having both predicted the cause and  consequence, and going on to provide grandiose,  

revolutionary ideas as possible solutions,  Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most influential  

and significant thinkers of modern history. The particular crossroads that Nietzsche  

stands at is one where the primary  path of Western religious faith  

began to crumble and cave in, leaving a massive,  empty crater at the end of life’s suffering,  

and what would seem like only one alternative  path towards that of pessimism and nihilism.  

His life’s work would undertake this newly  emerging issue and attempt to forge a new,  

third path away from both religious faith and  nihilism, and towards new meaning and human value. 

Nietzsche was born in 1844 in Saxony, Prussia,  which is now part of eastern Germany. He was  

born to a modest family, living an  ordinary, sheltered early childhood.  

His father, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, was the town’s  Lutheran pastor, which would immediately immerse  

young Nietzsche into the Christian faith. However,  simultaneous to being introduced to it, it would  

soon be challenged and tested as his father,  the same man who practiced and preached of God,  

was diagnosed with a terminal brain disease. For  a year, his father suffered horribly and then died  

at the young age of just 35. And the following  year, Nietzsche’s younger brother, Ludwig, also  

died. This dichotomy of his religious foundation  and early exposure to the irreconcilable,  

reasonless pain and suffering experienced by  good, underserving people, would likely lay some  

of the groundwork for what would ultimately  become the basis of Nietzsche’s later work. 

Following a fairly somber, serious, and lonely  childhood, Nietzsche would go on to study theology  

at the University of Bonn. Both in early  schooling and university, he would show  

strong intellectual promise, excelling especially  well in Christian theology. However, following  

just one semester at university, as he became  increasingly critical and intellectually sharp,  

and after being exposed to various critiques of  Christianity, Nietzsche would have no choice but  

to let go of his Christian faith, fully shedding  the skin of his innocence and blind devotion.  

From here, he would go on to study philology,  the study of the history of language,  

at the University of Leipzig. Here, he would do  so well that while still only in his mid-twenties,  

he would go on to be hired as a professor of  classical philology at the University of Basel,  

becoming the youngest professor to  ever be hired, still to this day. 

After only a few years of teaching, though,  Nietzsche would leave his position, partly because  

of his growing dissatisfaction and sense of  constraint within academia, and partly because of  

his growing poor health, which he had accumulated  by a combination of genetic ailments and what  

is believed to have been a case syphilis that he  contracted at a brothel. From here, he would go on  

to live a fairly isolated life, traveling around  Europe, moving to and from different climates most  

suitable for his poor-health, and living off his  small university pension. He would live primarily  

and most notably in the Swiss Alps, where he would  spend the majority of his remaining, sane life. 

Throughout this time, in between spells  of being bed-ridden by his ailments,  

a devastating failed love ordeal,  degrading friendships and family relations,  

and depressive and nihilistic states, Nietzsche  would spend most of his time walking, thinking,  

and writing, finding solace, meaning, and reason  to continue through his pursuit of philosophy.  

During this time, he would produce his most  influential works, including: Human All Too Human,  

The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond  Good and Evil, and On the Genealogy of Morals.  

In these works, Nietzsche would lay both the  groundwork and early constructions of a new sort  

of philosophy: a philosophy that would essentially  loosen the bolts on all contemporary certainties,  

all notions of good and evil, all knowledge  of true and false, right and wrong. 

"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have  killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves,  

the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest  and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned  

has bled to death under our knives…Is not  the greatness of this deed too great for us?  

Must we ourselves not become gods simply to  appear worthy of it?" This is perhaps one of  

Nietzsche’s most quoted and important passages.  It is in this line: “God is dead." that we find,  

not Nietzsche’s celebration of humanity’s lost  faith, but his stark, intense concern of warning  

for what it meant. The collapse of Christian  faith brought with it, in Nietzsche’s mind,  

the collapse of everything built on it: the whole  of European morality, its rationales, and its  

values. He both predicted and feared that with  this collective revelation, without sufficient  

replacement, humanity would be left to struggle  with no clear system or meaning and devolve into  

widespread despair in the form of or nihilism. One of Nietzsche’s key ideas at the foundation  

of his attempt to resolve this issue is the  recognition that there is in fact no universal,  

objective truth to be known. “There are  no facts, only interpretations.” he wrote.  

Nietzsche denied the very construct of any sort of  capital T truth and suggested that all attempts to  

find one were woefully misguided and actually  the source of disconnect preventing modern man  

from rediscovering any meaning in life.  The pursuit of universal objectivity  

or meaning beyond this life took the spirit out of  the present, earthly human experience of meaning,  

which is inherently subjective, independent,  and expressive. Because of this, Nietzsche  

would direct his attention primarily to the arts  and humanities, believing that creative acts and  

experiences, be it things like music, philosophy,  literature, theater, and so on, could be used as  

essential means to communicate deeper truths and  fill the void of higher connection and meaning.  

Although, as Nietzsche explored this theory,  he would find that cultural arts and humanities  

were susceptible to becoming dried out, academic,  and/or commodified, often losing their luster and  

dependability. From here, he would turn his  attention towards creating a philosophy that  

detached the individual from dependence on any  collective experience or cultural mechanisms,  

and rather, focused on the individual pursuit  of creative expression and subjective greatness,  

placing the creation of meaning squarely  in the hands of each individual. 

This philosophy would be embodied in  what Nietzsche would term the ubermensch,  

or overman, or sometimes translated as the  superman, which he would first introduce in  

his book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The overman  is described as a sort of defiant, confident,  

independent individual who pursues their personal  desires with vigor and dignifies their independent  

beliefs unapologetically; one who deviates from  the collective, exhibits strategic selfishness,  

and acts with aggressiveness and grandiose. The  reason for such characteristics was justified  

in Nietzsche’s view by the fact that a new  morality that opposed the moral views rooted  

in Christianity, which praised weakness and  modesty, was needed to better suit the natural  

condition of human experience, which he felt was  comprised and requiring of the desire for vigor,  

power, and greatness. This view is not without  valid critiques and invalid misinterpretations.  

However, perhaps what is more important than  Nietzsche’s image of the overman is what the  

concept serves to represent. In slightly broader  terms, Nietzsche sets up the overman to function  

as a sort of idealized version of one’s self–an  image of a perfect and powerful being who has  

overcome all their fears and deficiencies, which  one can and should set goals to strive towards.  

Of course, as an ideal, it cannot ever truly  be reached, but that is functionally the point. 

Nietzsche proposed that the world, including the  human, operates off of what he called the will  

to power: an insatiable desire in each living  being to manifest power. “The world is the will  

to power–and nothing besides.” he wrote. And  according to Nietzsche, this will to power is  

manifested in the desire for personal growth  and satisfied in the pursuance of said growth.  

It is important to note here that his notion of  power is not necessarily referring to physical  

strength nor power and dominance over others, but  rather, power over one’s self. Psychological and  

spiritual strength in the form of self-mastery  and continuous growth represents the ultimate  

synchronization with the will to power, for  Nietzsche, and thus, the ultimate synchronization  

with life itself. The desire and striving towards  the ideal of the overman serves as perpetual  

fuel to this process of self-growth, as one works  through a continued cycle of self-dissatisfaction,  

self-improvement, and self-re-discovery, over  and over. For Nietzsche, this process, which  

he would term “self-overcoming,” is fundamental to  answering and resolving the problem of meaning and  

value in life. So long as one establishes their  goals of growth in the name of what they deem an  

idealized life-affirming version of themselves,  the process transmutes the suffering of life into  

something worthwhile and personally redeemable;  a sort of alchemy of the spirit that affirms life  

in the face of its inevitable suffering. “If we  have our own why in life, we shall get along with  

almost any how." Nietzsche wrote. Unlike his primary predecessor,  

Arthur Schopenhauer, who proposed that suffering  is best minimized and avoided to the best of  

one’s ability, Nietzsche argued that suffering  is, rather, a good thing to be leaned into,  

embraced, and used as fuel towards the amassing of  strength and psychological power. Life is in fact  

inevitable suffering, and so, it is not matter  of if, but for what. “The meaninglessness of  

suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse  that layover mankind so far.” Nietzsche wrote. 

While continuing to write and live an  increasingly isolated life in the mountains,  

still in the early stages of some of his  most ambitious philosophical undertakings,  

Nietzsche would begin to show increasing signs of  declining mental health. At forty-four years old,  

after seeing a horse being flogged in a street  by its owner, he experienced a mental breakdown,  

rushing over to the horse, hugging and consoling  it, and yelling, “I understand you, I understand  

you.” This strange episode, which marked his  last moments out of apparent lucidity, appeared  

to be an act of complete contradiction to his own  philosophy: pity, weakness, and compassion. Soon  

after, Nietzsche would dip into complete madness,  eventually falling into a state of catatonia.  

One of the most powerful minds of modern history  seemingly collapsed under the weight of itself.  

Whether the cause was organic, latent consequences  to his contracted ailments, or the consequence  

of a mind that pursued too far into itself,  becoming stuck on its way back out, is unknown.  

Before ever coming back out, in 1900, at the young  age of fifty-five, Nietzsche died of a stroke. 

During his lifetime, according  to his own standards,  

Nietzsche might likely be considered  a failure. Prior to losing his sanity,  

he had made very little of himself and  saw very little, if not no success.  

His books didn’t sell, and he never really  garnered any notable respect or recognition.  

But following his death, of course, his work  would take-off, soon gaining massive notice,  

respect, and worldwide following–some of which  unfortunately would lead to horrible, misguided,  

and ill-conceived applications. However, today,  and more generally, Nietzsche’s work remains  

potent, important, and redeemably engrained in  modern thinking. His quotes, aphorisms, and ideas  

echo through culture every day, both literally and  symbolically. And so, in a fittingly ironic way,  

just how Nietzsche suggested that we must  symbolically die throughout life so that we  

can get of our own way and become who we really  are, sometimes sacrificing our self, our personal  

preservation, health, or sanity in the process of  something greater, perhaps Nietzsche’s life and  

death was just that: a process of self-overcoming  towards self-sacrifice towards something greater. 

Of course, Nietzsche’s ideas aren’t without  valid critiques, including this notion of  

self-overcoming, sacrifice, and greatness.  Although his assessments and predictions  

of modern issues are arguably quite accurate,  his resolutions aren’t necessarily all-serving.  

Is suffering in the continual pursuit of desire  and self-destruction in the name of growth towards  

an unattainable end goal really a good thing? And  how can one see it as a good thing if they do not?  

How can one create a life affirming interpretation  of life if their interpretation of life is not  

affirming? In other words, if one sees life as  negative or meaningless, to try to create goals  

or place themselves on such an interpretation,  only brings them back to square one, in need of  

some truth or meaning beyond themselves; something  other than what one sees, has, or experiences,  

which they cannot have. And furthermore, if one  does not agree with the initial premise–that  

suffering is good in the name of progress–then  the rest might merely be misdirection. 

Of course, being a philosopher whose work  doesn’t necessarily follow any linear  

or systematic structure, and can  even contradict itself at times,  

Nietzsche’s ideas are open to multiple  interpretations. And of course, all the  

aforementioned is merely a single, very brief one.  And more importantly, seeing as how his philosophy  

caters to this open-ended nature, and is  arguably not a guide to think in a certain way,  

but rather, a guide to think in one’s own  way, Nietzsche leaves us the space to,  

even if we disagree with him, do just as he  did and pave a new direction for ourself.