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German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was born in Prussia in 1844, the son of a Protestant pastor. He attended Schulpforta boarding school and completed his PhD in classical philology in Bonn and Leipzig, where he became friends with composer Richard Wagner. In 1869 Nietzsche became a professor in Basel, Switzerland, and a colleague of Swiss art and culture historian Jacob Burkhardt.

In 1872 Nietzsche published Birth of Tragedy, which contained his analysis of art in terms of the Apollonian/Dionysian duality as well as effusive praise of Wagner. This was followed by Untimely Meditations (1873–1876), a study of European culture, and Human, All-Too-Human (1878), in which he explored such topics as religion, psychology, and social reality. In 1879 he retired from teaching for health reasons and lived for the rest of his life variously in Switzerland, Italy, and on the French Riviera, writing The Dawn (1881), The Joyful Wisdom (1882), his magnum opus Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1885), Beyond Good and Evil (1886), On the Genealogy of Morality (1887),Twilight of the Idols (1888), The Antichrist (1888),The Case of Wagner (1888), and his autobiography Ecce Homo (1888). In 1889 he had a mental breakdown from which he never recovered, and he died in 1900. His sister rewrote portions of his works to reflect her own anti-Semitism, and in 1901 she published The Will to Power, a collection of his notes that she claimed was his magnum opus. Her distortions facilitated the reception of Nietzsche’s thought by the Fascists and Nazis.

Nietzsche is best known for proclaiming the death of God in several of his works. He is also often identified with the concept of nihilism, a spiritual malaise that he believed was undermining European morality and would give birth to terrible wars. Much of his thought was devoted to explaining the origin of nihilism, which he saw as a manifestation of declining life. Life, as he saw it, is will to power, a struggle between all beings for dominance over one another. In such a competitive environment, the strong flourish and establish themselves as masters, portraying themselves as “good” in contrast to the “bad” slaves. This master morality characterized the ancient world until it was overthrown by slave morality that portrayed the weak as “good” and the strong as “evil.” This reversal of values began with the Greek philosopher Plato, was institutionalized by Christianity with its ascetic ideal, and culminated in modern social democracy.

With the death of God and the advent of nihilism, Nietzsche believed humanity faced a great decision—whether to return to a healthier way of life such as that of the Greeks or to pursue a pleasurable but aimless existence. The former choice leads to Nietzsche’s famous superman, the latter to the last man. The superman, for Nietzsche, lives beyond good and evil, accepting the world as it is and rejecting all pity. The last man is driven and dominated entirely by his momentary desires. The path of the superman requires the acceptance and affirmation of the doctrine of the eternal recurrence of all things, or what Nietzsche elsewhere calls amorfati, love of fate.

While many have affirmed Nietzsche’s critique of modern society, there has been considerable disagreement about whether the struggle for power and the wars he predicts are real-world events or metaphors for spiritual struggle. Regardless, he exercised a profound influence on many of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century.

Bibliography:

Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche et la philosophie. Paris: PUF, 1962.
Detweiller, Bruce. Nietzsche’s Aristocratic Radicalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Lampert, Laurence. Nietzsche’s Teaching. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Edited by Giorgio Colli and M. Montinari. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967.
Strong,Tracy. Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

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