FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE was born on October 15, 1844, to the family of a Protestant minister in the town of Roecken, which is located in the Saxony-Anhalt region of what is now eastern Germany. After studing philosophy in Bonn and Leipzig, Nietzsche became a professor at the University of Basel, Switzerland, in 1869. Later he opted to become a Swiss citizen. While working in Switzerland, he published his first book, a literary work titled The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music. This volume was produced during Nietzsche's friendship with the composer Richard Wagner, though only a few years would pass before the two would part ways as a result of personal and intellectual differences. In failing health and unable to devote himself full time to both teaching and independent writing, Nietzsche chose to resign his university position. During the next decade he wrote such works as Thus Spake Zarathustra (most of which appeared in 1883), Beyond Good and Evil (1886), Genealogy of Morals (1887), Twilight of the Gods (1888), Antichrist (1888), and Ecce Homo (1888). His collapse while in Turin, Italy, in early 1899, would prove the beginning of a long and arduous struggle with ill health and insanity. Nietzsche died in the care of his family in Weimar on August 25, 1900, just a few weeks prior to his fifty-sixth birthday. Nietzsche advocated the view that all humankind should reject otherworldliness and instead rely on its own creative potential to discover values that best serve the social good. His infamous "superman" or "overman" is one who has recognized how to channel individual passions in the direction of creative outlets. In rejecting the morality of the masses, Nietzsche celebrates the pursuit of classical virtues.
Description
PART ONE -- Introduction; Author's Preface; First Division: First and Last Things; Second Division: The History of the Moral Sentiments; Third Division: The Religious Life; Fourth Division: Concerning the Soul of Artists and Authors; Fifth Division: The Signs of Higher and Lower Culture; Sixth Division: Man in Society; Seventh Division: Wife and Child; Eighth Division: A Glance at the State; Ninth Division: Man Alone by Himself; An Epode -- Among Friends. PART TWO -- Introduction; Author's Preface; Part I: Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions; Part II: The Wanderer and His Shadow.