biography
| name: |
Nietzsche, Friedrich (Wilhelm)
|
pronunciation:
[neechuh]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1844–1900)
|
| biography:
| Philosopher and critic, born in Röcken, EC Germany. He was a strongly religious child and a brilliant undergraduate, accepting the chair of classical philology at Basel (1869–79) before graduating. Influenced by Schopenhauer, he dedicated his first book, Die Geburt der Tragödie (1872, The Birth of Tragedy) to his friend Wagner, whose operas he regarded as the true successors to Greek tragedy, but broke with him in 1876, and resigned his university position in 1878 in fast-deteriorating mental and physical health. The characteristic themes of his major work, Also sprach Zarathustra (1883–5, Thus Spake Zarathustra), are the vehement repudiation of Christian and liberal ethics, the detestation of democratic ideals, the idea of the Übermensch ‘overman’ who can create and impose his own law, the death of God, and Schopenhauer's ‘will to power’. Other works include Jenseits von Gut und Böse (1886, Beyond Good and Evil), Zur genealogie der Moral (1887, On the Genealogy of Morals), and his autobiography Ecce Homo (1908). Much of his esoteric doctrine appealed to the Nazis, and he was a major influence on existentialism. In 1889 he had a mental breakdown, from which he never recovered. |
|
|
