Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche 1844-1900. German philosopher who rejected the accepted absolute moral values and the slave morality of Christianity. He argued that God is dead and therefore people were free to create their own values. His ideal was the Ubermensch, or Supeman, who would impose his will on the weak and worthless. Nietzsche claimed that knowlede is never objective but always serves some interest or unconscious purpose. His insights into the relation between thought and language were a major influence on philosophy. Although claimed as a precursor by Nazism, many of his views are incompatible with totalitarian ideology. He was a profoundly ambivalent thinker whose philosophy can be appropriated for many purposes. Born in Rocken, Saxony, he attended Bonn and Leipzig universities and was professor of Greek at Basel, Switzerland 1869-80. He had abandoned theology for philology , and was influenced by the writings of Schopenhauer and the music of Wagner, of whom he became both friend and advocate. Both these attractions passed, however, and ill health caused his resignation from the university. He spent his later years in northern Italy, in the Engadine, and in southern France. He published Morgenrote/The Dawn 1880-81, Die frohliche Wissenschaft/The Gay Science 181-82, Also sprach Zarathustra/Thus Spoke Zarathustra 1883-85, Jenseits von Gut und Bose/Between Good and Evil 1885-86, Zur Genealogie der Moral/Towards a Geneaology of Morals 1887, and Ecce Homo 1888. He suffered a permanent breakdown in 1889 from overwork and loneliness.