these figures were not the only influential thinkers in their day and generation. In fact, in the cases of Marx and Nietzsche, it is arguable that they were not particularly influential at all in their own day. Marx died in virtual penury, Nietzsche after a decade of insanity. And the latter’s work attracted little serious interest in his own lifetime. The question of why these nineteenth-century thinkers became so influential in the subsequent century is therefore an intriguing one.
