She edited his unpublished writings to fit her German ultranationalist ideology while often contradicting or obfuscating Nietzsche's stated opinions, which were explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism. His body of work touched a wide range of topics, including art, philology, history, music, religion, tragedy, culture, and science, and drew inspiration from figures such as Socrates, Zoroaster, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Wagner and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.Īfter his death, his sister Elisabeth became the curator and editor of Nietzsche's manuscripts. In his later work, he became increasingly preoccupied with the creative powers of the individual to overcome cultural and moral mores in pursuit of new values and aesthetic health. He also developed influential concepts such as the Übermensch and the doctrine of eternal return. Prominent elements of his philosophy include his radical critique of truth in favor of perspectivism a genealogical critique of religion and Christian morality and related theory of master–slave morality the aesthetic affirmation of life in response to both the 'death of God' and the profound crisis of nihilism the notion of Apollonian and Dionysian forces and a characterization of the human subject as the expression of competing wills, collectively understood as the will to power.

Nietzsche's writing spans philosophical polemics, poetry, cultural criticism, and fiction while displaying a fondness for aphorism and irony. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche.

In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties. Nietzsche resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. He became the youngest person ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24.

He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche ( / ˈ n iː tʃ ə, ˈ n iː tʃ i/ German: or 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, writer, and philologist whose work has exerted a profound influence on modern intellectual history.

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