ABSTRACT
Life. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), the son of a Lutheran minister, was raised in a Puritan environment. At an early age he developed an interest in philosophy, music, and literature. As a young student, Nietzsche studied classical philology, and at the age of 24 became a professor at the University of Basel. In 1879, he had to resign his position because of illness. He composed his philosophical works under difficult financial and personal conditions, at a hectic pace from 1878 to 1888. In Turin, in January 1889, he suffered an irreversible mental breakdown. During the course of his studies, Nietzsche had become acquainted with the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and with the music of Richard Wagner (1813–1883). From Schopenhauer, he took the notion of the will as the fundamental feature of life. In Wagner, he found the fruition of the Greek artistic ideal. In 1888, Georg Brandes lectured on Nietzsche's philosophy at the University of Copenhagen, and in the 1890s, the interest in his philosophy increased dramatically. European authors such as Thomas Mann, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, August Strindberg, and Martin Heidegger are, in various ways, indebted to Nietzsche. Nietzsche left several unpublished manuscripts and notes at his death. His sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, who was an anti-Semite and later a Nazi, edited and published these manuscripts after her brother's death, largely creating the myth of Nietzsche's anti-Semitism and proto-Nazism through herforgeries of his work. Nietzsche, like Kierkegaard, despised both the ‘masses’ and the complacent cultivated bourgeoisie. Both philosophers were convinced that they lived in a period of decline and opposed the dominant influences of their time. In Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, political thinking resulted in an ‘aristocratic radicalism’ (Georg Brandes), and both are central figures in modern existential philosophy.
