Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher whose work has had a profound and enduring influence on Western thought. After training as a classical philologist, he turned to philosophy and produced a series of searing critiques of morality, religion, and culture that anticipated many themes of twentieth-century thought.

His philosophy is often misunderstood. He did not advocate power for its own sake but for the self-overcoming of the individual. His attack on Christianity was not a call for cruelty but a rejection of what he saw as its hidden resentment and life-denial. The will to power, for Nietzsche, is ultimately a will to creative mastery.