Friedrich Nietzsche was born in 1844 in Röcken, a village in Saxony (now Germany). His father was a Lutheran pastor who died young; Nietzsche was raised in a pious household of women (mother, sister, grandmother). A precocious student, he excelled in classical philology (the study of Greek and Roman texts). At 24, he became a professor at Basel, Switzerland – extraordinarily young. But academic life didn’t suit his fiery spirit for long. He was deeply influenced by composer Richard Wagner (they were friends for a time) and by the philosophy of Schopenhauer (the idea of life as driven by irrational will).

Nietzsche’s own philosophy began with works like The Birth of Tragedy (1872), where he introduced his famous dichotomy of the Apollonian (order, reason, beauty) vs Dionysian (chaos, passion, ecstasy) elements in Greek tragedy – reflecting his view that life needs both structure and wild creativity, and that modern society was too Apollonian, suppressing the Dionysian vital force.

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