Thinker · TH-0020
Friedrich Nietzsche
German philologist and philosopher who became a professor at Basel at twenty-four and later wrote as an independent author until his collapse in Turin…
Also known as Nietzsche
1844 – 1900 · Röcken, Basel, Sils Maria, Turin, Weimar
Traditions: Modern European
German philologist and philosopher who became a professor at Basel at twenty-four and later wrote as an independent author until his collapse in Turin in 1889. He attacked traditional morality and religion, diagnosed the coming of nihilism, and asked how life could be affirmed without metaphysical consolation.
Key ideas
- The death of God and the problem of nihilism
- Genealogy of morality: master and slave morality
- Will to power and perspectivism
- Eternal recurrence and the Übermensch as ideals of affirmation
Major works
- The Birth of Tragedy (1872)
- Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–85)
- Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
- On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
In the conversation
- Reading group Reading group: Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (2001), from plants and wolves to people
- Discussion Iqbal’s khudi and Nietzsche’s Übermensch: influence or polemic?
- Question Half my class says they are nihilists. What exactly are they claiming?
- Discussion Nishitani on nihilism: you have to go through it, not around it
- Discussion Genealogy and the genetic fallacy: can the history of a value ever count against it?