The long-awaited biography of the world's most notorious philosopher reveals a man struggling against his own principles. No other modern philosopher has proved as influential as Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and none is as poorly understood. In the first major biography in decades, Rudiger Safranski re-creates the anguished life of Nietzsche while simultaneously assessing the philosophical implications of his morality, religion, and art. Plagued by illness and profoundly shaped by his tortured sexuality, Nietzsche was a man of masks and mood swings, a thinker who called himself dynamite yet labored under the weight of compulsive self-consciousness. Posing apt questions and at times offering unorthodox interpretations of Nietzsche's philosophical writings, Safranski offers a brilliant portrait of a historical figure in a work that is as groundbreaking as it will be long-lasting.