsche more deeply into account by following his disenchanting genealogy of moral convictions can be seen as a result of the influence of Max Weber. His reception of the theory of resentment was radical in terms of cultural sciences. The insight into the historical changes of moral judgements led Weber to a methodological demand: All sciences like history, sociology or psychiatry which were ambitious of human understanding should reflect that their premises are changing their character according to their time and to their object of interest. For him not only the limits between animal and man were relative like Darwin showed in the biological evolution. And for Weber not only the moral standards of human societies were changeable as the historical genealogy showed. Also he considered for the epistemic status of cultural sciences that the moral dimensions of understanding are opened, not bound by objectivity once for all times.

Weber was aware that these methodological considerations were marginal in times of cultural continuity. Their useful meaning could be seen only in decades of cultural crisis when revolutionary changes were disturbing and reorganizing the public patterns of value-judgements. Thus only then the demand for reflecting the moral standards could make sense in order to get to know how their unconscious influence had already impressed the scientific forms of understanding in a new way. Therefore all work of cultural sciences could normally be done without a constant reflection of the last values in which the process of understanding has its unseen anchorage. Only in times when the structure and color of the unreflected values are changing – so the opinion of Weber – the cultural sciences should react with a reflection of their unconscious prejudices. This means that the new standards of personal value-judgements and their influence on the process of understanding have to be enlightened: “Then science has to be prepared to change its standpoint and its rational instruments.” Reference Weber(6)) This reflection of the historical genealogy of cultural sciences can be seen as an original consequence of the disenchanting approaches Darwin and Nietzsche made in the different and also correlated fields of biological and historical genealogy of man and morals.

My remarks will close with a question which arises as a result of the actual observation that today, a time of increasing changes in value-questions, quite many people tend to a biological viewpoint in the scientific discussion of freedom Reference Bormuth(22, Reference Bormuth23). The alternative path in the cultural crisis to try to come to deeper reflection of the new standpoints and terms of the understanding sciences is seldom entered. It seems as if one turned down a decisive possibility of scientific enlightenment of the freedom of man which Nietzsche called the “animal without definite determinations”.

Max Weber was a great and classical exception and his classical texts still have the intellectual power to stir up our methodological thoughts like they did a hundred years ago when Jaspers read his epistemic textbook of science called Wissenschaftslehre His close reading of Weber and at the same his cautious way of taking unlike him the theory of resentment into account of his psychological approach show his deep ambivalence towards changing morals in the scientific field. Personally Jaspers was arguing with the idea of existential judgements which were at no means to enlighten by science. Kurt Schneider was even more cautious. He was looking for philosophical shelter in the horizon of absolute values which Scheler and Hartmann were holding up in their ethical thinking. They both did not take the risk which Weber took to bring cultural sciences and personal value-judgements into a serious.

Why is such an attitude so seldom? With Nietzsche one could speak of a very understandably resentment against the chaotic tendencies of life which all biological and all historical and cultural thinking cannot overcome. Modern philosophers especially Nietzsche have opened our eyes for this ambivalent viewpoint. Aware of this deep fear Max Weber wanted to strengthen the opposite attitude of human curiosity by quoting Goethe's drama Faust. The passage he took out of a longer monolog of Faust is situated at the end of his methodological essay on scientific “objectivity”: “…der neue Trieb erwacht, / Ich eile fort, ihr ew'ges Licht zu trinken, / Vor mir den Tag und hinter mir die Nacht, / Den Himmel über mir und unter mir die Wellen.” (“. the new drive is awaking,/I hurry to drink their eternal light,/In front the day and night behind,/Above the sky and waves beneath.”) Reference Weber(6)) These metaphoric words underline the enthusiasm and the slight ambivalence which result out of the decision to risk the adventure of inventing the human world into a nameless region where new moral standards have to be set scientifically according to the changing world.

Although Jaspers and Schneider were inspired by Weber they were too cautious and conservative to take Weber's Faustian attitude. Maybe this attitude is a fruit of their medical ethics which is bound to pragmatic help. As a pure philosopher Jaspers opened up for the horizon of changing criteria of cultural sciences which is connected with Nietzsche's theory of resentment. Taking the risk of value-judgements in a psychiatric approach of understanding is necessary in terms of research in order to gain the possible state of the art in a world of changing views and values. One can sum up: Taking Nietzsche and Weber seriously one can claim: Psychiatry has to be a biological and a cultural science at the same time.