Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), one of the greatest German philosophers, boldly proclaimed that God is dead and that Christianity is a "slave morality." Man is to be surpassed by the Übermensch, the superman, who is driven by the will to power and is beyond the herd's conception of good and evil. His greatest works, The Birth of Tragedy and Thus Spake Zarathustra, deeply influenced the psychologists Sigmund Freud and Karl Gustav Jung.

Although Nietzsche died insane, his writings were powerful and lucid. Unfortunately they were used by the Nazis to justify their concept of the master race.

The noble type of man regards himself as a determiner of values, he does not require to be approved of; he passes the judgment: "What is injurious to me is injurious in itself"; he knows that it is he himself only who confers honor on things; he is a creator of values,
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886. Helen Zimmern translation, 1927)