On Truth and Untruth

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.”

“The greatest philosopher of late modernity.” — Foreign Affairs“One of the most disturbing and influential thinkers of modern times.” — Economist“Nietzsche is the most influential of the great philosophers and the ‘patron saint of postmodernism,’” — Simon Blackburn, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge“Scholars regard Nietzsche’s 1873 unpublished essay, On Truth and Lies as a keystone in his thought.” — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy