by Friedrich Nietzsche

About the author: Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher, author, and poet. He is renowned for his statement, “God is dead,” by which he meant that religion had lost its meaningfulness and efficacy in modern society. He rejected Christianity, arguing that its values were based on fear and resentment, that it incorrectly accepted all people as equals, and that it denied this world in favor of an illusory other world. Nietzsche’s concept of the “superman”—the passionate individual able to control and utilize passions creatively—expressed his view of the ideal manner of human existence. He wrote the books Thus Spake Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil, from which this viewpoint is excerpted.

The human soul and its frontiers, the compass of human inner experience...