Friedrich Nietzsche was the most fearlessly provocative and original thinker in Western history. The protean diversity of his writings make him one of the most influential of modern philosophers, yet his often paradoxical statements can be properly understood only within the context of his restless, tragic life. Physically handicapped by weak eyesight, violent headaches and bouts of nausea, this Nietzsche made short shrift of self-pity and ostentatious...

"A monumental new biography of a pivotal yet poorly understood pioneer in modern philosophy. When a painter once told Goethe that he wanted to paint the most famous man of the age, Goethe directed him to Georg Friederich Wilhelm Hegel. Hegel, the most famous figure in modern philosophy, arguably its father, believed that to philosophize is to learn to live freely. He was slow and cautious in the development of his philosophy; yet his intellectual...

Autobiographical sketches by the philosopher and semioticist Ernst von Glasersfeld.

"Scion of a distinguished prewar Viennese Jewish family and son of the chief rabbi of Zurich, Jacob Taubes (1923-1987) was a philosopher of religion and scholar of Judaism and the New Testament whose career and public life intersected with that of many of the luminaries of postwar continental European and American intellectual life in the humanities. In a life that took him to teaching posts in Jerusalem, New York, Paris, and Berlin, he became a repository...