Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
Every week we ought to have one hour for recieving letters, then go take a bath.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Human, All Too Human. Translated by R.J. Hollingdale, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 367.
This quotation shows us that the 16th century English did not bathe very often. Even the Queen would only bathe once a month and she and the norms of the times did not feel that she “needed” it that often. Many English would go many months without bathing. Other Europeans were as bad or worse. Japan, in contrast, at the same time, had very frequent bathing. The Romans, 1500 years earlier not only bathed very frequently but created facilities for bathing in most Roman communities. Jewish communities also bathed frequently and had ritual baths but these were mainly for women.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, writer, and philologist whose work has exerted a profound influence on modern intellectual history. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24. Nietzsche resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900.
