German · 1844–1900
Nietzsche declared God dead and demanded we create new values, becoming the philosopher most influential on twentieth-century thought—and most dangerously misread. A classical philologist who abandoned academia at 35 due to ill health, he spent his final productive decade wandering Europe's boarding houses, writing books that found almost no readers. Then in 1889, he collapsed in Turin, embracing a horse being beaten in the street, and spent his final eleven years in silent madness. His sister's posthumous editing distorted his work for Nazi appropriation. Recovered from those distortions, his critique of morality, his psychology of resentment, and his demand for self-overcoming shaped existentialism, postmodernism, and contemporary thought.