Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Friedrich Nietzsche's complete rejection of Christianity, with the famous quote "God is dead", led him to be known as a remarkable philosopher in his own right, but also as a progenitor of existentialism.

A brilliant young man, he was appointed professor at the University of Basel aged 24 having not even finished his degree.

Nietzsche was debilitated from chronic illness. He lived as an invalid (sickly person) for many days of each year. Born with severe Myopia he had always been a sickly child. During the Franco-Prussia War he contracted dysentery and diphtheria while serving as a medical ordinate. While he was a student he became infected with syphilis in a brothel. By the age of 30 Nietzsche had become a partial inveigled (someone who entices or ensnares by flattery talk to acquire or obtain something).

Nietzsche argued that the Christian system of faith and worship was not only incorrect, but harmful to society because it allowed the weak to rule the strong - it suppressed the will to power which was the driving force of human character. He wanted people to throw of the shackles of our misguided Christian morality and become supermen - free and titanic. He later called himself the 'Anti-Christ.'

The core of Nietzsche's work, including Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-92), Beyond Good and Evil (1886), The Birth of Tragedy (1872) was to find a meaning and morality in the absence of God.

However, without God he felt that the future of man might spiral into a society of nihilism, devoid of any meaning; his aim was for man to realize the lack of divine purpose and create his own values.

Without divine sanction and retribution human suffering was unintelligible. Nietzsche sought for a replacement. He looked into philosophy for an answer and discovered the teachings of the German atheist thinker, Arthur Schopenhauer. Here he sought the consolation he craved to make sense of a godless universe. Schopenhauer's philosophy is very pessimistic at its core. One way to get out of this misery momentarily was the role of art and above all music.

His evanescent philosophical life ended 20 years later when he went insane and died shortly afterwards.


References: BBC.co.uk, TopDocumentaryFilms.com; Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil