So what point does "Zarathustra" make, say, in comparison with "Discipline and Punish"? I think both authors have published a broad spectrum of works, ranging from "accessible, rational" to "confusing". Both are suitable for having catchy citations ripped out of their context.

"He who does battle with monsters needs to watch out lest he in the process become a monster himself. And if you stare too long into the abyss, the abyss will stare right back at you." (Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse)

By most accounts he's the most cited academic of all time. I'm sure he's less relevant in pure philosophy than other humanities but he is definitely taken very seriously by many.

Funnily enough, iirc Foucault viewed a large part of his work as extending the style of investigation Neitzsche initiated in Genealogy of Morals.

I think Nietzsche is great. His prose is a breath of fresh air and he's arguably the greatest literary stylist among philosophers since the Greeks. Sartre was pretty good too, likely thanks to his ability as a novelist. Some later continental philosophers would have really benefited from reading his aphorism that good writers write to be understood.

> He lives squarely in the deep caverns of the "continental" space

And yet continental became the zeitgeist of virtually all contemporary popular culture and analytic is left as a stodgy academic dead end.

> where philosophy is often intertwined with psychology, politics, sociology

To be fair, these - and pretty much anything - have philosophical roots. And philosophy is omnivorous.

Of course, philosophy in the highest and most rarified sense deals with the first principles of its scope, but I’m not sure the distinction matters here.