'Friedrich Nietzsche': The Constructive Nihilist

From The New York Times:

Nietzsche was born in Rocken, Prussia, in 1844, and died, having gone insane, in 1900. He was educated at Bonn and Leipzig and was self-educated (and dis-educated) thereafter. But who, really, was he? Heidegger is onto something when he advises us that philosophy can be possessed ''most purely in the form of a persistent question,'' and that ''Nietzsche's procedure, his manner of thinking in the execution of the new valuation, is perpetual reversal,'' perhaps like life itself, not to mention Heidegger's own devoted explications of Nietzsche. That arch-muse Lou Salomé, who knew him not only as a thought machine but also as a lover of sorts, stated the case more intimately when she wrote, ''In Nietzsche the most abstract thoughts habitually could reverse themselves into the power of moods which could carry him off with immediate and unpredictable force.''

Ecce homo, behold the man! As we peer down time's long barrel to try to see him, his hand keeps turning the kaleidoscope.

More here.