The Philosophy of 19th Century Europe

That Darwin would inspire Nietzsche in some way seems obvious in the sub-title of "The Origin of Species" which he called "The preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life" (Darwin, 1859 frontispiece). Nietzsche picks up on this thought (whether accidentally or not: "Our present-day Europe, the scene of a senseless, precipitate attempt at a radical blending of the classes, and consequently of racesais often sick to death of its will" (Nietzsche, 1952, p. 508).

Just as Darwin speaks of "from war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of higher animals, directly follows" (Darwin, 1859, p. 459). What is that "higher animal"- it is something which tends to thrive on cruelty, according to Nietzsche: "Cruelty is here revealed, for the first time, as one of the oldest and most indispensable elements in the foundations of culture (Nietzsche, 1952, p. 910).

While Darwin is obviously interested only in the origin and the various branching out of species, Nietzsche for one is not really interested in why things began or how they evolved as much as what the cultural

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Approximate Word count = 1187
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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