Biography
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher. He dabbled in many subjects, including art, drama, and criticism, but he is most remembered as a radical and nihilistic philosopher. He promoted atheism and perspectivism, or the belief that it is impossible to ascertain one universal truth because everyone sees things through a different perspective. He also espoused a concept called "the will to power", where individuals fought for some control over the dominating forces in their lives, and he believed Christianity to be one of those hostile forces. His ideas remain controversial to this day.
Influential Works
The Will to Power by Publication Date: 1968Represents a selection of posthumously published works from Nietzche's notebooks. His writings include thoughts nihilism, art, morality, religion, and the theory of knowledge, among others.
Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks by Publication Date: 1996For Nietzsche the Age of Greek Tragedy was indeed a tragic age. He saw in it the rise and climax of values so dear to him that their subsequent drop into catastrophe (in the person of Socrates - Plato) was clearly foreshadowed as though these were events taking place in the theater. And so in this work, unpublished in his own day but written at the same time that his The Birth of Tragedy had so outraged the German professorate as to imperil his own academic career, his most deeply felt task was one of education. He wanted to present the culture of the Greeks as a paradigm to his young German contemporaries who might thus be persuaded to work toward a state of culture of their own; a state where Nietzsche found sorely missing.
