Friedrich Nietzsche began as a classical philologist, receiving a professorship at Basel in 1869 while still in his twenties. His studies of Greek language and culture developed alongside an interest in Schopenhauer's philosophy and a close association with Richard Wagner. The Birth of Tragedy, published in 1872, interpreted Greek drama through the interplay of artistic forces he called Apollonian and Dionysian. Its speculative approach provoked criticism from other classical scholars.

The essays collected as Untimely Meditations examined contemporary culture, historical study, and exemplary thinkers. Nietzsche gradually distanced himself from Wagner and from the metaphysical framework of his early work. Human, All Too Human, issued in 1878, used aphorisms to investigate morality, religion, and human motivation. Recurrent illness and impaired eyesight contributed to his resignation from Basel in 1879. Thereafter he lived on a pension, moving among Switzerland, Italy, and southern France while concentrating on writing.

Daybreak and The Gay Science deepened his analysis of inherited values and the conditions of knowledge. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, published in parts during the 1880s, employed a prophetic literary voice to explore self-overcoming, the Übermensch, and eternal recurrence.

Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morality examined how moral judgments arise, questioning their claims to universal and disinterested authority. Nietzsche criticized ascetic ideals, resentment, and the suppression of creative life while proposing forms of value creation. His writing challenged Christianity and egalitarian assumptions, but he also opposed German nationalism and antisemitism. Books completed in 1888 included Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, and Ecce Homo, displaying the increasingly forceful style of his final productive year.

A mental collapse in Turin in January 1889 ended his independent intellectual work. He spent his remaining years under care, dying in 1900. His sister Elisabeth later controlled his archive and promoted interpretations shaped by her own nationalist interests. The posthumous compilation The Will to Power was assembled from notebooks and was not a completed book authorized by Nietzsche. Later political appropriation, including by Nazi interpreters, obscured important distinctions in his thought. His influence spread across philosophy, literature, psychology, and debates about modernity and moral authority.