The Lives of the Philosophers, a series published by Cambridge University Press, shows why biography is important and what it can tell us about the work of its various subjects. Sensitively charting the interplay between an author’s life and text, each book implicitly challenges those thinkers who view biographies as secondary or even irrelevant to […]
Read MoreWhen I began my biography of Nietzsche’s youth, The Making of Friedrich Nietzsche, I expected eventually to dislike my subject. Biographers frequently start by admiring their protagonists, then become hostile. Why should I be different? My experience, however, was the opposite. I found a great deal repellent in Nietzsche at the beginning, then decided that […]
Read More1861 This photograph, taken for Confirmation, was probably the first portrait of himself that Nietzsche had ever seen. Fundamentally pleased with it, he nonetheless acknowledged its homelier aspects: “My stance is hunched, my feet somewhat crooked, and my hand looks like a dumpling.” 1862 In this image Nietzsche seems quite a different person from […]
Read MoreWe talk to Daniel Blue, author of a major new biography of German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, that radically reconceives Nietzsche's youth and reveals the importance of autobiography and environment to his early development.
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