Nietzsche Summary
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche was born on October 15th 1844 in the small town close to Leipzig. His father was a Lutheran pastor and former teacher. In 1849, his father died of a brain ailment and the family then moved to Naumburg where they lived with Nietzsche’s grandmother. In 1864, at the age of twenty, Nietzsche began his studies in theology and classical philology at the University of Bonn. After just one semester, Nietzsche halted his theological studies and lost his faith. He penned a letter to his deeply religious sister that stated, “Hence the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire…”
When he was 24, Nietzsche received an offer to become a professor of classical philology at the University of Basel in Switzerland. He had neither completed his doctorate nor had a teaching certificate. During his professorship at Basel he completed and published his first books, The Birth of Tragedy and Human, All Too Human. In these books he began to distance himself from the classical scholars and he began to take more interest in the values that drove modern day society. He eventually suffered from a nervous disorder and resigned from Basel in 1879. For the next decade, Nietzsche lived in seclusion and moved from Switzerland to France to Italy when not at his mother’s house in Naumburg. Nietzsche’s eyesight began to fail him, which prompted him to explore the use of typewriters as a means of continuing to write. When this failed, one of his past students, Peter Gast, became a transcriber for Nietzsche. Despite all these hardships, this was a highly productive period for him as a thinker and writer and was the period in which he published some of his most important works. One of these being Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which was published in four volumes between 1883 and 1885. During this time he also wrote Beyond Good and Evil, The Genealogy of Morals, and
Friedrich Nietzsche was born on October 15th 1844 in the small town close to Leipzig. His father was a Lutheran pastor and former teacher. In 1849, his father died of a brain ailment and the family then moved to Naumburg where they lived with Nietzsche’s grandmother. In 1864, at the age of twenty, Nietzsche began his studies in theology and classical philology at the University of Bonn. After just one semester, Nietzsche halted his theological studies and lost his faith. He penned a letter to his deeply religious sister that stated, “Hence the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire…”
When he was 24, Nietzsche received an offer to become a professor of classical philology at the University of Basel in Switzerland. He had neither completed his doctorate nor had a teaching certificate. During his professorship at Basel he completed and published his first books, The Birth of Tragedy and Human, All Too Human. In these books he began to distance himself from the classical scholars and he began to take more interest in the values that drove modern day society. He eventually suffered from a nervous disorder and resigned from Basel in 1879. For the next decade, Nietzsche lived in seclusion and moved from Switzerland to France to Italy when not at his mother’s house in Naumburg. Nietzsche’s eyesight began to fail him, which prompted him to explore the use of typewriters as a means of continuing to write. When this failed, one of his past students, Peter Gast, became a transcriber for Nietzsche. Despite all these hardships, this was a highly productive period for him as a thinker and writer and was the period in which he published some of his most important works. One of these being Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which was published in four volumes between 1883 and 1885. During this time he also wrote Beyond Good and Evil, The Genealogy of Morals, and