Overview of F. W. Nietzsche

[jgweed]

Perhaps no other modern philosopher has had so wide an influence as F.W. Nietzsche (1844-1900). A brilliant student and classical scholar, appointed to a professorship at Basel when he was 24, he enjoyed the friendship of such diverse people as Burckhardt the historian and Wagner the composer. Although living most of his life in physical pain and social isolation, he nevertheless continued fearlessly to explore philosophical problems and make important contributions to German prose until his collapse into insanity in 1889.
Among the philosophers influenced by his work were Sartre, Jaspers, Heidegger, and Foucault; among the novelists were Hesse, Mann, and Kazantzakis;among the psychologists Jung and Freud; among composers, Delius, Richard Strauss, and Gustave Mahler.

Nietzsche's major works are:
The Birth of Tragedy
Human All too Human
The Dawn
The Gay Science
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Beyond Good and Evil
The Genealogy of Morals
Twilight of the Idols
The Antichrist
Ecce Homo
The Will to Power (nachlass)

In the 1960s, Nietzsche's introduction to American readers was facilitated by the translations and writings of Walter Kaufmann, bringing his philosophy to a new generation of English readers.

Online resources:

Friedrich Nietzsche (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

The Nietzsche Channel (German, English translations)

Nietzsche Source - Home

(attempting to provide a complete edition in German of all of Nietzsche's writings, as well as a digital reproduction of all of N's estate)

[Arjen]

I would like to note that it was his sister Elisabeth Nietzsche who published and added a lot of things in 'Der Wille zur Macht'. I would also like to add Morgenröte to the list of important works.

The rest is short and sweet.

[jgweed]

Morganrote is translated as Daybreak above; Kaufmann prefers "Dawn."
You are absolutely correct in that WTP must be taken very carefully, as the contents are unpublished notes and most editions follow the arrangement of Fra Forster. Kaufmann discusses her editorial abilities---- or lack thereof--- in the Introduction to his translation. A brief discussion of current assesments of N's unpublished material (which includes WTP) is found in the NYPL Research Guide:

NYPL, Nietzsche Research Guide

[Arjen]

Are you sure Kaufmann understood what Nietzsche ment with Morgenröte? Daybreak seems a very strange translation...

[jgweed]

To make things easier and for consistency's sake, I have changed the title in the Overview from "Daybreak" to "The Dawn" which is how Kaufmann translated it.

[Professer Frost]

I know F. W.'s essay on the Pre-Socratics "Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks" is unfinished so it doesn't quite qualify as a "major" work but I would still recommend it to anyone interested in either Nietzsche or early Greek philosophy.