Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philosopher and writer, born on 15 October 1844 and dead on 25 August 1900. He began his career as a classical philologist and in 1869, at age 24, was appointed Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Basel; plagued by health problems, he resigned in 1879 and afterward lived as an independent writer, moving between Switzerland, Italy and southern France while he completed much of his core writing. In 1889, aged 44, he suffered a neurological collapse and a complete loss of his mental faculties, and he lived out his remaining eleven years under the care of his mother and later his sister. His work encompasses poetry, cultural criticism and philosophical essays, and displays a fondness for aphorisms and irony. His works and philosophy have fostered extensive scholarship as well as popular interest.