Long 19th c. · 1844–1900
Who influenced Friedrich Nietzsche?
Influences and legacy
Philosophizing with a hammer: genealogy of morals, death of God, love of fate.
Friedrich Nietzsche was influenced by Heraclitus, Baruch Spinoza, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Max Stirner and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and went on to influence Lev Shestov, Muhammad Iqbal, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault. That is 13 lines of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.
Read on Wikipedia Portrait: Friedrich Hermann Hartmann, Public domain See the whole map
Who was Friedrich Nietzsche?
Trained as a classical philologist, Nietzsche became professor at the University of Basel in 1869, aged 24. Ill health forced him to resign in 1879, and over the next decade, living in relative solitude and moving between Switzerland, Italy and southern France, he wrote most of his major work. A collapse in 1889 ended his mental life; he died in 1900.
Writing in aphorisms and irony, he criticised objective truth in favour of perspectivism, traced Christian morality to a master–slave genealogy, and answered the death of God and the nihilism that followed with an affirmation of life. His best-known ideas are the will to power, the Übermensch, the revaluation of values and eternal return. His sister edited his papers to suit her nationalism, though he had opposed antisemitism and nationalism; later scholars restored his texts.
Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.
Who influenced Friedrich Nietzsche?
6 direct influences on this map, earliest first.
- Heraclitus c. 535–475 BC
- Baruch Spinoza 1632–1677
- Arthur Schopenhauer 1788–1860
- Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803–1882
- Max Stirner 1806–1856
- Fyodor Dostoevsky 1821–1881
Who did Friedrich Nietzsche influence?
7 thinkers on this map draw directly on Friedrich Nietzsche.
- Lev Shestov 1866–1938
- Muhammad Iqbal 1877–1938
- Karl Jaspers 1883–1969
- Martin Heidegger 1889–1976
- Albert Camus 1913–1960
- Gilles Deleuze 1925–1995
- Michel Foucault 1926–1984
The line of teachers behind Friedrich Nietzsche
The longest documented line of influence ending at Friedrich Nietzsche runs 24 generations back, to Thales of Miletus.
- Thales of Miletus
- Anaximenes of Miletus
- Anaxagoras
- Socrates
- Antisthenes
- Diogenes of Sinope
- Crates of Thebes
- Zeno of Citium
- Seneca
- Tertullian
- Augustine of Hippo
- Anselm of Canterbury
- Peter Lombard
- Thomas Aquinas
- René Descartes
- Thomas Hobbes
- Baruch Spinoza
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Christian Wolff
- Immanuel Kant
- Johann Gottlieb Fichte
- F. W. J. Schelling
- Georg W. F. Hegel
- Max Stirner
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Two steps away from Friedrich Nietzsche
Indirect influences
- Through Baruch Spinoza: Maimonides, Giordano Bruno, Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes
- Through Arthur Schopenhauer: Plato, Immanuel Kant
- Through Ralph Waldo Emerson: Michel de Montaigne
- Through Max Stirner: Georg W. F. Hegel
The second generation
Contemporaries of Friedrich Nietzsche
Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of Friedrich Nietzsche, with no direct line between them.
- William James 1842–1910
- Peter Kropotkin 1842–1921
- F. H. Bradley 1846–1924
- Gottlob Frege 1848–1925
- Charles Sanders Peirce 1839–1914
- Ernst Mach 1838–1916
- Franz Brentano 1838–1917
- Henry Sidgwick 1838–1900
Friedrich Nietzsche by the numbers
- Direct influences
- 6
- Direct followers
- 7 — #13 of 279 on this map
- Thinkers upstream
- 93
- Thinkers downstream
- 17
- Wikipedia languages
- 177 — #5 of 47 among 19th-century philosophers
- Card rarity
- Legendary
Schools and lineages
- Existentialists: Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus
Questions about Friedrich Nietzsche
- Who influenced Friedrich Nietzsche?
- Heraclitus, Baruch Spinoza, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Max Stirner and Fyodor Dostoevsky.
- Who did Friedrich Nietzsche influence?
- Lev Shestov, Muhammad Iqbal, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault.
- When did Friedrich Nietzsche live?
- 1844–1900. The map files Friedrich Nietzsche under the long 19th century.
- How rare is the Friedrich Nietzsche card?
- Wikipedia carries an article on Friedrich Nietzsche in 177 languages, which makes it a Legendary card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.
More 19th-century philosophers
- Karl Marx 1818–1883
- Charles Darwin 1809–1882
- Leo Tolstoy 1828–1910
- Fyodor Dostoevsky 1821–1881
- Georg W. F. Hegel 1770–1831
- Friedrich Engels 1820–1895
- Søren Kierkegaard 1813–1855
- Arthur Schopenhauer 1788–1860