Fred N.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/
This little blog is going to be about the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Hopefully whoever is reading this will be take away a bit of knowledge about this critical thinker named Friedrich and his profound views of life. Little Friedrich was born in a small rural farmland in Germany. His family was very religious with his grandfather being ministers and his father being a Protestant scholar, whatever that means. Nevertheless his family instilled in him strong religious views. He grew up in a strict boarding school and went to the University of Bonn in 1864 where he studied philology which I thought was pretty interesting. It's kind of like philosophy except studying religious views instead of moralistic views. He moved to the University of Leipzig in 1865 and discovered the writings of Schopenhauer. This pretty much is how he discovered his enthusiasm for philosophy. A lot of other interesting things happened to him during his lifetime, one instance involving him going literally insane over a horse being whipped. But that's another story. Let's concentrate on his works.
Mr. Nietzsche was a bit more religious than other philosophers as he tested the traditional values of Christianity. Following this trend, he studied the common moralities of society too. Instead of many other philosophers who concentrated their thoughts on crazy out of this world ideas, Nietzsche believed in reality-the suffering, health, creativity, and all of the feelings we feel in life. “Central to Nietzsche's philosophy is the idea of "life-affirmation," which involves an honest questioning of all doctrines which drain life's energies, however socially prevalent those views might be.” Quite interesting……