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Born the son of a Lutheran pastor in Röcken, Saxony, Friedrich
Nietzsche was raised by female relatives after his father's
death in 1849. He quickly abandoned his initial pursuit of
theology in order to specialize in philology at Bonn and
Leipzig, where he studied with Friedrich Ritschl. Nietzsche's
mastery of classical literature led to an early academic
appointment at Basel and the publication of Die Geburt der
Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik (The Birth of Tragedy)
(1872), with its distinction between Apollonian and Dionysian
cultures. Nietzsche When ill health forced an early end to his
teaching career, Nietzsche began to produce the less
scholarly, quasi-philosophical, and anti-religious works for
which he is now best known, including Menschliches,
allzumenschliches (Human, All Too Human) (1878), Also Sprach
Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) (1883), Die Fröhliche
Wissenschaft (The Gay Science) (1882), and Jenseits von Gut
und Böse (Beyond Good and Evil) (1886). Nietzsche never
recovered from a serious physical and mental collapse he
suffered in 1889; his Der Wille zur Macht (Will to Power)
(1901) and the autobiographical Ecce Homo (Ecce Homo) (1908)
were published posthumously.
Nietzsche sharply criticized the Greek tradition's
over-emphasis on reason in his Die Götzendämmerung (Twilight
of the Idols) (1889). Nietzsche Reliance on abstract concepts
in a quest for absolute truth, he supposed, is merely a
symptom of the degenerate personalities of philosophers like
Socrates. From this Nietzsche concluded that traditional
philosophy and religion are both erroneous and harmful for
human life; they enervate and degrade our native capacity for
achievement.
Progress beyond the stultifying influence of philosophy, then,
requires a thorough "revaluation of values." In Zur Geneologie
der Moral (On the Genealogy of Morals) (1887) Nietzsche
bitterly decried the slave morality enforced by social
sanctions and religious guilt. Only rare, superior
individuals—the noble ones, or Übermenschen—can rise above all
moral distinctions to achieve a heroic life of truly human
worth.
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