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Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche is a German philosopher, cultural critic and philologist whose work has had a profound influence on modern philosophy.
Nietzsche began his career as a classical philologist. In 1869, at the age of 24, he became the youngest person ever to hold the chair of classical philology at the University of Basel. Nietzsche retired in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him for most of his life. He completed most of his major work in the next decade. In 1889, at the age of 45, he had his first apoplexy, and then he was placed in a psychiatric hospital. He lived the rest of his years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897, and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900.
Nietzsche's works, in addition to philosophy, dealt with a wide range of topics, including art, philology, history, music, religion, culture, and science. He drew inspiration from figures such as Socrates, Zoroaster, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Wagner and Johann Wolfgangze von Goethe. His works are often ironic and presented in the style of aphorisms, which is why they receive ambiguous interpretations and cause a lot of controversy.
Nietzsche's philosophical views include a radical critique of the concept of "truth" in favor of perspectivism; a genealogical critique of religion and Christian morality and a related theory of master and slave morality; the aesthetic affirmation of life in response to both the "death of God" and the deep crisis of nihilism; concept of Apollonian and Dionysian forces. He also developed the concepts of the will to power, the Übermensch, the doctrine of eternal return. In his later works, he became increasingly interested in the creative abilities of man to overcome cultural and moral foundations in search of new values and aesthetics.