Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche (AUDIO: Too Many Masters) was a philosopher. He dealt in morality, (AUDIO: The Spectre of Lanyon Moor) and one of his concepts involved a metaphorical abyss, that stared back at you. (PROSE: Uranus)
Nietzsche once declared that "God is dead". When an Ogron uttered these same words after the Monk killed their Crab God, Missy sarcastically called them Friedrich Nietzsche. (AUDIO: Too Many Masters)
Evelyn Smythe thought that Aleister Crowley was, at the very best, a cut-price Nietzsche. (AUDIO: The Spectre of Lanyon Moor)
Prentis Duke hated the grey void of hyperspace, as if you looked too hard into it, "it became Nietzche's abyss, grinning back at you." (PROSE: Uranus)
The Seventh Doctor noted that Nietzsche said not to gaze into the void, or something similar, and also said interesting things about fighting monsters; the Doctor found the rest of what Nietzsche said regrettable. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Revelation)
During one of their philosophical talks, F.I.D.O told Graelyn Scythes that in his opinion, even before his work was "co-opted by edge-lords", Nietzche's ideas, in his opinion, were "never particularly interesting in the first place". He thought that his works' outsized legacy constituted Nietzche being "overrated". (PROSE: White Canvas)
Behind the scenes[[edit] | [edit source]]
In The Dying Days, the Eighth Doctor paraphrases Nietszche's Beyond Good and Evil:
- "I've gazed into the abyss already, Xznaal, and the abyss gazed into me. It fled from what it saw. Monsters who fight with me should take care." -Eighth Doctor
This is, of course, an inversion of the original quote:
- "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you." -Friedrich Nietzsche
In reality, the infamous quote "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.", was spoken not by Nietzsche himself, but by a character in one of his books, The Gay Science, in the section The Madman.