The Engineer's Obligation to Cultural Progress(2)

Nietzsche
I suppose it would be appropriate to mention a few biographical "highlights" concerning Nietzsche before we start looking at some of his work. Nietzsche was born in 1844 at Röcken, in the Prussian province of Saxony. His father, who was a Lutheran pastor died shortly before Nietzsche's fifth birthday, and Nietzsche grew up with his mother, sister, grandmother, and two maiden aunts. He studied philology at Bonn University, and at the University of Leipzig, where he received his doctorate. In 1869 he was hired to teach at the University of Basel, in Switzerland. In 1870 he was promoted to full professor, became a Swiss citizen, and served as a medical orderly with the Prussian forces during the Franco- Prussian war. Nietzsche's war experience had a devastating effect on his health, which forced him to resign from the University in 1879, with a small pension. His retirement from teaching coincided with a dramatic increase in the volume of his writing, culminating in 1888, the year that he first began to develop a following (beginning with the Georg Brandes lectures on Nietzsche at the University of Copenhagen). Nietzsche collapsed into insanity early in January of 1889. Twilight of the Idols, part IV of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Antichrist, and Nietzsche Contra Wagner were all published after Nietzsche became incapacitated. Ecce Homo (behold the man) was published in 1908, eight years after Nietzsche's death. The Will to Power, an "organized" collection of aphorisms from Nietzsche's notebooks, was compiled and published by his sister in an evolving form between 1895 and 1904.