The Will to Power (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

By Friedrich Nietzsche and David Taffel

If there are still such things, in this ironic postmodern age, as "dangerous thoughts," surely no book is more overflowing with them than Friedrich Nietzsches Will to Power. No other great work of recent literature has heralded the decline of modern Western civilization as emphatically. In The Will to Power many of Nietzsches fundamental insights are encountered as they first inspired the thinker and as he first wrestled them into words. Moreover, Nietzsches central theme of nihilism-the uncanny and pervasive feeling that life is devoid of all meaning, purpose, and value-is subjected here to a more thoroughgoing and multifaceted examination than can be found anywhere in his finished writings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Sep 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781411428348

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher and author. Born into a line of Protestant churchman, Nietzsche studied Classical literature and language before becoming a professor at the University of Basel in Switzerland. He became a philosopher after reading Schopenhauer, who suggested that God does not exist, and that life is filled with pain and suffering. Nietzsche’s first work of prominence was The Birth of Tragedy in 1872, which contained new theories regarding the origins of classical Greek culture. From 1883 to 1885 Nietzsche composed his most famous work, Thus Spake Zarathustra, in which he famously proclaimed that “God is dead.” He went on to release several more notable works including Beyond Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals, both of which dealt with the origins of moral values. Nietzsche suffered a nervous breakdown in 1889 and passed away in 1900, but not before giving us his most famous quote, “From life's school of war: what does not kill me makes me stronger.”