German Philosopher, Proposer of "God Is Dead" and the Philosophy of the Übermensch
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher known for a strikingly aphoristic style, who proposed the famous declaration "God is dead" challenging the foundations of traditional religious morality, holding that after the collapse of the traditional value system the individual should surpass himself and create new values through the "will to power," a thought later often linked to the concept of the "Übermensch." He was tormented all his life by mental and physical illness, and after a total mental breakdown on a street in Turin in 1889 sank into prolonged insanity until his death. After his death his works were selectively distorted and misused by Nazi Germany for its ideological propaganda (markedly at odds with the actual content of his thought, an important point long clarified in Nietzsche scholarship), but since the late 20th century scholars have broadly held him an important forerunner of existentialist philosophy and postmodern thought.
In The Gay Science Nietzsche has a madman cry out "God is dead, and we have killed him"; the line is not a literal announcement of a god’s physical death but means that the traditional religious-moral system’s standing as the foundation of value has collapsed in modern society, so that humanity faces the grave challenge of a vacuum of meaning and value and must seek anew a ground on which to stand.
In 1889, seeing a horse whipped by its driver on a street in Turin, Nietzsche is said to have rushed to throw his arms around the horse’s neck and wept, and then broke down completely, sinking for over a decade into severe insanity until his death in 1900 — a tragic collapse that set a lamentable end to his intellectual life so full of contradiction and tension.
Nazi Germany once appropriated parts of Nietzsche’s works out of context to serve its ideological propaganda, markedly at odds with the actual content of his thought (Nietzsche himself was critical of nationalism and antisemitism) — an important matter long clarified in Nietzsche scholarship.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.
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