Nietzsche at age 18.

3,017 words

In the Alps I am unconquerable, that is, when I am alone and have no enemy other than myself. — Nietzsche, letter to Malwida von Meysenburg

Friedrich Nietzsche remains the most enigmatic of philosophers. Claimed by both the political Left and Right over the 121 years since his death (by which time he had been incurably insane for 11 years), the Lutheran pastor’s son left a philosophical legacy which remains mysterious, and yet to the “philosophers of the future” for whom Nietzsche wrote, ultimately uplifting even in its ominous predictions for the Western culture to which he felt he was a physician.