Paul Rée

Paul Rée
Lou Andreas-Salomé, Paul Rée and Friedrich Nietzsche (1882)
Born	Paul Ludwig Carl Heinrich Rée (1849-11-21)21 November 1849 Bartelshagen, Province of Pomerania, Prussia
Died	28 November 1901(1901-11-28) (aged 52) Celerina, Switzerland
Cause of death	falling into the Charnadüra Gorge
Occupation	Doctor

Paul Ludwig Carl Heinrich Rée (21 November 1849 – 28 October 1901) was a German author and philosopher, and friend of Friedrich Nietzsche.

Rée was born in Bartelshagen, Province of Pomerania, Prussia on the noble estate "Rittergut Adlig Bartelshagen am Grabow" near the south coast of the Baltic Sea. He was the third child of assimilated Jewish parents, Lord of the manor Ferdinand Philipp Rée from Hamburg and Jenny Julie Philippine Rée née Jenny Emilie Julie Georgine Jonas.

In the history of ideas, he is known as an auxiliary figure through his friendship with Friedrich Nietzsche, rather than as an important philosopher in his own right. Most of the general judgments of his character and work go back to formulations of Nietzsche and their mutual friend Lou Andreas-Salomé.

Rée's status as the son of a wealthy businessman and landowner allowed him to study philosophy and law at the University of Leipzig. The monthly allowance Rée received from his family allowed him to pursue his own interests in his studies. He had read Darwin, Schopenhauer, and French writers such as La Bruyère and La Rochefoucauld. Rée conglomerated his diverse studies under the heading of “psychological observations”, describing human nature through aphorisms, literary and philosophical exegesis. By 1875, Rée had qualified for his doctorate from Halle, and produced a dissertation on “the noble” in Aristotle’s Ethics.

Rée's book The Origin of the Moral Sensations was largely written in the autumn of 1877 in Sorrento, where Rée and Nietzsche both worked by invitation of Malwida von Meysenbug. The book sought to answer two questions. First, Rée attempted to explain the occurrence of altruistic feelings in human beings. Second, Rée tried to explain the interpretive process which denoted altruistic feelings as moral. Reiterating the conclusions of Psychological Observations, Rée claimed altruism was an innate human drive that over the course of centuries has been strengthened by selection.