Beyond Good and Evil Characters

Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher who taught that humans should strive to live happy, peaceful lives, maximizing their freedom and minimizing their pain and suffering. This teaching, to Nietzsche, also belongs to moral philosophy’s misguided attempt to abolish suffering.

The Stoics were a school of ancient Greek philosophers who argued that virtue was the most important expression of the “good,” and that humans live in accordance with their nature, propositions that Nietzsche strongly disagrees with.

Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance inventor, artist, and polymath, who Nietzsche upholds as an example of an individual who is great both because and in spite of the contradictory, chaotic nature of their being.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an 18th-century Austrian composer who was among the most influential composers of the Classical period.

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist active in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Generally considered to be one of the greatest composers of all time, Beethoven’s work spanned the transition from the Classical to the Romantic style in European music.

Felix Mendelssohn was a German composer and musical prodigy of the Romantic era. Both Mendelssohn’s Jewish origin and his heterodox tastes set him apart from many of his contemporaries, leaving his work largely overlooked until the mid-20th century. Nietzsche, however, was a great admirer of Mendelssohn.

Robert Schumann was a German composer and music critic, active in the early 19th century. Schumann was a leading composer of the Romantic era and is to Nietzsche an example of its flaws.

Thomas Hobbes was an influential English philosopher of the early modern era, best known for his political philosophy of the state.

David Hume was an 18th-century Scottish philosopher whose writing on empiricism and rationality was greatly influential for Enlightenment humanism.

John Locke was an English philosopher and empiricist whose work was enormously influential across European philosophy and politics, positively and negatively inspiring the likes of the American revolutionaries, Voltaire, and Kant.

John Stuart Mill was an English philosopher, political economist, and leading utilitarian, often considered to be one of the most influential English philosophers of his time.

Herbert Spencer was a 19th-century English philosopher and prominent utilitarian. An important early reader of Darwin, Spencer is credited with coining the term “survival of the fittest.”

Heinrich Heine was a German poet and writer. A political radical, Heine was exiled to France for much of his life.

Georg Hegel was a leading philosopher in the school of German Idealism and major influence on modern philosophy.