The thought of Friedrich Nietzsche has had a pervasive influence on Western thought since his death. Psychologists such as Sigmund Freud and existential philosophers such as Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger and Albert Camus have acknowledged their debt to his work, as have the post-structuralist and deconstructionists thinkers Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. Nietzsche has also influenced many great literary authors, notably George Bernard Shaw, André Gide, Rainer Maria Rilke, W. B. Yeats, Thomas Mann, Herman Hesse and André Malraux. Nietzsche's influence is grounded in the fact that he wrote with poetic force and elegance to express what his age in any case believed – that “God is dead”, that human kind is

This article in full comprises 4486 words but only the first 150 or so words are available to non-members.

All our articles have been written recently by experts in their field, more than 95% of them university professors. To read about membership, please click here.

First published 19 March 2004

Citation: Sedgwick, Peter. "Friedrich Nietzsche". The Literary Encyclopedia. 19 March 2004.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3342, accessed 20 November 2009.]