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Nietzsche - The Key Ideas: Nietzsche's legacy

by Dr Roy Jackson

Nietzsche has been hugely influential since his death. He was referred to as the ‘Nazi philosopher’, but this was due to the propagandist methods of his sister Elisabeth, and Nietzsche himself would have been horrified to be associated with Nazism. On the continent, his influence in philosophy has most notably been connected with France and existentialism, particularly amongst such important figures as John-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. It is not just existentialism, however, for he has influenced other philosophers including Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze, and Michel Foucault. Outside of philosophy, he has impacted upon such literary figures as George Bernard Shaw (his Man and Superman most notably), Thomas Mann, and Hermann Hesse. Milan Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being borrows from Nietzsche’s notion of the eternal recurrence: an event that happens over and over again bears more weight than something that happens only once. The psychologist Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) apparently thought highly of Nietzsche, as did Carl Jung (1875–1961). The Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler (1870–1937) founded a school of ‘individual psychology’ where the emphasis on power dynamics is rooted in the philosophy of Nietzsche. American novelist, philosopher and playwright Ayn Rand (1905–82) was likewise inspired by the writings of Nietzsche.

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