Friedrich Nietzsche A Philosophical Biography

In this beautifully written account, Julian Young provides the most comprehensive biography available today of the life and philosophy of the nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Young deals with the many puzzles created by the conjunction of Nietzsche's personal history and his work: why the son of a Lutheran pastor developed into the self-styled 'Antichrist'; why this archetypical Prussian came to loath Bismarck's Prussia; and why this enemy of feminism preferred the company of feminist women. Setting Nietzsche's thought in the context of his times - the rise of Prussian militarism, anti-Semitism, Darwinian science, the 'Youth' and emancipationist movements, as well as the 'death of God' - Young emphasises the decisive influence of Plato and of Richard Wagner on Nietzsche's attempted reform of Western culture.

Part I. Youth: 1. Da campo; 2. Pforta; 3. Bonn; 4. Leipzig; 5. Schopenhauer; Part II. The Reluctant Professor: 6. Basel; 7. Richard Wagner and the birth of The Birth of Tragedy; 8. War and aftermath; 9. Anal philology; 10. Untimely Meditations; 11. Aimez vous Brahms?; 12. Aufwiedersehen Bayreuth; 13. Sorrento; 14. Human, All-Too-Human; Part III. The Nomad: 15. The wanderer and his shadow; 16. Dawn; 17. The Gay Science; 18. The Salomé affair; 19. Zarathustra; 20. Nietzsche's circle of women; 21. Beyond Good and Evil; 22. Clearing the decks; 23. The Genealogy of Morals; 24. 1888; 25. Catastrophe; 26. The rise and fall of The Will to Power; 27. The end; Postscript: Nietzsche's madness.

Julian Young provides the most comprehensive biography available today of the life and philosophy of the nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Young deals with the many puzzles created by the conjunction of Nietzsche's personal history and his work, setting Nietzsche's thought in the context of his times.

Educated at Cambridge University and the University of Pittsburgh, Julian Young is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland and Honorary Research Professor at the University of Tasmania. A scholar of nineteenth- and twentieth-century German philosophy, he is the author of nine books, most recently Nietzsche's Philosophy of Religion, and has been invited to speak at universities and conferences throughout the world.