Nietzsche and Climato-Therapy in the Swiss Alps

Friedrich Nietzsche would have been intrigued by the current anxiety over the planet’s atmosphere. For the German philosopher was also an obsessive weather-watcher and climate-worrier. A disciple of what was known as “medical climatology” and “climato-therapy”, he travelled Europe searching for the perfect environment. When his ill-health made teaching impossible in 1879, he became as preoccupied with matters meteorological as many are today.

“Where,” he despaired on June 23, 1881, “is the land with plenty of shade, eternally clear sky, an equally strong sea breeze from morning to evening, without changes in the weather? It is there, there that I want to go; even if it lies outside Europe!” In a letter on July 7 he wrote:

Basel, Naumberg, Geneva, Baden-Baden, almost all of the mountain resorts with which I am familiar, Marienbad, the Italian lakes, etc,—these are my ruin. A winter by the sea is tolerable, but spring in Sorrento or Genoa brings incessant suffering because of the unsettled cloud cover.

A week later he found Sils-Maria, a village in the Swiss Alps on Lake Sils. It became his summer retreat. Nietzsche spent almost a decade here, renting a room in the Durisch family guesthouse. He spent winters in Nice, Genoa and Turin—until his breakdown near Turin’s Via Po in early 1889.

The illness that drove his meteorologische Komplex and restless quest remains a mystery. Many insist it was secondary syphilis, yet his health had been poor since childhood. Others prefer a psychological explanation: the cumulative stress of personal isolation, lack of professional status, public indifference to his books, and relationship failures—especially with Lou Andreas-Salome.

Writing to his mother, Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche, on March 14, 1885, he lamented:

one is punished good and proper for one’s ignorance. If I had occupied myself with medical, climatological and similar problems at the right time, instead of with Suidas and Laertius Diogenes, I wouldn’t be a half-ruined man.

Like many of his generation, Nietzsche believed—at least initially—that geographical remedies existed for some chronic conditions, that different “climates” affected health, stimulating or depressing the body’s nerves and muscles. There was a proliferation of what today would be promoted by marketing gurus—or the mafia—as Club Climate or Weather Wellness centres. Mountain clinics and spas sprang up in Europe, the Mediterranean region and North Africa. Many therapeutic guides were published, with detailed weather and rainfall charts. Nietzsche owned several, including Südliche Klimatische Curorte (Southern Climatic Health Resorts) by Professor Carl Sigmund of the University of Vienna.

Nietzsche’s interest was not superficial. His reading included Pierre Foissac’s 1859 work, On Meteorology, and its Relations to the Science of Man, and other books. The more he read, however, the more sceptical he became about the claims of “medical meteorology”. It was, he concluded in 1881, “unfortunately a science still in its infancy and, with respect to my personal requirements, just a dozen question-marks more”.

At the time, there was no formal distinction between climate and weather. Climate was not defined as average weather over a standard reference period until late last century. The current “climatological standard normal”—or agreed reference benchmark—is the thirty-year period from 1961 to 1990.

Switzerland became the “Kurhaus of Europe” during the nineteenth-century health tourism boom. Susan Barton’s 2008 study of five resorts, Healthy Living in the Alps: The Origins of Winter Tourism in Switzerland, 1860–1914, describes how they moved with the times, later morphing into winter sports centres—and conference venues.

Davos—host of the annual World Economic Forum since 1971—was the first winter refuge to treat respiratory problems—followed by St Moritz, Arosa, Leysin and Grindelwald. Each resort had its own “climatic profile” and “creation myth”, with treatment based on the idiosyncratic theories of individual doctors. Their popularity surged after a tuberculosis physician, Dr Alexander Spengler, pionier der Klimatherapie, began promoting the therapeutic benefits of the country’s high-altitude micro-climate.

Inspired by his wife’s experience as a patient at Dr Friedrich Jessen’s Waldsanatorium, Thomas Mann set his 1924 novel, Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain), in a Davos sanatorium. Mann explored the state of European culture and society through his fictional character Hans Castorp, an only child of a Hamburg merchant family, who spends seven years there.

Discussing his book in the Atlantic in 1953, Mann said that “what [Hans] came to understand is that one must go through the deep experience of sickness and death to arrive at a higher sanity and health”. It was “a necessary passage to knowledge, health, and life”.

Was that why wealthy folk—such as Mrs Mann—chose to spend months or years living austerely in remote villages over a century ago? According to Barton’s reviewer, Dr Jill Steward, there was more to the appeal of a Swiss winter, namely:

a combination of mystical, Romantic attitudes to mountains and, in particular, a belief in the Alps “as a place of healing” … and in alternative therapies and, perhaps most importantly, reports of good results. Certainly, for a number of patients, adherence to regimens centred on diet, rest and exposure to sunshine and fresh air did bring respite from many of their symptoms, although for others the local graveyards provided a final resting place.

The “high mountain climate” was defined as a zone 1000 metres above sea level—with high ultra-violet radiation and wind, reduced oxygen partial pressure, air temperature, air humidity and air pollution. It was here “climate treatment” of tuberculosis became a clinic’s key selling point.

An 1882 discovery, however, rocked the climato-therapeutic establishment. Robert Koch, 1905 Nobel laureate in Medicine and pioneer bacteriologist, published a research paper: “Die aetiologie der tuberculose”. TB was caused by an infectious germ, the tubercle bacillus. No amount of high-altitude sunshine and fresh air, no “regimen refrigerans” could cure it, only a cocktail of antibiotic drugs administered for weeks or months.

As Koch’s work gained acceptance in the 1890s, “closed” sanatoria became popular in Arosa and Leysin, while Davos and St Moritz continued to attract more “open” resorts. Grindelwald, originally a summer health resort located at a lower altitude, developed into a sporting centre.

It takes a long time to change entrenched attitudes. When Eric Blair (George Orwell) died in London at University College Hospital of massive haemoptysis early on January 21, 1950, there was a fishing rod in his room, a gift from a friend. Had there been any improvement in his condition, he was to have been dispatched to a Swiss sanatorium. Mountain air was still thought to assist recovery. Blair was looking forward to fishing in the alpine lakes during his convalescence.

Angela Scuh’s research on climato-therapy at the Munich-based Ludwig-Maximilians University Institute of Medical Balneology and Climatology has noted the absence of solid evidence for its efficacy, especially with TB cases:

Although there is a lot of experience of the hardening effects of the fresh air rest-cure, measured values of the immunological reactions are still lacking. To summarize: with the fresh air rest-cure a reduction in the predisposition to infection can be achieved, and functional cardio-circulatory diseases can be improved. Although the treatment of diseases of the respiratory systems and of tuberculosis using fresh air rest-cures can look back on a long tradition, so far experimental proof of the effectiveness of such treatment is still lacking.

The so-called fresh air rest-cure involves “slight exposure to cold during rest”. The goal here is to use “cold adaptation” to stimulate regeneration and increase physical endurance. Care has to be taken not to expose older folk “to too large an altitude difference in too short a space of time, as already-existing cardiac irregularities might be enhanced”.

A key principle of traditional climato-therapy is that a cooler environment will neutralise the negative effects of warm and humid air. “Hardening”—one of its most important therapeutic goals—is supposed to increase the body’s ability to adapt to “recurring cold stimuli”. Hence a “regimen refrigerans”—the application of slight cold stimuli—has been used systematically for a long time, with the goal of eventually reducing shivering thresholds.

But there is a paradox. Although “many questions” remain about the precise physiological and health-improving effects of hardening (if any), high-altitude climato-therapy remains popular. Clinics today, however, tend to treat dermatological diseases, such as psoriasis or neuro-dermatitis; pollen and dust-mite allergies—and celebrity high-anxiety, relationship trauma or media over-exposure.

As for Nietzsche, he began to develop his own theories. He constantly discussed the weather and speculated about climate–health relationships. After reading an article by Werner Siemans, he was convinced his winter illnesses in 1882 were caused by “electrical storms” related to the “appearance of large sunspots”. Siemans had mentioned that sunspot frequency varied over cyclical periods of ten to eleven years. He suggested rises in “electrical potential” affected the aurora borealis and terrestrial magnetism. The following year Nietzsche claimed two of his books—The Birth of Tragedy and Thus Spake Zarathustra—were influenced by “solar magnetism”.

In The Wanderer and His Shadow (1880), he began using “climate” in another sense. Each culture, he suggested, constituted a “spiritual climate”. Like a “physical climate”, it might be good or bad, depending on one’s constitution. Cultural physicians would emerge with a mastery of world history. Like medical doctors, they would send patients to the “climate” deemed most compatible with their temperaments. A time would come when “the whole Earth will be a collection of health resorts”.

Nietzsche’s prediction was half-right. But the world became instead a collection of climate conferences and climato-alarmist academies offering expensive treatment regimes for carborexia nervosa—and free advice to a growing cohort in the under-thirty demographic afflicted with apocalypse fatigue syndrome.

In the alpine Sils valley Nietzsche found a place where “nature is amazingly mild, solemn and mysterious all at once”. The first week of his 1888 visit, however, was warm and humid. Even his mother’s Lachsschinken sausage could not take his mind off the weather. But when it improved, the valley and its lakes Sils and Silvaplana became again his perla perlissima.

The unseasonally high temperatures in June that summer caused several avalanches. On inspecting the damage, Nietzsche found the slopes above the village covered with broken trees. According to Swiss law at the time, logs displaced by an avalanche belonged to the land-owner where they came to rest. As a consequence one Sils resident apparently became 5000 Swiss francs richer that summer, an amount equivalent to Nietzsche’s rent for sixteen years.

During this last sojourn “6000 feet beyond man and time” Nietzsche wrote about humankind’s “four great errors” in Twilight of the Idols (1889).

The First Error was mistaking an effect for a cause. For Nietzsche, it was the most dangerous error, “reason’s intrinsic form of corruption”. Every prohibitive edict of religion and morality seemed to contain it. So did a popular health book by the “celebrated Cornaro, in which he recommends his meagre diet as a recipe for a long and happy life—a virtuous one, too”.

Few books had shortened so many lives. The well-meaning Italian Cornaro mistakenly thought his diet was the cause of his long life. However, its real cause was his extraordinarily slow metabolism. Cornaro, wrote Nietzsche:

was not free to eat as much or as little as he chose, his frugality was not an act of “free will”: he became ill when he ate more … A scholar of our day, with his rapid consumption of nervous energy, would kill himself with Cornaro’s regimen.

Creating false causality was humankind’s Second Error. “We have always believed we know what a cause is: but where did we derive this knowledge, more precisely our belief we possessed this knowledge?” Nietzsche asked. Driven by insecurity, we invent false causes. We invent “inner facts”, as he called them, such as the will, ego and spirit. We view the world through these mental “causes”. In the process, we project our beliefs onto it. For example, spirit as cause is mistaken for a real phenomenon. The first cause we call “God”.

The Third Error was constructing imaginary causes. Fear of the unknown seduces us into describing external events as if they are under our control. According to Nietzsche, our “first principle” is that any explanation, no matter how provisional, is better than none. When faced with an unknown cause, we rely on memory of a known cause (or belief) to explain it. This tendency to create imaginary causes becomes so habitual it prejudices investigation of other possible causes. It becomes entrenched because it brings us “happiness”, that is relief and a sense of power over the unknown, or at least over fear of the unknown.

For Nietzsche, morality and religion are built on imaginary causes and the “psychology of error”: “In every single case cause is mistaken for effect; or the effect of what is believed true is mistaken for the truth; or a state of consciousness is mistaken for the causation of this state.”

Unpleasant feelings, for example, are explained as caused by “beings hostile to us (evil spirits: most celebrated case—hysterics misunderstood as witches)”, or punishments for something we should not have done. Pleasant feelings are explained as caused by “trust in God”, or by the presence in us of faith, hope and charity—the Christian virtues.

The Fourth Error was the error of free will. For Nietzsche, free will was an illusion, “the foulest of all theological artifices”. The notion of human responsibility—and accountability—was an invention of priests to enable them (and God) to identify the guilty, justify punishment and exercise control.

Nietzsche also insisted humankind was part of Nature. He rejected claims that it was separate, with a unique cause and destiny. The world was not merely background scenery on the stage of human existence, a tabula rasa on which we could project our fictions (“truths”) and “aesthetic anthropomorphisms” (such as order, form, beauty, wisdom and ethics). Without this insight, humankind risked becoming either inflated by a false sense of superiority, or deflated by guilt.

He had a message for environmental idealists, climato-therapists and eco-movie directors too, warning against deifying Nature and its “unknowable chaos”. For it was “wasteful beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without purposes and consideration, without mercy and justice, fertile and desolate and uncertain at the same time; imagine indifference itself as a power”.There were no “laws in nature” only “necessities”.

Hollywood’s latest $150 million blockbusters suggest it does not share his perspective. In Noah, the ark-building hero (played by Russell Crowe) wants a world where Nature is “left alone—safe, beautiful”. In Godzilla, another weird revenge-parable, a mega-monster—“a force of Nature”—combats two MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms). “The arrogance of man in thinking Nature is in his control,” opines one character, “and not the other way round.”

“Humanity has abused its position in the world,” Godzilla director Gareth Edwards explained. “Godzilla is a symbol of Nature coming back to put us in our place, to restore the balance … Films like this are powerful when you feel like you deserve what’s coming.”

What would Nietzsche have made of the controversial claim that knowledge of the Earth’s climate is now so complete governments can manipulate its elusive thermostat? What would he have said about today’s alarmist projections (not predictions) and the climato-therapeutic remedies for allegedly “dangerous” climate change—global decarbonisation? And how would we assess the success—or failure—of such a grandiose project?

One can only speculate, but if he used his “philosophical hammer” today with the same force as he applied to the idols of his time, he would see climate catastrophism as not just another manifestation of fin-de-siècle environmental fears, but as a new religion. Its embrace by established faiths faced with the choice of either “going green” or losing spiritual market share would not have surprised him; neither would the merging of environmental and faith-based rhetoric. Church liturgy is apparently warming to eco-themes like sustainability and greater “reconciliation” with Nature, repentance and social justice. (The St Francis Pledge to care for Creation and the poor can be taken online at the Catholic Climate Covenant.)

Hence Pope Benedict XVI’s public dismay at the failure to reach agreement on a new climate change treaty at Copenhagen in late 2009. For him, world peace depends on “safeguarding God’s creation”. The Vatican was playing its part—not by encouraging lower population growth, although it noted that “large numbers of people in different countries and areas of our planet are experiencing increased hardship”—but by installing photo-voltaic cells in its main auditorium and joining a reforestation project to offset its carbon dioxide emissions.

But it is a slippery slope, for the faithful must not become too green. There must be a “correct understanding” of the right relationship between humankind and the environment. The Church had “grave misgivings” about notions such as eco-centrism and bio-centrism, Benedict cautioned in his World Day of Peace Message of January 1, 2010. “In the name of a supposedly egalitarian vision of the ‘dignity’ of all living creatures,” he said, they:

end up abolishing the distinctiveness and superior role of human beings. They also open the way to a new pantheism tinged with neo-paganism, which would see the source of man’s salvation in Nature alone, and understood in purely naturalistic terms.

Like an earlier priestly class, today’s climato-therapist seeks, as Nietzsche put it, “not only some kind of explanation as cause, but a selected and preferred kind of explanation”. This process necessarily produces a conflicted view of “causality” by excluding other possible causes and encouraging projection of personal interests (and prejudices) onto reality. For all too often we “discover in things only that which we had put into them!” So a banker thinks of business, “the Christian of ‘sin’, the girl of her love”. The climate modeller thinks of anthropogenic carbon dioxide, the bureaucrat of “climate debt” and cash cows, the citizen of “carbon footprints” and compensation, the politician of power and a new tax.

Blaming “climate change” (instead of God or Satan) for almost every natural disaster and human affliction suggests Nietzsche’s Second Error—creating false causalities—and his Third Error, constructing imaginary causes. Perhaps this is done to exorcise irrational fears of all change; or to avoid confronting the possibility that there are random natural events, or events beyond rational explanation, prediction and control—especially in chaotic systems like climate. Hence he would be urging greater scepticism about the proliferation of phenomena allegedly caused by “dangerous” climate change and anthropogenic global warming—from acne to sour grapes and yellow fever—and about “consensus” truth-claims.

“Climate change” is merely a description, but now masquerades as an explanation. The expression itself does not tell us why the climate is changing. That climate changes is no surprise. It has done so since the planet acquired an atmosphere. Changing is what climate does. The politicised notion of “climate stability” does not exist in Nature. Yearning for it, or promoting it as a societal goal, suggests a reluctance to acknowledge the planet’s dynamism—or something more Machiavellian.

Then there are modern climato-therapy’s similarities with astrology. Both of them (i) encourage public anxiety; (ii) have their high priests and sacred texts; (iii) derive authority from esoteric formulae; (iv) claim predictive power; (v) urge action to avoid imminent destruction; (vii) confuse consequence with cause and causation with correlation; (vi) gain from their prognostications; and sometimes (vii) crown kings, disrupt kingdoms and win a Nobel (peace) prize.

As for climate modelling, given his intuition of Nature’s “unknowable chaos”, Nietzsche would see attempts to predict mean climate states as mathematical mythologising. He also might:

grow exceedingly ill-humoured and curse the salty taste which these apparitions [climate models] leave behind in the mouth and from which arises a raging thirst—without one having been brought so much as a single step nearer to any kind of spring [truth].

The current quest to master Nature by quantifying it might suggest to Nietzsche a Fifth Error: mistaking the menu for the food. Mathematical descriptions of reality—and complex systems—are not the whole story: “it is an illusion that something is known when we possess a mathematical formula for an event: it is only designated, described; nothing more”. For him, then, the climate’s defining characteristic would be its unpredictability:

To comprehend the world, we have to be able to calculate it; to be able to calculate it, we have to have constant causes; because we find no such causes in actuality, we invent them for ourselves. The calculability of the world, the expression of all events in formulas [or computer models]—is this really comprehension? How much of a piece of music has been understood when that in it which is calculable and can be reduced to formulae has been reckoned up?

So we are left with inconvenient questions—not inconvenient “truths” based on “consensus” cabals. Are today’s alarmist scenarios derived from reality, from verifiable natural laws? Are they projections onto reality, contaminated by confirmation bias? Can any anthropogenic contribution to climate change really be separated from natural variability—and with greater certainty than flipping a coin? What parameters are necessary and sufficient to identify a global—or regional—“anthropogenic climate change signature”, given the climate’s “irreducible” and “horribly non-linear” complexity (in the words of the climatologist Gavin Schmidt).

Nietzsche, then, would still have a “dozen question-marks more” about the practice of climato-therapy today. One of them would be about a recent divertimento: retraction of a “recursive fury” paper at the frontiers of punitive psychology, and the University of Queensland’s decision to refuse data-set access in a case of public interest. Is the academy still committed to the Socratic pursuit of truth by open discussion and free inquiry?

Above all, Nietzsche would urge us not to be taken in by “the theologian’s trick” of mingling scientific knowledge with superstition or speculation. For religion and real science “live on different stars”. Religion should not pass itself off as science. Conversely, climato-therapists and (postmodern) scientists should resist the temptation to proselytise, to politicise and to encourage “a religious comet to trail off into the darkness, making suspicious everything about itself that it presents as science”—especially where their arguments lack clarity or evidence.