Perspective

The author, Friedrich Nietzsche, is a German philosopher. He is born in 1844 and dies in 1900. He is employed as a professor at the University of Basel and writes many books during the productive period of his life. Amongst his writing from 1883 to 1887 are some of his greatest works, including "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", "Beyond Good and Evil" and "The Genealogy of Morals." In the last year of his productive period he finishes five books including "The Case of Wagner", "Twilight of the Idols" and "The Antichrist." At the end of this intensely productive year Nietzsche suffers an emotional breakdown and his friend Overbeck exclaims "Nietzsche is done for!" He spends the last ten years of his life a hopelessly deranged mental and physical invalid living like a puppet in the care of his domineering and anti-Semitic sister Elizabeth.

"The Genealogy of Morals" is written in reaction to a personal...