Contents
Friedrich Nietzsche
Challenging inherited morality and asking how people create values.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra · Beyond Good and Evil
- Born
- 15 October 1844
- Birthplace
- Röcken, Germany
- Died
- 25 August 1900
More people
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher and former classical scholar whose writing influenced philosophy, literature and cultural criticism.
Early life
Pastor’s family
Grew up in a Lutheran household after losing his father young.
Classical scholarship
Studied philology in Bonn and Leipzig.
Career
- 1869
Basel professor
Became a professor of classical philology while still in his twenties.
- 1879
Independent writing
Left his post because of ill health.
- 1880s
Major books
Wrote his best-known philosophical works.
- 1889
Collapse
A breakdown ended his productive writing career.
Selected writings
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Presented philosophical ideas through a fictional teacher.
Beyond Good and Evil
Questioned assumptions behind morality and knowledge.
On the Genealogy of Morality
Investigated the historical formation of moral values.
Beyond philosophy
Music
Composed music and had a consequential, later broken relationship with Richard Wagner.
Posthumous reception
His writings were edited and appropriated in ways that remain important to interpreting his legacy.
Sources & photo credit
Life, career and references ↗Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ↗Photo: Friedrich Hermann Hartmann. Public domain · Original image. Cropped and displayed in monochrome.
