another thought while reading Schopenhauer

Another thought I had while rereading “The Ages of Life” was about Nietzsche (since thinking of either Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, or Wagner often triggers thoughts about the other two as well).

The thought is this: Nietzsche was insane at age 44. Although his persona often feels more like that of an Archaic Greek than a 19th century German, all of his writings are those of a rather young man, even if we allow for the more rapid biographies of those days.

I wonder what the “late period” of Nietzsche would have been like. And that’s another interesting thought experiment… Nietzsche as a respected commentator in 1914, weighing in on WWI, a celebrated figure and the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. He barely missed living long enough to see the end of his obscurity.