The Coracle's Saturday Literary Corner

Nietzsche continues to beguile largely because of his exciting and libertine aphorisms, and his unhappy life and tragic end. This is the man who exclaimed ‘God is dead’, ‘live dangerously’, ‘what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger’, and who devised the idea of the ‘Superman’ – his idealised human being who not only transcends social rules and the bovine herd, but who also becomes supreme master of himself. Nietzsche is the everyman philosopher for writers and journalists: he wrote beautifully, yet during his life his books scarcely sold at all. He went mad in 1889 and, after his death, his work was disgracefully appropriated by the Nazis. What’s not to like?