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Nietzsche harbored a fevered yearning to call false prophets to book and to reduce their fine axioms to absurdity. Accordingly, he planned a series of twenty-four pamphlets and decided to call them Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen [Untimely Meditations], which may be translated as "Inopportune Speculations," or more clearly, "Essays in Sham-Smashing." In looking about for a head to smash in essay number one, his eye, naturally enough, alighted upon that of David Strauss, the favorite philosopher and fashionable iconoclast of the day. Strauss had been a preacher but had renounced the cloth and set up shop as a critic of Christianity. He had labored with good intentions, no doubt, but the net result of all his smug agnosticism was that his disciples were as self-satisfied, bigoted and prejudiced in the garb of agnostics as they had been before as Christians. Nietzsche's clear eye saw this and in the first of his little pamphlets, "David Strauss, der Bekenner and der Schriftsteller" ("David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer"), he bore down upon Strauss' bourgeoise pseudo-skepticism most savagely.
About the author
German philosopher and renowned scholar Friedrich Nietzsche was born on 15 October 1944, in Rocken, Prussia- Germany. His father was Carl Ludwig Nietzsche and mother Franziska Nietzsche. His father was a Lutheran preacher, who died when Nietzsche was only four-years old. After his father's death Nietzsche family shifted to Naumburg, he studied in a preparatory school and after that he joined prestigious Schulpforts School. He studied in University of Bonn and Leipzig, he was interested in philology, literature, linguistics and history. He did job as a professor of classical philology at the University of Basel in Switzerland. His first book' The Birth of Tragedy' was published in 1872 and 'Human, All Too Human' in 1878. Nietzsche believed in realities of life, he glorified the individuals and culture. He openly challenged the basics of Christianity and conventional ethics. He is famous for his thought 'God is dead'. At the early age of 55 years, on 25 August 1900 Nietzsche died. His popular works - Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, The Anti - Christ, On the Genealogy of Morals, The Gay Science, The Birth of Tragedy etc.
