The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was one of the leading philosophers of 19th-century Europe. He was born in Leipzig, then part of Prussia, to a Lutheran pastor named Carl Ludwig Nietzsche and his wife Franziska. Nietzsche’s father died when he was still a child, and he was raised by his mother and her relatives.

In his early years, Nietzsche was a good, although not exceptional, student. He attended the prestigious Schulpforta school in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. He then enrolled at the University of Bonn and studied theology and classical philology, continuing his studies at the University of Leipzig in 1865. During his studies, Nietzsche lost his Christian faith and became deeply interested in the philosophy of thinkers like Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer. In 1869, he attracted the notice of Switzerland’s University of Basel and became the institution’s youngest-ever professor of philology at age 24. While teaching there, Nietzsche continued to work on his doctoral thesis, but it was never officially completed.

Nietzsche remained at Basel for 10 years, until he was forced to resign in 1879 due to persistent ill health. Nietzsche continued to write philosophical works until he suffered a total mental breakdown in 1889; he would never regain his mental and physical health. He spent the final years of his life alternating between psychiatric clinics and living under the care of his mother and sister. He died in 1900 and is buried in the town of Röcken in Saxony-Anhalt.

Nietzsche achieved most of his fame posthumously. He is now best known for works like Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883), Beyond Good and Evil (1886), On the Genealogy of Morality (1887), and Twilight of the Idols (1888). Since his death, Nietzsche has become one of the most famous European philosophers of the 19th century, and he has garnered prominent name recognition even in popular culture. However, his philosophy is sometimes controversial due to some of his ideas, such as his rejection of traditional morality and his idealization of a “superman” who can reshape the world through his strength and cunning. Most troublingly, his philosophy is sometimes accused of inspiring Nazi ideology, especially the Nazis’ emphasis on a supposedly superior Aryan race.

Camus attacks Nietzsche’s philosophy in The Rebel for its nihilism and amorality, believing that the Nazis are part of his legacy (even though, as Camus acknowledges, this may have been contrary to Nietzsche’s personal intentions). For Camus, Nietzsche is, alongside Karl Marx, one of the unwitting authors of the 20th century’s global conflicts and the rise of totalitarian ideology.

Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818, in Trier, then part of Prussia. Although his family was Jewish by background, his father had converted to Christianity. Marx’s upbringing was comfortable: His father worked as a successful lawyer and provided his son with material comforts and educational opportunities.

The young Marx was academically gifted. He initially studied law at the University of Berlin, but his real passion was for philosophy, and he quickly developed a deep interest in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a figurehead in German idealism as well as Modern philosophy. Marx’s university education culminated with a PhD in 1841 from the University of Jena, with a doctoral thesis entitled The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature. In 1843, he married Jenny von Westphalen, with whom he had seven children. After receiving his PhD, Marx dabbled in journalism while continuing to widely read philosophy.

In 1844, Marx met Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), who became his dearest intellectual companion and who exercised an enormous influence upon Marx for the rest of Marx’s life. Engels was a socialist who had witnessed firsthand the deplorable conditions endured by the working classes in the Industrial Revolution’s mills and factories, since his father was a successful industrialist. Together, Marx and Engels developed political and economic theories based on the idea of a proletarian (i.e., working class) revolution that could overthrow traditional social hierarchies and usher in a communist utopia for all. In 1848, they published The Communist Manifesto, which outlined some of their radical ideas and called for a global workers’ revolution.

While Marx was raised in Prussia and spent time in cities like Berlin and Paris, he found his real home in London, England, where he moved in 1849. He frequented the British Library and read and wrote intensively. Marx was often short of money and had to rely on Engels for support, but Engels’s unwavering loyalty allowed Marx to focus on his writing and produce his major works, including A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy in 1859;Theories of Surplus Value in 1862; and his magnum opus, Capital—often known by its German name, Das Kapital—a blistering critique of the abuses and flaws of capitalism. The first volume of Capital was published in 1867; the other two volumes were published in 1885 and 1894 by Engels after Marx’s death.

Marx died in March 1883 from a lung infection, nearly two years after the death of his wife Jenny. He is buried in East Highgate Cemetery, London. Marx’s political and economic writings, both solo and with Engels, had a huge impact on Europe in the 20th century. Marxism became the leading communist ideology and led to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, which later developed into the Soviet Union that dominated Eastern Europe until its dissolution in 1991. Although a controversial figure due to the many abuses of communist dictatorships during the 20th century, Marx remains a landmark figure in the history of European intellectualism and is still recognized as one of the leading critics of capitalism.