Name	9½ Weeks
Caption	Theatrical release poster
Director	Adrian Lyne
Producer	Mark DamonSidney KimmelZalman KingAntony Rufus-Isaacs
Writer	Novel:Elizabeth McNeillScreenplay:Sarah KernochanZalman KingPatricia Louisanna Knop
Starring	Mickey RourkeKim Basinger
Music	Jack Nitzsche
Cinematography	Peter Biziou
Editing	Caroline BiggerstaffEd HansenTom RolfMark Winitsky
Distributor	Worldwide:Producers Sales OrganizationUnited States:Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (theatrical)Warner Home Video (DVD)
Released
Runtime	112 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$17,000,000
Gross	$6,734,844
Followed by	Another 9½ Weeks

‎ 9½ Weeks is a 1986 American erotic drama film directed by Adrian Lyne and starring Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger. It is based on the novel of the same name by Elizabeth McNeill.

The film was not a major success commercially in the United States, grossing only $7 million at the box office. In addition, it received mixed reviews. However, despite its only moderate success in North America, the film acquired a large fanbase on video and was a huge success internationally. The film is now well known for its erotic sadomasochistic content.

The film spawned two direct-to-video sequels, Another 9½ Weeks (1997) and The First 9½ Weeks (1998).

Plot

The title of the film refers to the duration of a relationship between Wall Street arbitrageur John Grey and divorced SoHo art gallery employee Elizabeth McGraw. The two meet and conduct a volatile and sometimes violent sex life.

They try a variety of sexual and erotic acts, such as a scene in which John titillates a blindfolded Elizabeth's body with ice; a scene in which John spoonfeeds Elizabeth various kinds of food while her eyes are closed; a scene in which Elizabeth takes off a tuxedo and fake moustache and has sex with John in a rainy alley; and Basinger's striptease to Randy Newman's "You Can Leave Your Hat On," as performed by Joe Cocker. Most of these erotic scenes were parodied or served as the inspiration for some music videos, like Sheena Easton's 1989 song "Days Like This" and Sarah Connor's 2007 "Sexual Healing".

The film details a sexual downward spiral as John pushes Elizabeth's boundaries toward her eventual emotional breakdown. He often manipulates her into getting what he wants during sex and sometimes abuses her.

Cast

Mickey Rourke as John Grey

Kim Basinger as Elizabeth McGraw

Margaret Whitton as Molly

David Margulies as Harvey

Christine Baranski as Thea

Karen Young as Sue

William De Acutis as Ted (as William DeAcutis)

Dwight Weist as Farnsworth

Roderick Cook as Sinclair, the Critic

Victor Truro as Gallery Client

Reception

9½ Weeks has a mixed 62% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Roger Ebert gave the film three and half stars, stating: "A lot of the success of "9½ Weeks" is because Rourke and Basinger make the characters and their relationship convincing". He further elaborated by saying that their relationship was believable, and unlike many other characters in other erotic films at that time, the characters in this movie are much more real and human.

The film was nominated for three categories in the 1986 Golden Raspberry Awards, Worst Actress (Kim Basinger), Worst Original Song (Jonathan Elias, John Taylor, Michael Des Barres), and Worst Screenplay (Patricia Louisianna Knop, Zalman King, Sarah Kernochan).

Soundtrack and score

The main single released from the 9½ Weeks: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack was "I Do What I Do," performed by Duran Duran bassist John Taylor, giving his first solo singing performance during a hiatus in Duran Duran's career. The song reached #23 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #42 on the UK Singles Chart. Music for the score was composed by Taylor and Jonathan Elias. Original music for the movie was also written by Jack Nitzsche, but his compositions are not included on the soundtrack.

The soundtrack also included tracks from Luba, Bryan Ferry, Dalbello, Corey Hart, Joe Cocker, Devo, Eurythmics and Stewart Copeland. Winston Grennan's reggae "Savior" as well as Jean Michel Jarre's "Arpegiator," played during the sex scene on the stairs in the rain, were not included on the record.

Sequel and prequel

In 1997, a sequel appeared direct-to-video called Another 9½ Weeks, starring Mickey Rourke and Angie Everhart and directed by Anne Goursaud. In 1998, a straight-to-video prequel was made called The First 9½ Weeks, but it did not include any of the original actors.

See also

Sex in film

References

Unfootnoted

External links

Category:1986 films Category:Films based on novels Category:Erotic films Category:BDSM in films Category:Films set in New York City Category:Films set in Brooklyn Category:Films directed by Adrian Lyne

Name	Kim Basinger
Caption	in 1989
Birth name	Kimila Ann Basinger
Birth date	December 08, 1953
Birth place	Athens, Georgia, U.S.
Occupation	ActressProducer
Years active	1969–1975 (model)1976–present (actress)
Spouse	(divorced)(divorced)

Kimila Ann "Kim" Basinger ( , often mispronounced -in-jər; born December 8, 1953) is an American actress and former fashion model.

She is known for her portrayals of Domino Petachi, the Bond girl in Never Say Never Again (1983), and Vicki Vale, the female lead in Batman (1989). Basinger received a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture nomination for her work in The Natural (1984). She won an Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in L.A. Confidential (1997). Ms. Basinger also acted in the movies 9½ Weeks (1986) and 8 Mile (2002).

Early life

Ms. Basinger was born in Athens, Georgia. Her father, Don Basinger, was a big band musician and loan manager who as a U.S. Army soldier landed in Normandy on D-Day (June 6, 1944). Her mother, Ann, was a model, an actress, and a swimmer who appeared in several Esther Williams films. The third of five children, she has two brothers, Mick and Skip, and two sisters, Ashley and Barbara. Basinger's ancestry includes German, Swedish and Cherokee Indian, and she was raised a Methodist.

When Basinger was 16, she started modeling by winning the Athens Junior Miss contest. She then won the title “Junior Miss Georgia”. She competed in the national Junior Miss pageant and was offered a modeling contract with Ford Modeling Agency. She turned it down in favor of singing and acting, but reconsidered and went to New York to become a Ford model.

Career

Not long after the Ford deal, Basinger was on the cover of magazines. She appeared in hundreds of ads throughout the early 1970s, most notably as the Breck Shampoo girl. She alternated between modeling and attending acting classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse as well as performing in Greenwich Village clubs.

In 1976, after five years as a cover girl, Basinger moved to Los Angeles to act. After guest roles on TV shows such as Starsky and Hutch and Charlie's Angels in 1976, and a starring role on the short-lived series Dog and Cat (1977), her first feature-length role was in a made-for-TV movie, Katie: Portrait of a Centerfold (1978) in which she played a smalltown young woman who goes to Hollywood to become an actress and winds up a famous centerfold for a men's magazine. She was then cast as a prostitute in From Here to Eternity (1979), in which she starred alongside Natalie Wood. Basinger played the same character in a 13-episode TV spinoff in 1980. She made her theatrical film debut in Hard Country (1981) with Jan Michael Vincent, followed by Mother Lode (1982) with Charlton Heston.

Basinger's breakout role was as Bond girl Domino Petachi in Never Say Never Again (1983), starring opposite Sean Connery. She posed nude for Playboy to promote the film. Basinger said Playboy led to opportunities such as Barry Levinson's The Natural (1984), co-starring Robert Redford, for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination as Best Supporting Actress. She starred opposite Mickey Rourke in the sexually provocative 9½ Weeks (1986). Oscar-winning writer-director Robert Benton cast her in the title role for the film Nadine (1987) with Jeff Bridges. Basinger played Vicki Vale in the 1989 blockbuster Batman, directed by Tim Burton.

Directors repeated her in their films, such as Blake Edwards for The Man Who Loved Women (1983) and Blind Date (1987), as well as Robert Altman for Fool for Love (1985) and Prêt-à-Porter (1994). In 1992, Basinger was guest vocalist on a re-recorded version of Was (Not Was)'s "Shake Your Head", which also featured Ozzy Osbourne on vocals, and reached the UK Top 5. In the video for Tom Petty's 1993 song "Mary Jane's Last Dance", Basinger played the unconscious woman whom Petty brings home from the morgue for dinner, dressing her in a wedding gown. Later, Petty is shown throwing her into the sea. In a macabre ending, she floats with her eyes open.

Basinger acted less in the 1990s to take care of her family. She made a comeback in 1997 as the femme fatale in the neo-noir L.A. Confidential, co-starring Russell Crowe. This earned her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, as well as the Golden Globe and Screen Actor's Guild Award. The film's director, Curtis Hanson, cast her once more as Eminem's mother in 8 Mile (2002). She appeared mostly in television and independent films such as While She Was Out, The Burning Plain, and Lifetime's The Mermaid Chair. She was also seen in the mainstream thrillers Cellular (2004) and The Sentinel (2006), and The Informers (2009).

Basinger played Zac Efron's mother in the 2010 film Charlie St. Cloud.

Personal life

at the 1994 César Awards ceremony in Paris.]] In the 1970s, Basinger lived with model Dale Robinette.

On October 12, 1980, Basinger married makeup artist Ron Snyder-Britton (born 1938), who worked on the crew of her film Hard Country. The marriage ended in divorce in 1988. He later wrote a memoir, Longer than Forever: The Story of Our Strange Marriage, in 1998, about their time together and her rumored affair with actor Richard Gere, with whom she starred in No Mercy (1986) and Final Analysis (1992).

After the divorce, Basinger dated casting director Jon Peters and singer Prince. and appealed the jury's decision to a higher court, which sided with her. She and the studio settled for a lesser amount.

In 1990, she met her second husband, Alec Baldwin, when they played lovers in The Marrying Man. They married on 19 August 1993 and appeared in the remake of The Getaway (1994). They played themselves in a 1998 episode of The Simpsons (which includes Ron Howard), in which Basinger corrects Homer Simpson on the pronunciation of her last name and polishes her Oscar statuette. Basinger and Baldwin have a daughter, Ireland Eliesse "Addie" Baldwin (born 23 October 1995).

They filed for divorce in January 2001; it was finalized in February 2002. Since then, the couple have been in a contentious custody battle. Alec Baldwin's book A Promise To Ourselves chronicles the lengths Basinger has gone to deny Baldwin access to their daughter since separation.

Activism

Basinger is an animal rights supporter. She has posed for anti-fur advertisements by PETA. She has written to fashion designers such as Yohji Yamamoto to ask that they stop using fur.

Filmography

Television work

Charlie's Angels (1976) (episode: Angels in Chains)

Dog and Cat (1977) (TV) (canceled after six episodes)

The Ghost of Flight 401 (1978) (TV)

Katie: Portrait of a Centerfold (1978) (TV)

From Here to Eternity (1979) (miniseries)

From Here to Eternity (1980) (canceled after thirteen episodes)

Killjoy (1981) (TV)

Sean Connery, an Intimate Portrait (1997) (documentary)

The Simpsons (1998: 13.17) – Herself

The Mermaid Chair (2006) (TV)

References

External links

Category:1953 births Category:American Methodists Category:Actors from Georgia (U.S. state) Category:American female models Category:American film actors Category:American voice actors Category:Best Supporting Actress Academy Award winners Category:Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (film) winners Category:American actors of German descent Category:Living people Category:People from Athens, Georgia Category:American actors of Swedish descent Category:Animal rights advocates

Zan Perrion is a Vancouver based writer, motivational speaker, and life coach. One of the founding members of today's "burgeoning community of international pickup artists", he has advocated a more natural and enlightened form of interaction between men and women.

Through his company, Enlightened Seduction, he gives seminars and workshops, and publishes various types of literature and multimedia on relationships, seduction, and dating.

In 2007, Zan played himself in the movie "Let the Game Begin" starring Adam Rodriguez.

Background

He has been a guest and presenter at dating related events, such as with David Deangelo of "Double Your Dating", and the Cliff's List Conventions.

Author Neil Strauss devoted a chapter to him in his New York Times bestseller , calling Zan "...the undisputed heavyweight of the genre... in four years, he never once asked for advice, he only gave it." Seattle's Komo TV has called him "The World's Greatest Seducer".

Concepts

Zan teaches the belief that women will respond favorably to men who are confident and fun - but not arrogant. He advocates the notion of honesty and respect toward women; his assertion is that women will open themselves up in amazing ways to a man who is sincere and respectful, who knows what he wants, and who doesn't mask his desires as a man. As he puts it, "men who like women are liked by women".

Zan also argues that looks are not as important as most men believe. He illustrates this idea by demonstrating that many of the greatest seducers in history were notably unremarkable in their appearance. What these men possessed, however, was a "mesmerizing aura; an unbelievably compelling way of interacting with women and moving through this world". As Zan puts it: "Women are not attracted to men who are good looking - they are attracted to men who are attractive."

Another key concept that Zan advocates is the notion that most of the rejection men experience originates from their own self-limiting beliefs, and their inner concepts of themselves. As a result, there is a strong emphasis in his work on the idea of changing mindsets, and in teaching concepts that are "internally focused, less about routines and tactics and more about emotions and ideas."

Zan also presents the idea that the secret of all natural seducers is that they are not "born with the ability to flirt with and seduce women, they learn it. And what one man can do, so can another." He also advocates the notion that a "natural seducer doesn’t pick and choose who he flirts with — he’s charming to all women."

Filmography

Let the Game Begin : as Himself. (Zan Perrion appears in the trailer)

References

External links

Zan Perrion

Zan Perrion's MySpace

Category:Living people Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Canadian motivational writers Category:Seduction community

Region	Western Philosophy
Era	19th century philosophy
Color	#B0C4DE
Image name	Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche.jpg
Name	Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Birth date	October 15, 1844
Birth place	Röcken bei Lützen, Prussia
Death date	August 25, 1900
Death place	Weimar, Saxony, German Empire
School tradition	Weimar Classicism; precursor to Continental philosophy, existentialism, Individualism, postmodernism, poststructuralism|
Main interests	aesthetics, ethics, ontology, philosophy of history, psychology, value-theory, poetry
Influences	Aristotle, Burckhardt, Dostoyevsky, Emerson, Epicurus, Goethe, Hegel, Heine, Heraclitus, Kant, Lange, Leibniz, Montaigne, Pascal, Plato, La Rochefoucauld, Rousseau, Schopenhauer, Socrates, Spinoza, Spir, Stendhal, Voltaire, Wagner
Influenced	Adorno, Bataille, Baudrillard, Benjamin, Bloom, Allan, Buber, Butler, Camus, Deleuze, Derrida, Dreyfus, Foucault, Freud, Heidegger, Iqbal, Jaspers, Jung, Kaufmann, Kojeve, Mencken, Onfray, Robakidze, Santayana, Sartre, Strauss, Spengler, Williams, Wittgenstein, Zapffe
Notable ideas	Apollonian and Dionysian, death of God, eternal recurrence, herd-instinct, master-slave morality, Übermensch, perspectivism, will to power, ressentiment, der letzte Mensch
Signature	Friedrich Nietzsche Signature.svg

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; in English , ) (October 15, 1844 August 25, 1900) was a 19th-century German philosopher and classical philologist. He wrote critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and aphorism.

Nietzsche's influence remains substantial within and beyond philosophy, notably in existentialism and postmodernism. His style and radical questioning of the value and objectivity of truth have resulted in much commentary and interpretation, mostly in the continental tradition. His key ideas include the death of God, perspectivism, the Übermensch, the eternal recurrence, and the will to power. Central to his philosophy is the idea of “life-affirmation,” which involves an honest questioning of all doctrines that drain life's expansive energies, however socially prevalent those views might be.

Nietzsche began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. At the age of 24 he was appointed to the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel (the youngest individual to have held this position), but resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life. In 1889 he became mentally ill, possibly due to atypical general paralysis attributed to tertiary syphilis. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897, then under the care of his sister until his death in 1900.

Life

Youth (1844–1869)

Born on October 15, 1844, Nietzsche grew up in the small town of Röcken, near Leipzig, in the Prussian Province of Saxony. He was named after King Frederick William IV of Prussia, who turned 49 on the day of Nietzsche's birth. (Nietzsche later dropped his given middle name, "Wilhelm".) Nietzsche's parents, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche (1813–1849), a Lutheran pastor and former teacher, and Franziska Oehler (1826–1897), married in 1843, the year before their son's birth, and had two other children: a daughter, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, born in 1846, and a second son, Ludwig Joseph, born in 1848. Nietzsche's father died from a brain ailment in 1849; his younger brother died in 1850. The family then moved to Naumburg, where they lived with Nietzsche's paternal grandmother and his father's two unmarried sisters. After the death of Nietzsche's grandmother in 1856, the family moved into their own house.

Nietzsche attended a boys' school and then later a private school, where he became friends with Gustav Krug and Wilhelm Pinder, both of whom came from very respected families. In 1854, he began to attend Pforta in Naumburg, but after he showed particular talents in music and language, the internationally recognised Schulpforta admitted him as a pupil, and there he continued his studies from 1858 to 1864. Here he became friends with Paul Deussen and Carl von Gersdorff. He also found time to work on poems and musical compositions. At Schulpforta, Nietzsche received an important introduction to literature, particularly that of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and for the first time experienced a distance from his family life in a small-town Christian environment.

After graduation in 1864 Nietzsche commenced studies in theology and classical philology at the University of Bonn. For a short time he and Deussen became members of the Burschenschaft Frankonia. After one semester (and to the anger of his mother) he stopped his theological studies and lost his faith. This may have happened in part because of his reading around this time of David Strauss's Life of Jesus, which had a profound effect on the young Nietzsche, Nietzsche then concentrated on studying philology under Professor Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl, whom he followed to the University of Leipzig the next year. There he became close friends with fellow-student Erwin Rohde. Nietzsche's first philological publications appeared soon after.

In 1865 Nietzsche thoroughly studied the works of Arthur Schopenhauer. He owed the awakening of his philosophical interest to reading his Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung and later admitted that he was one of the few thinkers that he respected, dedicating to him his essay Schopenhauer als Erzieher (), one of his Untimely Meditations.

In 1866 he read Friedrich Albert Lange's History of Materialism. Schopenhauer and Lange influenced him. Schopenhauer was especially significant in the development of Nietzsche's later thought. Lange's descriptions of Kant's anti-materialistic philosophy, the rise of European Materialism, Europe's increased concern with science, Darwin's theory, and the general rebellion against tradition and authority greatly intrigued Nietzsche. The cultural environment encouraged him to expand his horizons beyond philology and to continue his study of philosophy.

In 1867 Nietzsche signed up for one year of voluntary service with the Prussian artillery division in Naumburg. However, a riding accident in March 1868 left him unfit for service. Consequently Nietzsche turned his attention to his studies again, completing them and first meeting with Richard Wagner later that year.

Professor at Basel (1869–1879)

, Carl von Gersdorff, Nietzsche]] In part because of Ritschl's support, Nietzsche received a remarkable offer to become professor of classical philology at the University of Basel. He was only 24 years old and had neither completed his doctorate nor received his teaching certificate. Despite the fact that the offer came at a time when he was considering giving up philology for science, he accepted. To this day, Nietzsche is still among the youngest of the tenured Classics professors on record. Before moving to Basel, Nietzsche renounced his Prussian citizenship: for the rest of his life he remained officially stateless.

Nevertheless, Nietzsche served in the Prussian forces during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871 as a medical orderly. In his short time in the military he experienced much, and witnessed the traumatic effects of battle. He also contracted diphtheria and dysentery. Walter Kaufmann speculates that he might also have contracted syphilis along with his other infections at this time, and some biographers speculate that syphilis caused his eventual madness, though there is some disagreement on this matter. On returning to Basel in 1870 Nietzsche observed the establishment of the German Empire and the following era of Otto von Bismarck as an outsider and with a degree of skepticism regarding its genuineness. At the University, he delivered his inaugural lecture, "". Nietzsche also met Franz Overbeck, a professor of theology, who remained his friend throughout his life. Afrikan Spir, a little-known Russian philosopher and author of Denken und Wirklichkeit (1873), and his colleague the historian Jacob Burckhardt, whose lectures Nietzsche frequently attended, began to exercise significant influence on Nietzsche during this time.

Nietzsche had already met Richard Wagner in Leipzig in 1868, and (some time later) Wagner's wife Cosima. Nietzsche admired both greatly, and during his time at Basel frequently visited Wagner's house in Tribschen in the Canton of Lucerne. The Wagners brought Nietzsche into their most intimate circle, and enjoyed the attention he gave to the beginning of the Bayreuth Festival Theatre. In 1870 he gave Cosima Wagner the manuscript of 'The Genesis of the Tragic Idea' as a birthday gift. In 1872 Nietzsche published his first book, The Birth of Tragedy. However, his colleagues in the field of classical philology, including Ritschl, expressed little enthusiasm for the work, in which Nietzsche eschewed the classical philologic method in favor of a more speculative approach. In a polemic, Philology of the Future, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff dampened the book's reception and increased its notoriety. In response, Rohde (by now a professor in Kiel) and Wagner came to Nietzsche's defense. Nietzsche remarked freely about the isolation he felt within the philological community and attempted to attain a position in philosophy at Basel, though unsuccessfully.

, ca. 1875]]

Between 1873 and 1876, Nietzsche published separately four long essays: David Strauss: the Confessor and the Writer, On the Use and Abuse of History for Life, Schopenhauer as Educator, and Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. (These four later appeared in a collected edition under the title, Untimely Meditations.) The four essays shared the orientation of a cultural critique, challenging the developing German culture along lines suggested by Schopenhauer and Wagner. In 1873, Nietzsche also began to accumulate notes that would be posthumously published as Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. During this time, in the circle of the Wagners, Nietzsche met Malwida von Meysenbug and Hans von Bülow, and also began a friendship with Paul Rée, who in 1876 influenced him in dismissing the pessimism in his early writings. However, he was deeply disappointed by the Bayreuth Festival of 1876, where the banality of the shows and the baseness of the public repelled him. He was also alienated by Wagner's championing of 'German culture', which Nietzsche thought a contradiction in terms, as well as by Wagner's celebration of his fame among the German public. All this contributed to Nietzsche's subsequent decision to distance himself from Wagner.

With the publication of Human, All Too Human in 1878 (a book of aphorisms on subjects ranging from metaphysics to morality and from religion to the sexes) Nietzsche's reaction against the pessimistic philosophy of Wagner and Schopenhauer became evident, as well as the influence of Afrikan Spir's Denken und Wirklichkeit. Nietzsche's friendship with Deussen and Rohde cooled as well. In 1879, after a significant decline in health, Nietzsche had to resign his position at Basel. (Since his childhood, various disruptive illnesses had plagued him, including moments of shortsightedness that left him nearly blind, migraine headaches, and violent indigestion. The 1868 riding accident and diseases in 1870 may have aggravated these persistent conditions, which continued to affect him through his years at Basel, forcing him to take longer and longer holidays until regular work became impractical.)

Independent philosopher (1879–1888)

Because his illness drove him to find climates more conducive to his health, Nietzsche traveled frequently, and lived until 1889 as an independent author in different cities. He spent many summers in Sils Maria, near St. Moritz in Switzerland, and many winters in the Italian cities of Genoa, Rapallo and Turin and in the French city of Nice. In 1881, when France occupied Tunisia, he planned to travel to Tunis to view Europe from the outside, but later abandoned that idea (probably for health reasons). While in Genoa, Nietzsche's failing eyesight prompted him to explore the use of typewriters as a means of continuing to write. He is known to have tried using the Hansen Writing Ball, a contemporary typewriter device.

Nietzsche occasionally returned to Naumburg to visit his family, and, especially during this time, he and his sister had repeated periods of conflict and reconciliation. He lived on his pension from Basel, but also received aid from friends. A past student of his, Peter Gast (born Heinrich Köselitz), became a sort of private secretary to Nietzsche. To the end of his life, Gast and Overbeck remained consistently faithful friends. Malwida von Meysenbug remained like a motherly patron even outside the Wagner circle. Soon Nietzsche made contact with the music-critic Carl Fuchs. Nietzsche stood at the beginning of his most productive period. Beginning with Human, All Too Human in 1878, Nietzsche would publish one book (or major section of a book) each year until 1888, his last year of writing, during which he completed five.

, Paul Rée and Nietzsche, 1882]]

In 1882 Nietzsche published the first part of The Gay Science. That year he also met Lou Andreas Salomé, through Malwida von Meysenbug and Paul Rée. Nietzsche and Salomé spent the summer together in Tautenburg in Thuringia, often with Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth as a chaperone. Nietzsche, however, regarded Salomé less as an equal partner than as a gifted student. Salomé reports that he asked her to marry him and that she refused, though the reliability of her reports of events has come into question. Nietzsche's relationship with Rée and Salomé broke up in the winter of 1882/1883, partially because of intrigues conducted by Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth. Amidst renewed bouts of illness, living in near isolation after a falling-out with his mother and sister regarding Salomé, Nietzsche fled to Rapallo. Here he wrote the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra in only ten days.

After severing his philosophical ties with Schopenhauer and his social ties with Wagner, Nietzsche had few remaining friends. Now, with the new style of Zarathustra, his work became even more alienating and the market received it only to the degree required by politeness. Nietzsche recognized this and maintained his solitude, though he often complained about it. His books remained largely unsold. In 1885 he printed only 40 copies of the fourth part of Zarathustra, and distributed only a fraction of these among close friends, including Helene von Druskowitz.

In 1883 he tried and failed to obtain a lecturing post at the University of Leipzig. It was made clear to him that, in view of the attitude towards Christianity and the concept of God expressed in Zarathustra, he had become in effect unemployable at any German University. The subsequent "feelings of revenge and resentment" embittered him. "And hence my rage since I have grasped in the broadest possible sense what wretched means (the depreciation of my good name, my character and my aims) suffice to take from me the trust of, and therewith the possibility of obtaining, pupils."

In 1886 Nietzsche broke with his editor, Ernst Schmeitzner, disgusted by his anti-Semitic opinions. Nietzsche saw his own writings as "completely buried and unexhumeable in this anti-Semitic dump" of Schmeitzner—associating the editor with a movement that should be "utterly rejected with cold contempt by every sensible mind". He then printed Beyond Good and Evil at his own expense, and issued in 1886–1887 second editions of his earlier works (The Birth of Tragedy, Human, All Too Human, Dawn, and The Gay Science), accompanied by new prefaces in which he reconsidered his earlier works. Thereafter, he saw his work as completed for a time and hoped that soon a readership would develop. In fact, interest in Nietzsche's thought did increase at this time, if rather slowly and in a way hardly perceived by him. During these years Nietzsche met Meta von Salis, Carl Spitteler, and also Gottfried Keller. In 1886 his sister Elisabeth married the anti-Semite Bernhard Förster and traveled to Paraguay to found Nueva Germania, a "Germanic" colony—a plan to which Nietzsche responded with mocking laughter. Through correspondence, Nietzsche's relationship with Elisabeth continued on the path of conflict and reconciliation, but they would meet again only after his collapse. He continued to have frequent and painful attacks of illness, which made prolonged work impossible. In 1887 Nietzsche wrote the polemic On the Genealogy of Morals.

During the same year Nietzsche encountered the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky, with whom he felt an immediate kinship. He also exchanged letters with Hippolyte Taine, and then also with Georg Brandes. Brandes, who had started to teach the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard in the 1870s, wrote to Nietzsche asking him to read Kierkegaard, to which Nietzsche replied that he would come to Copenhagen and read Kierkegaard with him. However, before fulfilling this undertaking, he slipped too far into sickness. In the beginning of 1888, in Copenhagen, Brandes delivered one of the first lectures on Nietzsche's philosophy.

Although Nietzsche had in 1886 announced (at the end of On The Genealogy of Morality) a new work with the title The Will to Power: Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values, he eventually seems to have abandoned this particular approach and instead used some of the draft passages to compose Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist (both written in 1888).

His health seemed to improve, and he spent the summer in high spirits. In the fall of 1888 his writings and letters began to reveal a higher estimation of his own status and "fate." He overestimated the increasing response to his writings, especially to the recent polemic, The Case of Wagner. On his 44th birthday, after completing Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist, he decided to write the autobiography Ecce Homo. In the preface to this work—which suggests Nietzsche was well aware of the interpretive difficulties his work would generate—he declares, "Hear me! For I am such and such a person. Above all, do not mistake me for someone else." In December, Nietzsche began a correspondence with August Strindberg, and thought that, short of an international breakthrough, he would attempt to buy back his older writings from the publisher and have them translated into other European languages. Moreover, he planned the publication of the compilation Nietzsche Contra Wagner and of the poems that composed his collection ''Dionysian-Dithyrambs.

Mental breakdown and death (1889–1900)

(background, right), as seen from across Piazza Carlo Alberto, where he is said to have had his breakdown. To the left is the rear façade of the Palazzo Carignano]]

On January 3, 1889, Nietzsche suffered a mental collapse. Two policemen approached him after he caused a public disturbance in the streets of Turin. What actually happened remains unknown, but an often-repeated tale states that Nietzsche witnessed the whipping of a horse at the other end of the Piazza Carlo Alberto, ran to the horse, threw his arms up around its neck to protect the horse, and then collapsed to the ground.

In the following few days, Nietzsche sent short writings—known as the Wahnbriefe ("Madness Letters")—to a number of friends (including Cosima Wagner and Jacob Burckhardt). To his former colleague Burckhardt, Nietzsche wrote: "I have had Caiaphas put in fetters. Also, last year I was crucified by the German doctors in a very drawn-out manner. Wilhelm, Bismarck, and all anti-Semites abolished." Additionally, he commanded the German emperor to go to Rome to be shot, and summoned the European powers to take military action against Germany.

On January 6, 1889 Burckhardt showed the letter he had received from Nietzsche to Overbeck. The following day Overbeck received a similarly revealing letter, and decided that Nietzsche's friends had to bring him back to Basel. Overbeck traveled to Turin and brought Nietzsche to a psychiatric clinic in Basel. By that time Nietzsche appeared fully in the grip of a serious mental illness, and his mother Franziska decided to transfer him to a clinic in Jena under the direction of Otto Binswanger. From November 1889 to February 1890 the art historian Julius Langbehn attempted to cure Nietzsche, claiming that the methods of the medical doctors were ineffective in treating Nietzsche's condition. Langbehn assumed progressively greater control of Nietzsche until his secretiveness discredited him. In March 1890 Franziska removed Nietzsche from the clinic, and in May 1890 brought him to her home in Naumburg. During this process Overbeck and Gast contemplated what to do with Nietzsche's unpublished works. In January 1889 they proceeded with the planned release of Twilight of the Idols, by that time already printed and bound. In February they ordered a fifty copy private edition of Nietzsche contra Wagner, but the publisher C. G. Naumann secretly printed one hundred. Overbeck and Gast decided to withhold publishing The Antichrist and Ecce Homo because of their more radical content. Nietzsche's reception and recognition enjoyed their first surge.

In 1893 Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth returned from Nueva Germania (in Paraguay) following the suicide of her husband. She read and studied Nietzsche's works, and piece by piece took control of them and of their publication. Overbeck eventually suffered dismissal, and Gast finally cooperated. After the death of Franziska in 1897 Nietzsche lived in Weimar, where Elisabeth cared for him and allowed people, including Rudolf Steiner (who in 1895 had written one of the first books praising Nietzsche) to visit her uncommunicative brother. Elisabeth at one point went so far as to employ Steiner–at a time when he was still an ardent fighter against any mysticism–as a tutor to help her to understand her brother's philosophy. Steiner abandoned the attempt after only a few months, declaring that it was impossible to teach her anything about philosophy. would "correct" Nietzsche's writings even after the philosopher's breakdown and did so without his approval—an action severely criticized by Nietzsche scholars.]]

Nietzsche's mental illness was originally diagnosed as tertiary syphilis, in accordance with a prevailing medical paradigm of the time. Although most commentators regard his breakdown as unrelated to his philosophy Georges Bataille drops dark hints (""man incarnate" must also go mad") and René Girard's postmortem psychoanalysis posits a worshipful rivalry with Richard Wagner. The diagnosis of syphilis was challenged, and manic-depressive illness with periodic psychosis, followed by vascular dementia was put forward by Cybulska prior Schain's; and Sax's studies;. Orth and Trimble postulate frontotemporal dementia, while other researchers propose a syndrome called CADASIL.

In 1898 and 1899 Nietzsche suffered at least two strokes, which partially paralysed him and left him unable to speak or walk. After contracting pneumonia in mid-August 1900 he had another stroke during the night of August 24 / August 25, and died about noon on August 25. Elisabeth had him buried beside his father at the church in Röcken bei Lützen. His friend, Gast, gave his funeral oration, proclaiming: "Holy be your name to all future generations!" Nietzsche had written in Ecce Homo (at the time of the funeral still unpublished) of his fear that one day his name would be regarded as "holy".

Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche compiled The Will to Power from Nietzsche's unpublished notebooks, and published it posthumously. Because his sister arranged the book based on her own conflation of several of Nietzsche's early outlines, and took great liberties with the material, the consensus holds that it does not reflect Nietzsche's intent. Indeed, Mazzino Montinari, the editor of Nietzsche's Nachlass, called it a forgery in The 'Will to Power' does not exist. For example, Elisabeth removed aphorism 35 of The Antichrist, where Nietzsche rewrote a passage of the Bible (see The Will to Power and Nietzsche's criticisms of anti-Semitism and nationalism).

Citizenship, nationality, ethnicity

Nietzsche is commonly classified as a German philosopher. The modern unified nation-state called Germany did not yet exist at the time of his birth, but the German Confederation of states did, and Nietzsche was a citizen of one of these, Prussia—for a time. When he accepted his post at Basel, Nietzsche applied for the annulment of his Prussian citizenship. The official response confirming the revocation of his citizenship came in a document dated April 17, 1869, and for the rest of his life he remained officially stateless.

According to a common myth, Nietzsche's ancestors were Polish. Nietzsche himself subscribed to this story toward the end of his life. He wrote in 1888, "My ancestors were Polish noblemen (Nietzky); the type seems to have been well preserved despite three generations of German mothers." At one point Nietzsche becomes even more adamant about his Polish Identity. “I am a pure-blooded Polish nobleman, without a single drop of bad blood, certainly not German blood.” On yet another occasion Nietzsche stated “Germany is a great nation only because its people have so much Polish blood in their veins [...] I am proud of my Polish descent.” Nietzsche believed his name might have been Germanized, in one letter claiming, "I was taught to ascribe the origin of my blood and name to Polish noblemen who were called Niëtzky and left their home and nobleness about a hundred years ago, finally yielding to unbearable suppression: they were Protestants."

Most scholars dispute Nietzsche's account of his family's origins. Hans von Müller debunked the genealogy put forward by Nietzsche's sister in favor of a Polish noble heritage. Max Oehler, the curator of Nietzsche Archive at Weimar, argued that all of Nietzsche's ancestors bore German names, even the wives' families. Colli and Montinari, the editors of Nietzsche's assembled letters, gloss Nietzsche's claims as a "mistaken belief" and "without foundation." The name Nietzsche itself is not a Polish name, but an exceptionally common one throughout central Germany, in this and cognate forms (such as Nitsche and Nitzke). The name derives from the forename Nikolaus, abbreviated to Nick; assimilated with the Slavic Nitz, it first became Nitsche and then Nietzsche. He calls himself an "immoralist" and harshly criticizes the prominent moral schemes of his day: Christianity, Kantianism, and utilitarianism. In Ecce Homo Nietzsche called the establishment of moral systems based on a dichotomy of good and evil a "calamitous error", and wished to initiate a re-evaluation of the values of the Judeo-Christian world. He indicates his desire to bring about a new, more naturalistic source of value in the vital impulses of life itself.

In both these works, Nietzsche's genealogical account of the development of master-slave morality occupies a central place. Nietzsche presents master-morality as the original system of morality—perhaps best associated with Homeric Greece. Here, value arises as a contrast between good and bad, or between 'life-affirming' and 'life-denying': wealth, strength, health, and power, the sort of traits found in a Homeric hero, count as good; while bad is associated with the poor, weak, sick, and pathetic, the sort of traits conventionally associated with slaves in ancient times.

Slave-morality, in contrast, comes about as a reaction to master-morality. Nietzsche associates slave-morality with the Jewish and Christian traditions. Here, value emerges from the contrast between good and evil: good being associated with other-worldliness, charity, piety, restraint, meekness, and submission; evil seen as worldly, cruel, selfish, wealthy, and aggressive. Nietzsche sees slave-morality born out of the ressentiment of slaves. It works to overcome the slave's own sense of inferiority before the (better-off) masters. It does so by making out slave weakness to be a matter of choice, by, e.g., relabeling it as "meekness."

Nietzsche sees the slave-morality as a source of the nihilism that has overtaken Europe. In Nietzsche's eyes, modern Europe, and its Christianity, exists in a hypocritical state due to a tension between master and slave morality, both values contradictorily determining, to varying degrees, the values of most Europeans (who are "motley"). Nietzsche calls for exceptional people to no longer be ashamed of their uniqueness in the face of a supposed morality-for-all, which Nietzsche deems to be harmful to the flourishing of exceptional people. However, Nietzsche cautions that morality, per se, is not bad; it is good for the masses, and should be left to them. Exceptional people, on the other hand, should follow their own "inner law." A favorite motto of Nietzsche, taken from Pindar, reads: "Become what you are."

Death of God, nihilism, perspectivism

The statement "God is dead", occurring in several of Nietzsche's works (notably in The Gay Science), has become one of his best-known remarks. On the basis of it, most commentators regard Nietzsche as an atheist; others (such as Kaufmann) suggest that this statement reflects a more subtle understanding of divinity. In Nietzsche's view, recent developments in modern science and the increasing secularization of European society had effectively 'killed' the Christian God, who had served as the basis for meaning and value in the West for more than a thousand years.

Nietzsche claimed the death of God would eventually lead to the loss of any universal perspective on things, and along with it any coherent sense of objective truth. Instead we would retain only our own multiple, diverse, and fluid perspectives. This view has acquired the name "perspectivism".

Alternatively, the death of God may lead beyond bare perspectivism to outright nihilism, the belief that nothing has any inherent importance and that life lacks purpose. As Heidegger put the problem, "If God as the suprasensory ground and goal of all reality is dead, if the suprasensory world of the Ideas has suffered the loss of its obligatory and above it its vitalizing and upbuilding power, then nothing more remains to which man can cling and by which he can orient himself." Developing this idea, Nietzsche wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra, therein introducing the concept of a value-creating Übermensch. According to Lampert, "the death of God must be followed by a long twilight of piety and nihilism (II. 19; III. 8). […] Zarathustra's gift of the superman is given to a mankind not aware of the problem to which the superman is the solution."

Will to power

A basic element in Nietzsche's philosophical outlook is the "will to power" (der Wille zur Macht), which provides a basis for understanding human behavior. In a wide sense of a term, the will to power is a more important element than pressure for adaptation or survival. According to Nietzsche, only in limited situations is the drive for conservation precedent over the will to power. The natural condition of life, according to him, is one of profusion. In its later forms Nietzsche's concept of the will to power applies to all living things, suggesting that adaptation and the struggle to survive is a secondary drive in the evolution of animals, less important than the desire to expand one’s power. Nietzsche eventually took this concept further still, and speculated that it may apply to inorganic nature as well. He transformed the idea of matter as centers of force into matter as centers of will to power. Nietzsche wanted to dispense with the atomistic theory of matter, a theory which he viewed as a relic of the metaphysics of substance. One study of Nietzsche defines his fully developed concept of the will to power as "the element from which derive both the quantitative difference of related forces and the quality that devolves into each force in this relation" revealing the will to power as "the principle of the synthesis of forces."

Nietzsche's notion of the will to power can also be viewed as a response to Schopenhauer's "will to live." Writing a generation before Nietzsche, Schopenhauer had regarded the entire universe and everything in it as driven by a primordial will to live, thus resulting in all creatures' desire to avoid death and to procreate. Nietzsche, however, challenges Schopenhauer's account and suggests that people and animals really want power; living in itself appears only as a subsidiary aim—something necessary to promote one's power. Defending his view, Nietzsche describes instances where people and animals willingly risk their lives to gain power—most notably in instances like competitive fighting and warfare. Once again, Nietzsche seems to take part of his inspiration from the ancient Homeric Greek texts he knew well: Greek heroes and aristocrats or "masters" did not desire mere living (they often died quite young and risked their lives in battle) but wanted power, glory, and greatness. In this regard he often mentions the common Greek theme of agon or contest.

In addition to Schopenhauer's psychological views, Nietzsche contrasts his notion of the will to power with many of the other most popular psychological views of his day, such as that of utilitarianism. Utilitarianism—a philosophy mainly promoted, in Nietzsche's days and before, by British thinkers such as Bentham and Stuart Mill—claims that all people fundamentally want to be happy. But this conception of happiness found in utilitarianism Nietzsche rejected as something limited to, and characteristic of, English society only. Also Platonism and Christian neo-Platonism–which claim that people ultimately want to achieve unity with The Good or with God–are philosophies he criticizes. In each case, Nietzsche argues that the "will to power" provides a more useful and general explanation of human behavior.

Übermensch

Another concept important to an understanding of Nietzsche's thought is the Übermensch. While interpretations of Nietzsche's overman vary wildly, here are a few of his quotations from Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Prologue, §§3–4):

"I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? … All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood, and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is ape to man? A laughing stock or painful embarrassment. And man shall be that to overman: a laughingstock or painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape.... The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth.... Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman—a rope over an abyss … what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end."

Eternal return

The idea of eternal return occurs in a parable in Section 341 of The Gay Science, and also in the chapter "Of the Vision and the Riddle" in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, among other places. Nietzsche contemplates the idea as potentially "horrifying and paralyzing", and says that its burden is the "heaviest weight" imaginable ("das schwerste Gewicht"). The wish for the eternal return of all events would mark the ultimate affirmation of life, a reaction to Schopenhauer's praise of denying the will–to–live. To comprehend eternal recurrence in his thought, and to not merely come to peace with it but to embrace it, requires amor fati, "love of fate":

Reading and influence

, Germany, which holds many of Nietzsche's papers]]

As a philologist, Nietzsche had a thorough knowledge of Greek philosophy. He read Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, Arthur Schopenhauer and Afrikan Spir, who became his main opponents in his philosophy, and later Spinoza, whom he saw as his "precursor" in some respects but as a personification of the "ascetic ideal" in others. However, Nietzsche referred to Kant as a "moral fanatic", Mill as a "blockhead", and of Spinoza he said: "How much of personal timidity and vulnerability does this masquerade of a sickly recluse betray?"

Nietzsche's philosophy, while highly innovative and revolutionary, was indebted to many predecessors, including the pre-Socratic Greek thinker Heraclitus. Heraclitus was known for the rejection of the concept of being as a constant and eternal principle of universe, and his embrace of "flux" and incessant change. His symbolism of the world as "child play" marked by amoral spontaneity and lack of definite rules was appreciated by Nietzsche. From his Heraclitean sympathy Nietzsche was also a vociferous detractor of Parmenides, who opposed Heraclitus and believed all world is a single Being with no change at all.

Nietzsche expressed admiration for 17th century French moralists such as La Rochefoucauld, Jean de La Bruyère and Vauvenargues, as well as for Stendhal. The organicism of Paul Bourget influenced Nietzsche, as did that of Rudolf Virchow and Alfred Espinas. Nietzsche early learned of Darwinism through Friedrich Lange. Notably, he also read some of the posthumous works of Charles Baudelaire, Tolstoy's My Religion, Ernest Renan's Life of Jesus and Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Possessed. Nietzsche called Dostoevsky "the only psychologist from whom I have anything to learn." Comments in several passages suggest that he responded strongly and favorably to the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson. While Nietzsche never mentions Max Stirner, the similarities in their ideas have prompted a minority of interpreters to suggest he both read and was influenced by him. In 1861 Friedrich Nietzsche wrote an enthusiastic essay on his "favorite poet", Friedrich Hölderlin, mostly forgotten at that time.

Reception

Nietzsche’s works did not reach a wide readership during his active writing career. However, in 1888 Georg Brandes (an influential Danish critic) aroused considerable excitement about Nietzsche through a series of lectures he gave at the University of Copenhagen. Then in 1894 Lou Andreas-Salomé published her book, Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken (Friedrich Nietzsche in His Works). Andreas-Salomé had known Nietzsche well in the early 1880s, and she returned to the subject of Nietzsche, years later, in her work Lebensrückblick – Grundriß einiger Lebenserinnerungen (Looking Back: Memoirs) (written in 1932), which covered her intellectual relationships with Nietzsche, Rilke, and Freud. Nietzsche himself had acquired the publication-rights for his earlier works in 1886 and began a process of editing and re-formulation that placed the body of his work in a more coherent perspective.

In the years after his death in 1900, Nietzsche's works became better known, and readers have responded to them in complex and sometimes controversial ways. Many Germans eventually discovered his appeals for greater individualism and personality development in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but responded to those appeals divergently. He had some following among left-wing Germans in the 1890s; in 1894–1895 German conservatives wanted to ban his work as subversive. During the late 19th century Nietzsche's ideas were commonly associated with anarchist movements and appear to have had influence within them, particularly in France and the United States. The poet W.B. Yeats helped to raise awareness of Nietzsche in Ireland. H.L. Mencken produced translations of Nietzsche's works that helped to increase knowledge of his philosophy in the United States.

By World War I, Nietzsche had acquired a reputation as an inspiration for right-wing German militarism. German soldiers received copies of Thus Spoke Zarathustra as gifts during World War I. The Dreyfus Affair provides another example of his reception: the French anti-semitic Right labelled the Jewish and Leftist intellectuals who defended Alfred Dreyfus as "Nietzscheans". Nietzsche had a distinct appeal for many Zionist thinkers at the turn of the century. It has been argued that his work influenced Theodore Herzl, and Martin Buber went so far as to extoll Nietzsche as a "creator" and "emissary of life". Bertrand Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy was scathing about Nietzsche, calling his work the "mere power-phantasies of an invalid", referring to him as a "megalomaniac", and writing that he was a philosophical progenitor of the Nazis and fascists.

Nietzsche's growing prominence suffered a severe setback when his works became closely associated with Adolf Hitler and the German Reich. Many political leaders of the twentieth century were at least superficially familiar with Nietzsche's ideas, although it is not always possible to determine whether or not they actually read his work. Hitler, for example, probably never read Nietzsche, and if he did, his reading was not extensive, although he was a frequent visitor to the Nietzsche museum in Weimar and did use expressions of Nietzsche's, such as "lords of the earth" in Mein Kampf. The Nazis made selective use of Nietzsche's philosophy. Mussolini and Charles de Gaulle read Nietzsche. It has been suggested that Theodore Roosevelt read Nietzsche and was profoundly influenced by him, and in more recent years, Richard Nixon read Nietzsche with "curious interest".

A decade after World War II, there was a revival of Nietzsche's philosophical writings thanks to exhaustive translations and analyses by Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale. Others, well known philosophers in their own right, wrote commentaries on Nietzsche’s philosophy, including Martin Heidegger, who produced a four-volume study. Many 20th century thinkers (particularly in the tradition of continental philosophy) cite him as a profound influence, including Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Leo Strauss, Albert Camus, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Gilles Deleuze, whose philosophy of immanence has significant similarities to Nietzsche's will to power. In the Anglo-American tradition he has had a profound influence on Bernard Williams due to the scholarship of Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, which rehabilitated Nietzsche as a philosopher, and American philosophers such as Allan Bloom, Alexander Nehamas, William E. Connolly, Judith Butler, and Brian Leiter continue to study him today. A vocal minority of recent Nietzschean interpreters (Bruce Detwiler, Fredrick Appel, Domenico Losurdo, Abir Taha) have contested what they consider the popular but erroneous egalitarian misrepresentation of Nietzsche's "aristocratic radicalism".

Works

The Birth of Tragedy (1872)

On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873)

Untimely Meditations (1876)

Human, All Too Human (1878; additions in 1879, 1880)

The Dawn (1881)

The Gay Science (1882)

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1885)

Beyond Good and Evil (1886)

On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)

The Case of Wagner (1888)

Twilight of the Idols (1888)

The Antichrist (1888)

Ecce Homo (1888)

Nietzsche contra Wagner (1888)

The Greek State (1871)

The Will to Power (unpublished manuscripts edited together by his sister)

Unpublished Writings (1869–1889)

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

Magnus and Higgins, "Nietzsche's works and their themes", in The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, Magnus and Higgins (ed.), University of Cambridge Press, 1996, pp. 21–58. ISBN 0-521-36767-0

O'Flaherty, James C., Sellner, Timothy F., Helm, Robert M., "Studies in Nietzsche and the Classical Tradition" (University of North Carolina Press)1979 ISBN 0-08078-8085-X

O'Flaherty, James C., Sellner, Timothy F., Helm, Robert M., ""Studies in Nietzsche and the Judaeo-Christian Tradition" (University of North Carolina Press)1985 ISBN 0-8078-8104-X

Porter, James I. "Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future" (Stanford University Press, 2000). ISBN 0-8047-3698-7

Porter, James I. "The Invention of Dionysus: An Essay on The Birth of Tragedy" (Stanford University Press, 2000). ISBN 0-8047-3700-2

Seung, T.K. Nietzsche's Epic of the Soul: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005. ISBN 0-7391-1130-2

Young, Julian. Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography (Cambridge University Press; 2010) 649 pages; His thought in the context of Prussian militarism, anti-Semitism, Darwinian science, and other phenomena of his era.

External links

Nietzsche Source: Digital version of the German critical edition of the complete works / Digital facsimile edition of the entire Nietzsche estate

Walter Kaufmann 1960 Audio

Nietzsche from the radio program Philosophy Talk

Brian Leiter's Nietzsche Blog: News, polls, and discussion about Nietzsche and current events in Nietzsche scholarship from Brian Leiter (University of Chicago).

BBC (1999). "Beyond Good and Evil". Human, All Too Human.

Category:1844 births Category:1900 deaths Category:People from Lützen Category:19th-century German people Category:19th-century philosophers Category:Anti-Christianity Category:Aphorists Category:Atheist philosophers Category:Atheistic existentialism Category:Continental philosophers Category:Deaths from pneumonia Category:Determinists Category:Existentialists Category:German atheists Category:German classical philologists Category:German composers Category:German philologists Category:German philosophers Category:German-language philosophers Category:Hellenists Category:People from the Province of Saxony Category:Philosophers of art Category:Romantic composers Category:Stateless persons Category:University of Bonn alumni Category:University of Leipzig alumni

Imgsize	220px
Caption	Rourke at the 2009 premiere of City Island
Birth name	Philip Andre Rourke, Jr.
Birth date	September 16, 1952
Birth place	Schenectady, New York, U.S.
Other names	Sir Eddie Cook
Occupation	Actor, professional boxer, screenwriter, music supervisor
Years active	Actor (1979–present)Boxer (1991-1994)

Philip Andre "Mickey" Rourke, Jr. (born September 16, 1952) is an American actor, screenwriter and retired boxer, who has appeared primarily as a leading man in action, drama, and thriller films.

During the 1980s, Rourke starred in Diner, Rumble Fish, and the erotic drama 9½ Weeks, and received critical praise for his work in Barfly and Angel Heart. In 1991, Rourke, who had trained as a boxer in his early years, left acting and became a professional boxer for a period. He had supporting roles in several later films, including The Rainmaker, Buffalo '66, The Pledge, Get Carter, Once Upon a Time in Mexico and Man on Fire.

In 2005, Rourke made his comeback in mainstream Hollywood circles with a lead role in Sin City, for which he won awards from the Chicago Film Critics Association, the Irish Film and Television Awards and the Online Film Critics Society. In the 2008 film The Wrestler, Rourke portrayed a past-his-prime wrestler, and garnered a 2009 Golden Globe award, a BAFTA award, and a nomination for an Academy Award.

In 2010, he appeared in the blockbusters Iron Man 2 and The Expendables.

Early life

Rourke was born Philip Andre Rourke, Jr. in Schenectady, New York He was raised Roman Catholic and still practices his faith. His father, Philip Andre Rourke, Sr., an amateur body builder, left the family when Mickey was six years old. After his parents divorced, his mother, Ann, married Eugene Addis, a Miami Beach police officer with five sons, and moved Rourke, his younger brother, and their sister to southern Florida. There, he graduated from Miami Beach Senior High School in 1971.

During his teenage years, Rourke focused his attention mainly on sports. He took up self-defense training at the Boys Club of Miami. It was there that he learned boxing skills and decided on an amateur career. At age 12, Rourke won his first boxing match as a 118-pound bantamweight (53.5 kg), fighting some of his early matches under the name Andre Rourke. He continued his boxing training at the famed 5th Street Gym, in Miami Beach, Florida, where Muhammad Ali began his career. In 1969, Rourke, then weighing 140 lbs. (63.5 kg), sparred with former World Welterweight Champion Luis Rodríguez. Rodriguez was the number one-rated middleweight boxer in the world and was training for his match with world champion Conor Scullion. Rourke boxed Scullion and claims to have received a concussion in this sparring match.

At the 1971 Florida Golden Gloves, Rourke suffered another concussion in a boxing match. After being told by doctors to take a year off and rest, Rourke temporarily retired from the ring. From 1964 to 1972, he compiled an amateur record of 20 wins, 17 by knockout and 6 defeats, which included wins over Ron Carter, Charles Gathers and Joe Riles.

Early acting roles

In 1971, as a senior at Miami Beach Senior High School, Rourke had a small acting role in the Jay W. Jensen-directed school play, The Serpent. However, Rourke's interests were geared to boxing, and he never appeared in any other school productions. Soon after he temporarily gave up boxing, a friend at the University of Miami told Rourke about a play he was directing, Deathwatch, and how the man playing the role of Green Eyes had quit. Rourke got the part and immediately became enamored with acting. Borrowing 400 dollars from his sister, he went to New York in order to take private lessons with an acting teacher from the Actors Studio, Sandra Seacat. He received critical praise for his work in Barfly as the alcoholic writer Henry Chinaski (the literary alter ego of Charles Bukowski) and in Year of the Dragon. In 1987, Rourke appeared in Angel Heart. The film was nominated for several awards. It was seen as controversial by some owing to a sex scene involving Cosby Show cast member Lisa Bonet, who won an award for her part in the film. Although some of Rourke's work was viewed as controversial in the U.S., he was well-received by European, and especially French, audiences, who loved the "rumpled, slightly dirty, sordid ... rebel persona"

Rourke's acting career eventually became overshadowed by his personal life and career decisions. Directors such as Alan Parker found it difficult to work with him. Parker stated that "working with Mickey is a nightmare. He is very dangerous on the set because you never know what he is going to do." In a documentary on the special edition DVD of Tombstone, actor Michael Biehn, who plays the part of Johnny Ringo, mentions that his role was first offered to Rourke.

Boxing career

In 1991, Rourke decided that he "…had to go back to boxing" because he felt that he "… was self-destructing … (and) had no respect for (himself as) an actor."

During his boxing career, Rourke suffered a number of injuries, including a broken nose, toe, ribs, a split tongue, and a compressed cheekbone. He also suffered from short term memory loss.

His trainer during most of his boxing career was Hells Angels member Chuck Zito. Freddie Roach also trained Rourke for seven fights. Rourke's entrance song into the ring was often Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child o' Mine."

Boxing promoters said that Rourke was too old to succeed against top-level fighters. Indeed, Rourke himself admits that entering the ring was a sort of personal test: "(I) just wanted to give it a shot, test myself that way physically, while I still had time." In 1995, Rourke retired from boxing and returned to acting.

Rourke's boxing career resulted in a notable physical change in the 1990s, as his face needed reconstructive surgery in order to mend his injuries. His face was later called, "appallingly disfigured." In 2009, the actor told The Daily Mail that he had gone to "the wrong guy" for his surgery, and that his plastic surgeon had left his features "a mess."

|- | style="text-align:center;" colspan="8"|Boxing record |- | style="text-align:center;" colspan="8"|6 Wins (4 knockouts, 2 decisions), 0 Losses, 2 Draws |- style="text-align:center; background:#e3e3e3;" | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Res. | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Record | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Opponent | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Type | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Rd., Time | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Date | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Location | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Notes |- style="text-align:center;" |style="background: #dae2f1"|Draw || 6-0-2 || align=left| Andrew Banks |Majority draw || 4 || September 8, 1994 || align=left| Davie, Florida, USA |align=left| |- style="text-align:center;" |Win || 6-0-1 || align=left| Thomas McCoy |TKO || 3 || November 20, 1993 || align=left| Hamburg, Germany || |- style="text-align:center;" |Win || 5-0-1 || align=left| Bubba Stotts |TKO || 3 || July 24, 1993 || align=left| Joplin, Missouri, USA || |- style="text-align:center;" |Win || 4-0-1 || align=left| Tom Bentley |KO || 1 || March 30, 1993 || align=left| Kansas City, Missouri, USA || |- style="text-align:center;" |Win || 3-0-1 || align=left| Terry Jesmer |Decision || 4 || December 12, 1992 || align=left| Oviedo, Spain || |- style="text-align:center;" |style="background: #dae2f1"|Draw || 2-0-1 || align=left| Francisco Harris |Majority draw || 4 || April 25, 1992 || align=left| Miami Beach, Florida, USA |align=left| |- style="text-align:center;" |Win || 2-0 || align=left| Darrell Miller |KO || 1 , 2:14 || June 23, 1991 || align=left| Tokyo, Japan || |- style="text-align:center;" |Win || 1-0 || align=left| Steve Powell |Unanimous decision || 4 || May 23, 1991 || align=left| Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA |align=left|

1990s: return to acting

In the early 1990s, Rourke was offered and declined the role of Butch Coolidge, which later became Bruce Willis' role in Pulp Fiction. After his retirement from boxing, Rourke did accept supporting roles in several 1990s films, including Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of John Grisham's The Rainmaker, Vincent Gallo's Buffalo '66, Steve Buscemi's Animal Factory, Sean Penn's The Pledge and Sylvester Stallone's remake of Get Carter. Rourke also has written several films under the name Sir Eddie Cook, including Bullet, in which he co-starred with close friend Tupac Shakur.

While Rourke was also selected for a significant role in Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, his part ended up on the editing room floor. Rourke also played a small part in the film Thursday, in which he plays a crooked cop. He also had a lead role in 1997's Double Team, which co-starred martial arts actor Jean-Claude Van Damme. It was Rourke's first over-the-top action film role, in which he played the lead villain. During that same year, he filmed Another 9½ Weeks, a sequel to 9½ Weeks, which only received limited distribution. He ended the 1990s with the direct-to-video films Out in Fifty, Shades and television movie Shergar, about the kidnapping of Epsom Derby-winning thoroughbred racehorse Shergar. Rourke has expressed his bitterness over that period of his career, stating that he came to consider himself a "has-been" and lived for a time in "a state of shame." Christopher Heard stated that actors/musicians Tupac Shakur, Johnny Depp, Sean Penn and Brad Pitt have "…animated praise for Rourke and his work." During a roundtable session of Oscar nominated actors held by Newsweek, Brad Pitt cited Rourke as one of his early acting heroes along with Sean Penn and Gary Oldman.

Despite having withdrawn from acting at various points, and having made movies that he now sees as a creative "sell-out" (the action film Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man), Rourke has stated that "…all that I have been through…[has] made me a better, more interesting actor." Rourke's renewed interest in pursuing acting can be seen in his statement that "… my best work is still ahead of me."

Rourke had a role in the movie version of The Informers, playing Peter, an amoral former studio security guard who plots to kidnap a small child.

In 2008, Rourke played the lead in The Wrestler, winner of the Golden Lion Award for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival, about washed-up professional wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson. In regards to first reading the screenplay, he stated that he originally "didn't care for it."

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He also spoke on personal concern and hesitance of being in a movie about wrestling, for he perceived it as being "prearranged and prechoreographed." However, as he trained for the film, he developed an appreciation and respect for what real-life pro wrestlers do to prepare for the ring:

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He trained under former WWE wrestler Afa the Wild Samoan for the part, and has received a British Academy (BAFTA) award, a Golden Globe award, an Independent Spirit Award, and an Oscar nomination as Best Actor. Rourke was pessimistic about his chances to win the Oscar as he had been, in the past, very vocal against Hollywood's establishment. Rourke lost the Oscar to Sean Penn, while Penn did acknowledge Rourke in his acceptance speech.

Rourke has written or co-written six scripts: Homeboy, The Last Ride, Bullet, Killer Moon, Penance and the latest, Pain. Of these, the first three were produced as movies between 1988 and 1996.

In early 2009, Rourke developed a small feud with WWE Superstar Chris Jericho, as part of a storyline. The storyline climaxed at WrestleMania XXV, when Rourke knocked out Jericho with a left hook after Jericho won his match against Jimmy Snuka, Ricky Steamboat, and Roddy Piper, with Ric Flair in their corner.

In 2009, Rourke starred in John Rich's music video for Shuttin' Detroit Down along side of Kris Kristofferson.

In 2009, Rourke voiced protagonist US Navy SEAL Dick Marcinko in the video game Rogue Warrior. The game received very poor reviews from critics.

In 2010, Rourke played the role of the main villain Whiplash in the film Iron Man 2, in an interview with Rip It Up Magazine he revealed that he prepared for the role by visiting Russian jail inmates. He also had a supporting role playing 'Tool' in Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables.

Political views

Rourke's political views came under fire when he claimed to have donated part of his salary from the 1989 film Francesco to the Provisional Irish Republican Army. He later retracted the statement, although he has an IRA symbol tattoo.

Personal life

Rourke has dated several celebrities, including Terry Farrell and Sasha Volkova. He has been married twice. In 1981, he married Debra Feuer, whom he met on the set of Hardcase (1981) and who co-starred with him in Homeboy (1990) as his love interest. The marriage ended in 1989, with Rourke subsequently commenting that making the film 9½ Weeks "was not particularly considerate to my wife's needs." The two have remained good friends, according to an interview Feuer gave in 2009. and Rourke at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival.]]Wild Orchid co-star Carré Otis was briefly a cause célèbre following the release of the film owing to rumours that she and then-lover Rourke filmed an unsimulated sex scene. Otis married Rourke on June 26, 1992. In 1994, Rourke was arrested for spousal abuse. The charges were later dropped. The couple reconciled and also starred together in Exit in Red, but their marriage ended in December 1998. In November 2007, Rourke was arrested again, this time on DUI charges in Miami Beach. It is rumoured that Rourke is now engaged to Russian model Elena Kuletskaya and that they plan to marry in 2010.

In numerous TV and print interviews, he attributes his comeback after fourteen years to weekly meetings with a psychiatrist, "Steve," and to a Catholic priest he identified as "Father Pete."

In addition to his faith and his psychiatric treatment, Rourke has publicly attributed his comeback to his dogs. was a chihuahua-terrier mix.

Rourke gave his dogs credit during his Golden Globe Best Actor acceptance speech January 11, 2009: "I'd like to thank all my dogs. The ones that are here, the ones that aren't here anymore because sometimes when a man's alone, that's all you got is your dog. And they've meant the world to me." The day of the 2009 Golden Globes show, he told Barbara Walters that "I sort of self-destructed and everything came out about fourteen years ago or so ... the wife had left, the career was over, the money was not an ounce. The dogs were there when no one else was there." Asked by Walters if he had considered suicide, he responded:

Despite being identified as "Lowjack" in the transcription above, the dog in the anecdote was apparently Beau Jack, who sired two of Rourke's later pets, Loki and her littermate Chocolate. Beau Jack died in 2002, though Rourke gave him 45 minutes of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Chocolate was the subject of a children's book, Chocolate at the Four Seasons, about his temporary stay with producer Bonnie Timmerman. Chocolate returned to Rourke and died in 2006. He has had as many as seven dogs at one time, back in 2005.

Rourke is also a motorcycle enthusiast and uses motorcycles in some of his films.

Filmography

References

External links

Dialogus.net

Category:Actors Studio alumni Category:American boxers Category:American film actors Category:American screenwriters Category:American Roman Catholics Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:Best Actor BAFTA Award winners Category:Best Drama Actor Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Golden Orange Honorary Award winners Category:Independent Spirit Award winners Category:American people of Irish descent Category:Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute alumni Category:Actors from New York Category:People from Miami, Florida Category:People from Schenectady, New York Category:1952 births Category:Living people