page_title: German philosophy
section_title: Nietzsche
hierarchical_section_title: German philosophy / 19th century / Nietzsche
caption_attribution_description: English: Friedrich Nietzsche around 1869. Photo taken at studio Gebrüder Siebe, Leipzig. Then, he must have sent it to Deussen with his letter from July 1869 ([1], KGB II.1 No 10). A copy of this photography is at Goethe und Schillerarchiv, No. GSA 101/11. Public domain due to age of photography. Scan processed by Anton (2005).
context_page_description: German philosophy, here taken to mean either philosophy in the German language or philosophy by Germans, has been extremely diverse, and central to both the analytic and continental traditions in philosophy for centuries, from Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz through Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein to contemporary philosophers. Søren Kierkegaard is frequently included in surveys of German philosophy due to his extensive engagement with German thinkers.
context_section_description: Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was initially a proponent of Schopenhauer. However, he soon came to disavow Schopenhauer's pessimistic outlook on life and sought to provide a positive philosophy. He believed this task to be urgent, as he believed a form of nihilism caused by modernity was spreading across Europe, which he summed up in the phrase "God is dead". His problem, then, was how to live a positive life considering that if you believe in God, you give in to dishonesty and cruel beliefs (e.g. divine predestination of some individuals to Hell), and if you don't believe in God, you give in to nihilism. He believed he found his solution in the concepts of the Übermensch and Eternal Recurrence. His work continues to have a major influence on both philosophers and artists.
caption: Nietzsche
exif: {}