15 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
Greek-American philosopher at Princeton who wrote Nietzsche: Life as Literature — arguing that Nietzsche's philosophy is best understood as the project of creating oneself as a literary character — and whose work on Plato, aesthetics, and the beauty of friendship has made him one of the most elegant philosophical writers in the analytic tradition.
Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical critique of dogmatism — attacking the assumptions of traditional morality (good/evil, Christian ethics), previous philosophers' dogmatic faith in their own systems, and the slave morality that resents aristocratic excellence — arguing for a philosophy beyond conventional good and evil.
Thomas Mann's 1912 novella following Gustav von Aschenbach — a famous disciplined German writer — who travels to Venice, becomes obsessed with the beautiful Polish boy Tadzio, and remains despite a cholera epidemic, dying on the beach — the supreme literary treatment of beauty, Dionysian dissolution, and artistic self-destruction.
Nietzsche's 1888 autobiographical work — written weeks before his mental collapse — with chapter titles 'Why I Am So Wise,' 'Why I Am So Clever,' 'Why I Write Such Good Books,' and 'Why I Am a Destiny' — simultaneously the most grandiose and most self-aware philosophical autobiography ever written.
Irish playwright who wrote Pygmalion, Major Barbara, Heartbreak House, and Man and Superman — the most important dramatist after Shakespeare in the English language — and whose plays are simultaneously social criticism (capitalism, war, medicine, marriage) and philosophical comedy.
Sue Prideaux's 2018 biography of Nietzsche — widely regarded as the best one-volume English biography — which places Nietzsche's philosophy in its biographical and historical context and narrates his final descent into madness with clarity and sympathy.
German-Russian writer and psychoanalyst who was one of the most remarkable intellectual women of the late 19th and early 20th century — famously refusing Nietzsche's marriage proposal, inspiring Rilke's greatest poetry, writing one of the first books on Nietzsche, and becoming one of Freud's closest associates.
American philosopher who wrote Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy — arguing that Nietzsche ultimately abandoned his early perspectivism and arrived at a more conventional conception of truth in his mature works — making her a revisionary figure in Nietzsche scholarship.
Nietzsche's 1873 unpublished essay arguing that truth is 'a mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms' — that all human knowledge is perspectival and anthropocentric, that concepts are worn-out metaphors we have forgotten are metaphors — anticipating his later perspectivism.
British academic at the University of Glasgow who has written extensively on Jungian psychology and German literature — Synchronicity and Intellectual Intuition in Kant, Swedenborg and Jung, Carl Jung — one of the leading academic scholars of analytical psychology in the UK.
American philosopher at the University of Chicago who is one of the leading interpreters of Hegel and Nietzsche — and who extended Hegelian analysis to film and literature — making the German idealist tradition accessible to contemporary humanists.
Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical prose poem — featuring the prophet Zarathustra's descent from the mountain to teach humanity about the Übermensch, eternal recurrence, and the will to power — the most poetic and influential expression of Nietzsche's philosophy.
Nietzsche's 1888 polemic — 'How to Philosophize with a Hammer' — which delivers quick devastating strikes against Socrates, Kant, German culture, and Christianity in rapid aphoristic chapters, showing how the 'idols' of Western philosophy are merely disguised life-denial.
Friedrich Nietzsche's four early essays (1873–1876) — including 'David Strauss the Confessor and the Writer,' 'On the Utility and Liability of History for Life,' 'Schopenhauer as Educator,' and 'Richard Wagner in Bayreuth' — attacking German cultural complacency and identifying models for genuine culture.
Joachim Köhler's 2002 book arguing that Nietzsche was homosexual and that this 'secret' structured his philosophy — specifically his relationship with Wagner and Paul Rée, his attitudes toward women, and the male-dominated values of master morality — a controversial psychobiographical reading.