Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche also questioned the entire philosophical tradition of the West, which developed based on trust in the power of reason. He asked: Isn't there a deeper unconscious motive underneath the exercise of reason? Is a theory not a matter of justification, an invention in order to conceal that motive? Is a human being not far more complex than a mere rational being? Can rationality be the root of philosophical discourse? Is thinking not dominated by other forces in consciousness, forces one is not aware of? Did Western philosophy not take the wrong path? Thus, Nietzsche questions the way Western philosophy has developed and its trust in rationality that can be traced back to Greek philosophy.

Nietzsche was prophetic in the sense that he raised fundamental questions about the two key traditions of the West - Christianity and philosophy. His life was tragic, because not only could no one answer him, but also no one understood the authenticity of his questions. Even his well-known phrase, "God is dead," has a tragic tone.

Nietzsche grew up as an innocent and faithful child nicknamed the "small priest," singing hymns and citing biblical verses in front of others. When he was ten or twelve, he expressed his question about God in an essay entitled "Destiny and History." In Daybreak (Book I), which Nietzsche wrote right after his resignation from professorship, he asks, "Would he not be a cruel god if he possessed the truth and could behold mankind miserably tormenting itself over the truth?" (Clark 92). The question, if God is almighty, why did he not simply tell us the truth and save us, who were terribly suffering and seeking for truth, is a question we all may have had in our mind. In the phrase, "God is dead," don't we hear Nietzsche's tormented heart asking God to answer the question?

Nietzsche is among the most readable of philosophers and penned a large number of aphorisms and varied experimental forms of composition. Although his work was distorted and thus identified with Philosophical Romanticism, Nihilism, Anti-Semitism, and even Nazism, he himself vociferously denied such tendencies in his work, even to the point of directly opposing them. In philosophy and literature, he is often identified as an inspiration for existentialism and postmodernism. His thought is, by many accounts, most difficult to comprehend in any systematized form and remains a vivacious topic of debate.