- Published: 3 March 2016
- ISBN: 9780241251867
- Imprint: Penguin eBooks
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 96
Why I Am so Clever
46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946
'Why do I know a few more things? Why am I so clever altogether? I have never reflected on questions that are none - I have not squandered myself.'
- Published: 3 March 2016
- ISBN: 9780241251867
- Imprint: Penguin eBooks
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 96
Other books in the series
About the author
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was born in Prussia in 1844. After the death of his father, a Lutheran minister, Nietzsche was raised from the age of five by his mother in a household of women. In 1869 he was appointed Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Basel, where he taught until 1879 when poor health forced him to retire. He never recovered from a nervous breakdown in 1889 and died eleven years later.
Known for saying that 'god is dead,' Nietzsche propounded his metaphysical construct of the superiority of the disciplined individual (superman) living in the present over traditional values derived from Christianity and its emphasis on heavenly rewards. His ideas were appropriated by the Fascists, who turned his theories into social realities that he had never intended.