Existentialism: Autonomy and Authority

In 1888, literary critic Georg Brandes wrote to Nietzsche informing him of ‘one of the profoundest psychologists of all time’ — Soren Kierkegaard. Nietzsche replied that he intended to busy himself with the ‘psychological problem’ of Kierkegaard. Sadly, Nietzsche did not read the religiously minded Dane and we are left wondering what his reaction would have been, given his criticism of Dostoevsky whom he admired as a psychological genius for his Notes from Underground — ‘a frightening and ferocious mockery of the Delphic “know thyself”, but tossed off with such an effortless audacity and joy in his superior powers that I was thoroughly drunk with delight’.1 Brandes wrote to Nietzsche about Dostoevsky in unflattering terms: ‘He is a great poet, but an abominable person, utterly Christian in his emotional life and at the same time utterly sadistic. All his morality is what you have christened slave morality.’ Nietzsche replied: ‘I believe every word you say about Dostoevsky; and yet he has given me my most precious psychological material. I’m grateful to him in a very special way, much as he constantly offends my most basic instincts.’2