Friedrich Nietzsche
Philosopher with a hammer: questioned where our values come from and what replaces them once God is gone.
Ideas
- The death of God
- Belief in God no longer holds Western values up, and most people have not noticed what that means for morality.
- Master and slave morality
- On the Genealogy of Morality traces 'good and evil' back to the resentment of the weak against the strong.
- Will to power
- Life is driven less by survival than by the urge to grow, overcome and express strength.
- Eternal recurrence
- A test: could you will to live your exact life again, endlessly? The Übermensch is the one who says yes.
In their words
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”
“What does not kill me makes me stronger.”
“If we have our own why of life, we shall get along with almost any how.”
“And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”
Start with
- The Birth of Tragedy (1872)
- The Gay Science (1882)
- Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–85)
- Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
- On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
