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Friedrich Nietzsche   The Best 9 Books to Read

F riedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a 19th-century German philosopher who, though hardly read during his own (sane) lifetime, has become a dominant intellectual force in today’s popular culture.

Perhaps best known for his proclamation that God is dead , along with his critique of conventional morality and religion, Nietzsche is remembered for his attempt to establish what he called a ‘revaluation of all values’, and is celebrated for his brilliant, provocative aphorisms and idea-packed prose (which includes, for instance, his vision of the Übermensch , his distinction between the Apollonian and Dionysian , his presentation of the eternal recurrence , amor fati , and all of the 97 clever Nietzsche passages and quotations we’ve collated here ).

Accordingly, Nietzsche’s reputation in the English-speaking world is now arguably the highest it’s ever been, and his place in philosophy’s canon looks assured.

However, it wasn’t always this way. After suffering a mental breakdown in 1889 from which he never recovered, Nietzsche (and his works) came under the care of his sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, who was a bigoted anti-Semite.

Elisabeth warped Nietzsche’s unpublished notebooks and unfinished works (now collected in The Will to Power ) into a bloodthirsty call to arms for nationalist Germany, which aligned to the blueprint for Hitler’s ‘superior’ Aryan race.

For a long time, therefore, Nietzsche’s ideas were synonymous with those of Nazism.

Thankfully, the truth of Elisabeth’s tampering emerged — as did letters and earlier works evidencing Nietzsche’s fierce opposition to nationalism and antisemitism.

Following the Nazi defeat in World War II, efforts were made to sanitize Nietzsche’s name, not least by the philosopher, translator, and poet Walter Kaufmann.

Kaufmann recognized that Nietzsche was majorly misunderstood in the English-speaking world, and set out on a long-term campaign to not only provide new English translations of all of Nietzsche’s works, but also guide readers in better understanding the profundity of his ideas.

(For more on the key events of Nietzsche’s life and legacy, including his tragic descent into insanity, see our overview of Nietzsche’s life, insanity, and legacy , which places his philosophy in the context of his life and illness, ultimately suggesting that Nietzsche’s task in both his personal life and his wider philosophy were one and the same: to find meaning in suffering , to make recovery more predominant than resentment, and to establish a solution to the problem of nihilism.)

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Even enjoying a resurgence in popularity, however, Nietzsche’s philosophy remains commonly misunderstood, misread, and misappropriated by those from all over the political and philosophical spectrum, who wish to elevate their particular cause with the power of his rhetoric.

With a range of thinking so widespread, and a style of writing so stunningly and wickedly provocative, it is perhaps no surprise that Nietzsche’s iconoclastic, hammering utterances — designed to jolt people out of presuppositions — can be so grossly taken out of context.

Here is a thinker who not only changes his mind on key topics throughout his active philosophical period, but who at times suggests he doesn’t want to be understood, not to be purposefully oblique, but because he thinks his readers are not yet ready for what he has to say.

The difficulties of reading Nietzsche

G etting into Nietzsche, then — i.e. really understanding and appreciating his philosophy, rather than just a few of his most famous quotations — can be somewhat of a challenge.

For, far from helping his readers by clearly laying out his ideas in rigid, structured form, Nietzsche prefers to challenge us by scattering his great ideas across his works — often offering only hints and winks about what he truly thinks, and occasionally contradicting himself or reevaluating earlier ideas.

Nietzsche also primarily adopts an aphoristic writing style — presenting us with a numbered sequence of rather disconnected sentences and paragraphs across a whole range of different subjects, sometimes held together by a particular theme, sometimes not.

There may be a paragraph from an 1881 work that aligns to something he then expands on in an 1887 work, for example.

Nietzsche also writes in such a way whereby he assumes you’ve read everything he’s ever written — as well as every major Western thinker from the ancient pre-Socratic Greeks onwards.

Which is the best Nietzsche book to start with?

G iven the quirks involved in reading him, selecting a ‘first’ Nietzsche book can be tricky. While they all contain diamonds, and while his writing style is always stunningly engaging, there is perhaps no ‘single’ work of his that stands out as an easy gateway to his ideas.

That said, some are certainly better candidates than others.

As we discuss below, his 1889 work Twilight of the Idols , for instance, is often recommended as a better starting point than most, for Nietzsche attempts to offer short summaries of his mature philosophy.

The 1887 On the Genealogy of Morals , too, can be a more accessible first read than others, in that Nietzsche foregoes his aphoristic style for the production of three longer-form essays, making for a more conventional initial reading experience (though, for first-time Nietzsche readers, understanding the subject matter will most definitely be a challenge without the assistance of some secondary literature, the best of which we outline below).

Perhaps the worst route into Nietzsche’s thinking, meanwhile, is the one most commonly taken: starting with his most famous book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra , written between 1883 and 1885.

While Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a stunning literary achievement, it is not the best way to learn about Nietzsche’s ideas, for it is more a densely cryptic expression of them in poetic, lyrical form.

Another common approach is to start with Nietzsche’s first book, The Birth of Tragedy — but this is also not recommended.

While the germ for many of his later ideas can be found in The Birth of Tragedy , on the whole it is not representative of his most important contributions to philosophy, for Nietzsche’s style and ideas develop considerably in his later works.

Nietzsche: the best 9 books to read

T aking into account all of the above, the below reading list consists of the best and most essential books for those looking to understand more about Nietzsche and his fascinating philosophy.

It contains a mix of both primary and secondary literature, for although Nietzsche’s words always make for a brilliantly entertaining read themselves, tying together Nietzsche’s ideas — scattered as they are across his works — can be a real challenge.

Indeed, if you’re interested in learning about Nietzsche as a first-time reader of his books, the power of his ideas is more accessible when contextualized by scholars whose life’s work has been dedicated to understanding him.

Without further ado, let’s dive in!

1. I Am Dynamite! By Sue Prideaux

I Am Dynamite!

BY SUE PRIDEAUX

This is the biography on Nietzsche we’ve been waiting for. Winner of The Times Biography of the year in 2019, Sue Prideaux’s I Am Dynamite! is a vividly compelling, myth-shattering portrait of one of history’s most misunderstood philosophers.

Prideaux illuminates all the events that shaped Nietzsche’s thinking, his key relationships — including those with the composer Richard Wagner and psychoanalyst Lou Salomé — as well as his heart-breaking descent into madness.

If you want to understand how the life Nietzsche lived led to the production of his philosophy, this is the biography for you.

2. Nietzsche on Morality, by Brian Leiter

Nietzsche on Morality

BY BRIAN LEITER

Both an introduction to and a sustained commentary on Nietzsche’s moral philosophy, Brian Leiter’s 2002 book Nietzsche on Morality has become one of the most widely used and debated secondary sources on Nietzsche over the past two decades.

Focusing on morality but touching on related topics too, Nietzsche on Morality is a solid overview and critique for anyone interested in Nietzsche’s philosophy.

3. The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche, by Ken Gemes and John Richardson

The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche

BY KEN GEMES & JOHN RICHARDSON

For an insight into just how lively, productive, and diverse the contemporary Nietzsche scholarship scene is, look no further than the 2013 Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche , edited by Ken Gemes and John Richardson.

This brilliant collection brings together 32 essays from leading Nietzsche scholars, covering virtually every aspect of Nietzsche’s thought — from his epistemology and metaphysics, to his value theory and metaethics.

The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche is the most academic treatment of Nietzsche on this list, but rewards the reader with deep excavations and interpretations of his thinking.

Each essay sheds new light on the great philosopher, making this an essential book for Nietzsche die-hards.

4. Introduction to Nietzsche and His 5 Greatest Ideas, by Philosophy Break

Your Myth-Busting Guide to Nietzsche & His 5 Greatest Ideas

BY PHILOSOPHY BREAK

★★★★★ (50+ reviews)

If you’re looking for a modern, accessible, engaging introduction to Nietzsche’s philosophy with none of the nuance sacrificed, then the 2024 Introduction to Nietzsche and His 5 Greatest Ideas is designed to help you learn everything you need to know about the brilliant philosopher in 42 self-paced, myth-busting lessons.

This concise online guide is instantly accessible from any device, distills Nietzsche’s best and most misunderstood ideas (from God is dead to the Übermensch), and allows you to discuss Nietzsche and philosophy with other members (join 350+ active members inside).

Of course, we’re a little biased, as we produced this one — but if you’re seeking to understand the fundamentals of Nietzsche’s best ideas, have clarity on exactly what he was trying to say across his many works, and discover why he is so influential, then Introduction to Nietzsche and His 5 Greatest Ideas gets rave reviews (one reader describes it as “the best introduction to Nietzsche I’ve come across”), and might be just what you’re looking for!

5. Twilight of the Idols, by Friedrich Nietzsche

Twilight of the Idols

BY FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Turning from secondary literature to Nietzsche’s primary works, the question, of course, is where to start .

Well, as we discussed above, though one of his later works, Nietzsche’s 1889 Twilight of the Idols offers one of the best gateways into Nietzsche’s philosophy as a whole.

By no means ‘easy’ (secondary literature, including the previous entries on this list, is highly recommended for first-time Nietzsche readers), Twilight of the Idols nevertheless provides a better starting point than many of Nietzsche’s other works, for he was attempting to write a concise summary of some of the main ideas of his mature philosophy.

Not only that, but Twilight of the Idols contains some fantastic and hilarious passages, it’s a good introduction to Nietzsche’s aphoristic style, and it’s rather short (i.e. less than 100 pages, compared to the 500+ pages of some of Nietzsche’s earlier works).

This particular edition also features an updated, 21st-century translation by Judith Norman, and bundles in some introductory scholarly essays, as well as Nietzsche’s Anti-Christ — another great late work, in which Nietzsche offers his most scathing attack on Christianity — and Ecce Homo , his mania-afflicted autobiography which isn’t a good starting point, but a fascinating read nonetheless.

If you’re looking for your ‘first’ Nietzsche book, this bundled edition of Twilight of the Idols is a better, more accessible option than most, and will give you a feel for the great philosopher’s general ideas and approach.

6. The Gay Science, by Friedrich Nietzsche

The Gay Science

Nietzsche’s early-middle works — Human, All Too Human , Daybreak , and The Gay Science — are hugely significant for the development of his thinking, and the brilliantly rich aphorisms that make them up contain much of the intellectual raw material that form his later ideas.

Though they are rather long ( Human, All Too Human is over 500 pages), all are worth reading at some point; but if you’re seeking an accessible representative from this important era, The Gay Science is a good choice.

The Gay Science is where Nietzsche first mentions his ideas of the death of God , the eternal recurrence , and the higher man — and seeing them in this early form sets one up nicely to better understand Nietzsche’s later works, like Beyond Good & Evil , On the Genealogy of Morals , and Thus Spoke Zarathustra .

7. Beyond Good & Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche

Beyond Good & Evil

Nietzsche’s 1886 book Beyond Good & Evil is a rich, wide-ranging work in which he explores all the themes for which he is best known: the origins and nature of morality, the will to power, the failures and dangers of objective thinking, the vapidity of modernity, the shortcomings of ‘reason’, the short-sightedness and wrongheadedness of previous philosophers (including Socrates, Kant, Schopenhauer, and many others), as well as how we can overcome mediocrity and suffering and become who we truly are.

Along with his next book, On the Genealogy of Morals , contemporary scholars increasingly recognize Beyond Good & Evil as perhaps Nietzsche’s most important and enduring contribution to philosophy.

Though challenging in places, Beyond Good & Evil is nevertheless incredibly rewarding once you’ve got a few of the Nietzsche fundamentals under your belt — and you can dip around various aphorisms and sections to ease your reading experience.

8. On the Genealogy of Morals, by Friedrich Nietzsche

On the Genealogy of Morals

Foregoing his usual aphoristic style, in his 1887 On the Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche adopts a tripartite essay form, perhaps making for a more conventional and connected reading experience than that of some of his other works.

That said, it remains a dense, difficult, often bamboozling challenge: On the Genealogy of Morals is Nietzsche’s most sustained critique of conventional morality and religion, where he introduces and discusses a diverse collection of novel ideas, including the slave revolt in morality, ‘master’ morality, and the ascetic ideal.

Among the most studied of Nietzsche’s works today, On the Genealogy of Morals stands alongside Beyond Good & Evil , of which it was planned as an accompaniment, as his philosophical masterpiece.

Indeed, if Beyond Good & Evil is the culmination of Nietzsche’s philosophy in his trademark aphoristic style, then On the Genealogy of Morals is the culmination of his philosophy in essay form.

If you’re interested in Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals belongs on your bookshelf (though some secondary literature would be very handy in helping you fully digest and appreciate it).

9. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, by Friedrich Nietzsche

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

If Beyond Good & Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals are the culmination of Nietzsche’s philosophy as prose, then Thus Spoke Zarathustra is the culmination of Nietzsche’s philosophy as poetry.

Written between 1883 and 1885, Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a densely lyrical, epic prose-poem that Nietzsche regarded as his most important philosophical contribution (while some scholars agree with this judgment, many see it more as a literary achievement, with his philosophy better expressed elsewhere).

Aping the New Testament in style, it follows the journey of a prophet named Zarathustra who comes down from the mountains to share his “philosophy of the future” (the parallels with Nietzsche’s own life are not, one might suspect, accidental).

Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a challenging read and widely open to interpretation, with the key theme being that we must overcome all past value systems and cultivate self-affirmation — a theme embodied by Nietzsche’s character of the Übermensch , as well as his idea of the eternal recurrence .

While definitely not the best place to start, Thus Spoke Zarathustra is one of Nietzsche’s most famous works for good reason: its audacity, uniqueness, and style make it Nietzsche’s supreme literary achievement.

Further reading

Are there any other books you think should be on this list? Let us know via email or drop us a message on Twitter or Instagram .

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The best nietzsche books, recommended by brian leiter.

Moral Psychology with Nietzsche by Brian Leiter

Relativist, atheist, existentialist, Nazi. All have been said of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, some with more reason than others. We asked Nietzsche expert Brian Leiter to explain the appeal of the controversial philosopher and recommend books to get started with to understand him and his work.

Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography by Rüdiger Safranski & translator Shelley Frisch

Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy by Maudemarie Clark

Nietzsche’s System by John Richardson

Beyond good and evil by friedrich nietzsche & walter kaufmann (translator).

On the Genealogy of Morality by Friedrich Nietzsche

1 Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography by Rüdiger Safranski & translator Shelley Frisch

2 nietzsche on truth and philosophy by maudemarie clark, 3 nietzsche’s system by john richardson, 4 beyond good and evil by friedrich nietzsche & walter kaufmann (translator), 5 on the genealogy of morality by friedrich nietzsche.

B efore we get to the books, how did you first become interested in Nietzsche as one of your philosophical specialities?

What did you particularly like about him?

I had actually become interested in philosophy from reading Sartre as a high school student in French classes. The essay Rorty assigned starts on a very existentialist note – and of course the writing was very evocative. At this point I was reading it in English but Walter Kaufman’s strength as a translator is that he captures the flavour of Nietzsche in English. He’s not the most literal translator but he is the most evocative. So it was a combination of the proto-existentialist themes and the style of the writing that I found very gripping. And that sense never left me – I still always enjoying reading and re-reading Nietzsche.

We’re going to talk about five books you’d recommend for someone who’s interested but not an expert in Nietzsche. You’ve chosen a mixture of primary and secondary material. Would you say it’s best for readers to begin with the modern academic texts or should they go straight to Nietzsche first?

I think it’s a question of whether they’ve had any exposure to philosophy. If somebody has not had much exposure to philosophy, then it might be best to start with the Safranski biography before going to the primary texts. The primary texts are certainly more fun and if you were to start with one of them, then Beyond Good and Evil would be a great choice, because it covers all the distinctive and important Nietzschean themes and as it’s broken into bite-size pieces you don’t get overwhelmed. But if you wanted someone to patiently introduce you then Safranski is good on that score.

It seems like Nietzsche is one of the few philosophers whom lots of people who have never studied philosophy still enjoy reading. Why do you think he’s so appealing in this way?

I think the most important reason to start with is that he’s a great writer, and that is not the norm in philosophy. He’s a great stylist, he’s funny, he’s interesting, he’s a bit wicked, he’s rude. And he touches on almost every aspect of human life and he has something to say about it that’s usually somewhat provocative and intriguing. I think that’s the crucial reason why Nietzsche books are so popular. Indeed, he’s probably more popular outside academic philosophy because he’s so hostile to the main traditions in Western philosophy.

Do you think people who haven’t studied philosophy can get quite a lot out of him? You might not really enjoy Spinoza’s Ethics , for instance, if you just picked it up randomly in a bookshop or in the library. Would you say that’s the case with Nieztsche’s books?

I think people without that philosophical background do miss quite a lot – because a lot of what is going on in Nietzsche is reaction to and sometimes implicit dialogue with earlier philosophers. If you don’t know any Kant or Plato or the pre-Socratics, you’re not going to understand a lot of what’s motivating Nietzsche, what he’s reacting against. You get a much richer appreciation of Nietzsche if you are reading him against the background of certain parts of the history of philosophy.

Nietzsche himself was not trained in philosophy, he was trained in classics. But that included a great deal of study of ancient Greek philosophy. And then he taught himself a lot of other philosophy. Kant and Schopenhauer were particularly important to him.

Are there any non-philosophers who have influenced the way you think about Nietzsche?

Let’s start with the Safranski book, Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography . There are absolutely loads of biographies of Nietzsche. Why did you go with this one in particular?

I think the virtue of this book is that it has a detailed and readable narrative of the life, but it combines it with an introduction to the philosophical works, which is written at a very appropriate level for the beginner. That’s the main reason I picked the Safranski.

The standard German biography of Nietzsche, by this guy Curt Paul Janz, is a three-volume tome that is exhaustive but it’s also exhausting. It’s a very good resource for scholars but not a delightful book for beginners.

There’s a famous quote in Beyond Good and Evil where Nietzsche says that despite philosophers’ claims about arguing rationally and aiming to find objective truth, all philosophy has really been a form of unconscious and involuntary autobiography. How do you think Nietzsche’s own life informs his philosophy, if at all?

The influences of Nietzsche’s own life on the philosophy are very dramatic. Some of them have to do with the intellectual biography, of course – what he studied, what he read et cetera. But I think probably the crucial fact about Nietzsche’s life is that when he writes about suffering he’s not a tourist. He’s writing about something he knows very intimately. He understands from his own experience the effect of suffering on the mind, on creativity and on one’s attitude to life generally. And if there’s a central question in Nietzsche it’s the one he takes over from Schopenhauer – namely, how is it possible to justify life in the face of inevitable suffering? Schopenhauer comes up with a negative answer. He endorses something like a stereotype of the Buddhist view: The best thing would not to be born, but if you’re born the next best thing would be to die quickly. Nietzsche wants to repudiate that answer – partly through bringing about a re-evaluation of suffering and its significance.

Could you give a sense of the suffering Nietzsche experienced and why his life was so difficult?

He was the proverbial frail and sickly child. But the real trouble started in his early 30s, the 1870s, when he started to develop gradually more and more physical maladies – things that looked like migraines, with nausea, dizziness, and he would be bedridden. It got so severe that he had to retire from his teaching position at the age of 35. So he spent the remainder of his sane life, until his mental collapse in 1889, basically as an invalid travelling between different inns and hotels in and around Italy, Switzerland and southern France, trying to find a good climate, often writing, often walking when his health permitted, but often bedridden with excruciating headaches, vomiting, insomnia. He was trying every self-medication device of the late 19th century. He had a pretty miserable physical existence. His eyesight also started to fail him during this time. Through all this he usually managed to continue to write and read, despite these ailments. So he really knew what suffering was.

In retrospect, there’s reasonably good evidence that he had probably at some point contracted syphilis and that the developing infection might have been responsible for these maladies. Though his father had also died at an early age, so there may have been some familial genetic component as well.

Safranski himself is German, whereas the other two secondary texts you recommend are by American scholars. Is there a difference between the view of Nietzsche in German scholarship and in Anglo-American scholarship at present?

What would be the next book to read if you’ve just finished the Safranski?

I think the one to go for would be the Clark – Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy .

Given the title, does this book focus on Nietzsche’s epistemology or is it more of a general overview?

The first half of the book is primarily about truth and knowledge, matters of metaphysics and epistemology. The book appeared in 1990 and it was a very significant work. It was very unusual because, first of all, it treated Nietzsche as a philosopher. I know that sounds a funny thing to say, but an awful lot of books on Nietzsche are full of quotations and paraphrase – they don’t really engage dialectically and argumentatively with what Nietzsche has to say.

What Clark did, through systematic examination of Nietzsche’s views about truth and knowledge from the early essays through to his final works, was to try to show that Nietzsche’s view of truth and knowledge evolved over time, that it changed in significant ways.

Often Nietzsche is, perhaps wrongly, associated with a postmodern rejection of objective truth. I presume that’s not what this book argues…

That is Clark’s target in this book – the idea that Nietzsche is the guy who thinks there’s no such thing as truth and that there’s no such thing as knowledge, that every view is as good as every other view. She suggests that there may have been an aspect of the postmodernist view of truth in Nietzsche’s early work, but that he gradually came to abandon that view once he came to abandon the intelligibility of the old Kantian distinction between the way things appear to us versus the way things really are in themselves . There are a lot of difficult philosophical issues here, but that’s the crux of the story she’s trying to tell in the first part of the book.

As you mentioned the contrast between Clark and Richardson, let’s move on to the next book, Nietzsche’s System . First off, am I right in thinking that that title is rather controversial, given that Nietzsche is often seen as an anti-systematic philosopher?

The title is meant to be provocative, but Richardson’s central claim is that there is a kind of thematic coherence to all of Nietzsche’s work, and this coherence derives in part from the doctrine of the will to power.

Let’s just explain exactly what the will to power is for those not familiar with it.

Well, this question of definition is part of the Clark-Richardson debate. The Clark side is that what Nietzsche means by the will to power is that people are often motivated to act because the action will give them a feeling of power. But Richardson’s view is closer to Heidegger’s, although he makes a more compelling and sophisticated case for it.

Richardson’s view of Nietzsche’s doctrine of the will to power is this: Every person is made up of a bundle of “drives” – sex drive, hunger drive, drive for knowledge, and so on. Every drive, according to Richardson’s reading of Nietzsche, is characterised by the will to power. Every drive has a tendency to want to enlist every other drive in its service. So if the sex drive is dominant in a person – think Hugh Hefner – then the sex drive tries to get every other drive enlisted in helping satisfy it. So knowledge or food would only be of interest to the extent that they facilitate gratification of the sex drive, and so on.

Out of this basic picture of human psychology and the metaphysics of drives and their essential nature as will to power, Richardson thinks you can take this theme and see how it figures in everything else Nietzsche writes, whether it’s about truth, knowledge, morality and so on. In that sense he tells a very systematic story about Nietzsche’s thought.

If you side more with Clark in the debate, what made you decide to recommend Richardson’s Nietzsche book?

First of all, I think it’s a very well done and compelling interpretation. What’s particularly interesting is that Richardson , who is also a well-known Heidegger scholar, takes up a theme that was important to Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche – the view that Nietzsche is the final point in the history of Western metaphysics. First there was Plato and at the very end was Nietzsche, and Nietzsche’s metaphysical doctrine is that everything is will to power. Richardson takes up that idea but gives it a very refined and nuanced elaboration that makes it much more plausible than it ever was in Heidegger.

Let’s move on to the primary texts. You mentioned that Beyond Good and Evil is a good one to dip into for people who are new to Nietzsche books, because it provides a good overview to his thoughts…

Yes, I think that’s right. It touches on almost all Nietzsche’s central concerns – on truth, on the nature of philosophy, on morality, on what’s wrong with morality, will to power.

The first thing you notice when you open the book is the layout and the way it’s written, which is striking, especially if you come to it having read modern philosophy essays and that kind of thing. Why does Nietzsche write in such an unusual, more aphoristic style?

The explanation really comes in the first chapter of the book where Nietzsche tells us that the great philosophers are basically fakers when they tell you that they arrived at their views because there were good rational arguments in support of them. That’s nonsense, says Nietzsche. Great philosophers , he thinks, are driven by a particular moral or ethical vision. Their philosophy is really a post-hoc rationalisation for the values they want to promote. And then he says that the values they want to promote are to be explained psychologically, in terms of the type of person that that philosopher is.

The relevance of this is that if this were your view of the rational argumentation of philosophers, it would be quite bizarre to write a traditional book of philosophy giving a set of arguments in support of your view. Because in Nietzsche’s view consciousness and reasoning are fairly superficial aspects of human beings. What really gets us to change our views about things are the non-rational, emotional, affective aspects of our psyche. One of the reasons he writes aphoristically and so provocatively – and this, of course, is why he’s the teenager’s favourite philosopher – is connected to his view of the human psyche. He has to arouse the passions and feelings and emotions of his readers if he’s actually going to transform their views. There’d be no point in giving them a systematic set of arguments like in Spinoza’s Ethics – in fact he ridicules the ‘geometric form’ of Spinoza’s Ethics in the first chapter of Beyond Good and Evil .

Do you have a particular favourite passage from Beyond Good and Evil that exemplifies Nietzsche’s direct and provocative approach?

For funny wickedness I do like Section 11, on Kant’s philosophy . It’s hysterically funny – if you’re familiar with Kant’s philosophy, that is. It’s not a late-night TV concept of hysterically funny!

You mentioned that Nietzsche is fascinated by psychology . Do you think if he were around today he would be hanging around the psychology department, rather than the philosophy department?

Maybe not the psychology department in its current form! But he would be interested in psychological research. There are a number of themes in contemporary empirical psychology that are essentially Nietzschean themes. There is a large literature suggesting that our experience of free will is largely illusory, that we often think we’re doing things freely when in fact we’re not, that our actions have sources that lie in the pre-conscious and unconscious aspects of ourselves and then we wrongly think we’re acting freely. These are themes familiar to anyone who’s read Nietzsche books and it’s striking that recent empirical work is largely coming down on Nietzsche’s side on these questions.

Would it be right to say Nietzsche was a big influence on Freud as well?

Freud claims to have stopped reading Nietzsche at a certain point – perhaps he thought Nietzsche anticipated his own views to an uncomfortable extent. But they share a very similar picture of the human mind, in which the unconscious aspect of the mind, and in particular the affective, emotional, non-rational part of the mind, plays a decisive role in explaining many of our beliefs, actions and values. Freud came up with a more distinctive and precise account of the structure of the unconscious, but the general picture is very similar.

Let’s talk about On the Genealogy of Morality, then. Is it fair to say that this is often seen, nowadays, as Nietzsche’s masterpiece?

I don’t know I would single it out as the masterpiece, but it’s a fascinating book which follows on many of the themes of Beyond Good and Evil . It’s unusual because it’s less aphoristic, but rather three essays. The essays have more structure and extended argumentation than is typical in most of Nietzsche’s works.

The book deals with the two absolutely central questions for Nietzsche, namely what’s wrong with our morality and the problem of suffering. It tells an extremely provocative story about each of these and in the third essay it even connects up with Nietzsche’s interest in questions about the nature of truth and why we value truth. In that sense it really is a mature work, bringing together reflections on topics that span the prior decade.

Why did you decide to recommend different translators for these two Nietzsche books?

Clark and Swensen, I think, have the best English translation of the Genealogy but it’s the only work they translated. If they had ever translated Beyond Good and Evil I might have recommended that. They are more literal than Kaufman, who does take liberties at times with the German. That often has a virtue – you get more of a sense of Nietzsche in Kaufman’s English than anyone else’s English, but sometimes for a philosophically-minded reader it can elide certain important distinctions. Clark is a philosopher, Swensen is a German-language scholar, and so they bring two good skill sets to the translation. Swensen has a good feel for the German and Clark is very sensitive to what is philosophically important in the German and not losing that in translation.

The other thing that is very nice about their edition is that it has very detailed notes. The Genealogy is sort of notorious because it has no footnotes. It makes all kinds of historical claims, etymological claims et cetera, but there are no footnotes because that’s not how Nietzsche does things. But in point of fact he had scholarly sources in mind on almost every one of these issues, and Clark and Swensen compiled them. So they supply the underlying scholarly apparatus for the kind of claims Nietzsche is making, which makes this a very useful text.

The book obviously focuses on morality. Do you think there’s been a shift in the way scholars have seen Nietzsche’s view of morality over the past 60 or 70 years?

I do think there’s been a significant change and I think there’s a simple explanation for it. Nietzsche’s association with the Nazis didn’t exactly help his reputation. For people like Walter Kaufman, who wrote an influential book about Nietzsche after the war, his Nietzsche is a pleasant, secular liberal. He’s a nice guy who believes in self-development – he’s not a scary Nazi! With Heidegger, we see Nietzsche as a metaphysician with a grand picture of the essence of reality as will to power, and the moral/political side of Nietzsche’s thought gets pushed aside. For the French deconstructionists, Nietzsche’s a guy who tells us that no text has a stable meaning and there’s no truth and so on. All these readings pull us away from Nietzsche’s core evaluative concerns, and I think over the last 20 years those concerns have come back to centre stage.

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I think it’s always worth saying that Nietzsche was no Nazi. To start with, he hated Germans. This created a lot of problems for the Nazis. They had to edit the texts quite selectively because he hated German nationalists, he hated anti-semites, he hated militarists. He wouldn’t have fitted in too easily at Nuremberg! On the other hand, it is absolutely true that Nietzsche has quite shocking views about traditional Christian morality. Kaufman whitewashed this 50 years ago, but I think it’s less common to do so now. Nietzsche is deeply illiberal. He does not believe in the equal worth of every person. Nietzsche thinks there are higher human beings. His favourite three examples are Goethe , Beethoven and Nietzsche himself. And that higher human beings, through their creative genius, can actually make life worth living – that Beethoven’s 9th Symphony is enough to justify all the suffering the world includes. Again this is a crude summary but there is this aspect of Nietzsche. At the heart of his critique of morality is that he thinks creative geniuses like Beethoven, had they really taken morality seriously, wouldn’t have been creative geniuses. Because to really take morality seriously is to take your altruistic obligations seriously – to help others, to weigh and consider the interests of others et cetera. You can read any biography of Beethoven and see that that wasn’t how he lived! He was single-mindedly focused on his creative work and that’s what Nietzsche means by severe self-love.

Given that Nietzsche has a profoundly illiberal view of morality, what does he have to say to us now – if, that is, you’re keen to come at morality from, loosely speaking, a liberal and democratic point of view?

Even if you’re not as illiberal as Nietzsche, you might be worried if Nietzsche’s right that certain kinds of traditional moral values are incompatible with the existence of people like Beethoven. That’s the strong psychological claim he makes – that you can’t really be a creative genius like Beethoven and take morality seriously. I think even good old democratic egalitarian liberals could worry a bit about that, if it were true. It’s a very striking and pessimistic challenge, because the liberal post-Enlightenment vision is that we can have our liberal democratic egalitarian ethos and everyone will be able to flourish. Nietzsche thinks there’s a profound tension between the values that traditional morality holds up and the conditions necessary for creative genius.

So that challenge is interesting in its own right, even if you wouldn’t want to side with Nietzsche, who’s ready to sacrifice the herd of humanity for the sake of a Goethe or a Beethoven. And then there are all these aspects of Nietzsche that don’t really depend for their importance on his ultimate evaluative judgement. There’s Nietzsche’s picture of the human mind, there’s his attack on traditional philosophy, his attack on free will and moral responsibility. All of these themes are interesting and challenging, and resonate with themes in contemporary philosophy – even if you don’t have the same illiberal affect that Nietzsche has. And of course most readers don’t. That’s why there’s been a lot of whitewashing of Nietzsche in the secondary literature. It’s a bit shocking. It certainly took me a while to come to terms with the fact that this is really what Nietzsche believes, that the illiberal attitudes and the elitism was really central to the way he looked at things. The suffering of mankind at large was not a significant ethical concern in his view, it was largely a matter of indifference – in fact it was to be welcomed because there’s nothing better than a good dose of suffering to get the creative juices flowing.

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Since this interview was first published in 2011, you’ve written a new book on Nietzsche. Could you tell me a bit about that?

My book Moral Psychology with Nietzsche (Oxford, 2019) explores issues that were either ignored or touched on only briefly in my earlier book Nietzsche on Morality (Routledge, 2002; 2nd ed., 2015). These are issues that professional philosophers usually group under the label “moral psychology,” questions about the nature of morality and moral judgment, the structure of human agency, and the like. For example, since Nietzsche denies that value judgments are objective (I set out and defend his arguments for this view), what happens psychologically when we make such judgments? Nietzsche, I argue, should be seen as part of a tradition of moral anti-realists who are also sentimentalists , like Hume and, in the German tradition, Herder—that is, philosophers who think the best explanation of our moral judgments is in terms of our emotional responses to states of affairs in the world, responses that are, themselves, explicable in terms of psychological facts about the judger.

I also explore Nietzsche’s views about agency and his skepticism about free will. The book has exegetical aims, certainly, but it is not an exercise in the “history of ideas.” I believe Nietzsche is often correct, for example, in his anti-realism about value, his sentimentalism, his skepticism about the causal efficacy of consciousness, and his skepticism about the post-hoc rationalizations of moral philosophers for their moral beliefs. Much of the book is devoted to arguing philosophically, and on the basis of empirical psychological evidence, for Nietzsche’s views.

Which books by Nietzsche does your book focus on?

I range fairly widely over Nietzsche’s mature works, but besides the two crucial books recommended in the earlier interview— Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morality —I think two other works are quite important for understanding his moral psychology:  Daybreak , his first mature work of 1881, and Twilight of the Idols , one of his last works in 1888.

Are there any other books on Nietzsche that have come out since this interview that you’d recommend?

A very good collection of original essays on Nietzsche can be found in the book The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche (2013), edited by Ken Gemes and John Richardson: the volume gives readers a nice sense of why this is now a “golden age” for Nietzsche scholarship in the Anglophone world. I especially commend the chapters by Jessica Berry on Nietzsche and the ancient Greeks (readers interested in that topic might also look at her Nietzsche and the Ancient Skeptical Tradition [Oxford, 2011]); Nadeem Hussain on Nietzsche’s metaethical views; and Paul Katsafanas on his philosophical psychology.

A very important book on the latter topic ( Nietzsche’s Philosophical Psychology ) , by an Italian philosopher, Mattia Riccardi, came out from Oxford University Press in 2021. He combines philosophical skill and historical knowledge in elucidating Nietzsche’s views about the drives, affects, and consciousness, among other topics. I have no doubt his book will be a major event in Nietzsche studies.

September 8, 2020

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Brian Leiter

Brian Leiter is Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the Center for Law, Philosophy, and Human Values at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Nietzsche on Morality and co-editor of several books on Nietzsche’s work. He has also published widely on topics in moral, political and legal philosophy, and runs the influential philosophy blog Leiter Reports

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Friedrich Nietzsche: The 13+1 Best Books Of His Philosophical Career

Friedrich Nietzsche was a provocative 19th-century philosopher who critiqued traditional values and explored the complexities of human nature and the pursuit of power.

Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the towering figures in philosophy, whose lasting mark on the late 19th and early 20th-century intellectual landscape left a distinctive imprint. Known for his unorthodox views and provocative ideas, Nietzsche’s works continue to capture readers, scholars, and thinkers alike.

Nietzsche’s writings elaborate the following philosophical ideas: nihilism, master-slave morality, perspectivism, eternal recurrence, and Übermensch (Superman). He criticized traditional values and societal institutions while advocating for individualism and self-overcoming.

So let us explore Nietzsche’s philosophical journey by looking into all the important books that explain his intellectual development.

Human All Too Human, 1880

One of Nietzsche’s first and most important books,  Human, All Too Human , is a collection of aphorisms and reflections published in three parts between 1878 and 1880. It represents an important stage in Nietzsche’s philosophical career as he distanced himself from the idealism of his earlier works towards a more skeptical, critical view.

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In the first section of the book, “Of the First and Last Things,” Nietzsche covers a wide range of topics: from science, to philosophy, culture, and human existence. He challenges traditional religious beliefs and makes an assertion that man has made religion as a way to cope with their fears and uncertainties. Besides, Nietzsche argues for the importance of reason and rationality to understand the world, abandoning dogmas of religion in favor of empirical inquiry.

In “History of the Moral Feelings,” the second part, Nietzsche turns his attention to morality and ethics . He engages in a critical examination with respect to the origins of moral values and seeks to unveil their underlying psychological motivations. He argues that moral values are not universal truths but rather societal constructs shaped by power dynamics as well as individual perspectives. This critique undermines traditional notions of good and evil and posits them as largely subjective notions conditioned culturally.

In the third section, “The Religious Life,” he dissects religious systems, particularly Christianity, saying they perpetuate a life-denying mentality rather than opening people up to fill the challenges of life with fullness. To him, religion is an impediment to personal growth and freedom because it demands conformity over individual self-realization.

Throughout  Human, All Too Human , Nietzsche takes on a kind of scientific approach to philosophy. This work establishes the context for many themes that would continue to pervade Nietzsche’s later writings, such as nihilism, perspectivism (the theory that knowledge is always tied to one’s perspective), and the importance of embracing life’s contradictions.

The Gay Science, 1882

The Gay Science , the 1882 masterpiece by Nietzsche, is an invigorating and heterogeneous conglomerate of aphorisms, poems, and reflections that explore life’s complexities and contradictions.

Amongst the major themes explored in  The Gay Science  is that life should be embraced enthusiastically and joyously, even amidst its challenges and uncertainties. Nietzsche encourages individuals to engage with life courageously, embracing both its highs as well as lows. He contemplates the notion of “amor fati” which translates to “love of fate.” This philosophy urges us not only to accept but also to love our destiny by finding meaning even in suffering.

Another distinctive feature of  The Gay Science  is the explanation of truth and knowledge. Nietzsche rejects traditional common views that consider truth as an objective reality available only via rational thinking. Instead, he asserts a more varied view called perspectivism—the notion of conceiving truth as always subject to our viewpoints. There are no absolute truths, according to Nietzsche—they emerge from individual perceptions.

The book also celebrates the notorious proclamation: “ God is dead .” With this daring statement, Nietzsche disparaged religious dogmas and stated that society had grown enough out of its dependence on obsolete religious frameworks. But instead of nihilism or despair without traditional beliefs, Nietzsche urges for humanity to become creators of their own values. He encourages people to make their own paths and find meaning without being dependent on external sources such as religion or societal norms.

The unconventional structure and snappily energetic style make  The Gay Science  a really enthralling read. Nietzsche’s gift for intermingling profound insights with wit and provocation ensures readers are challenged at every turn.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883

Thus Spoke Zarathustra  was published in 1883 and is the most famous of Friedrich Nietzsche’s works. Described as a series of philosophical allegories, it tells the story of Zarathustra, a mythical prophet who descended from his mountain retreat to communicate his wisdom to mankind.

In the very heart of  Thus Spoke Zarathustra  is found this idea of Übermensch or “Superman” or “Overman.” Nietzsche depicts this visionary as the highest point in human potential—the breaker of traditional morals and practices that created his own value systems. The distinctions between right and wrong, good and bad, have no meaning for the Übermensch. They make their own value system by seeking individual excellence.

Zarathustra’s teachings arouse conventional beliefs about good and evil. According to Nietzsche, morality is not fixed but rather the product of human creation. He encourages individuals to put aside concepts of guilt and punishment inherited from religion. For him, liberation lies in acknowledging and owning one’s own desires while bearing full responsibility for their consequences.

Besides that, the book also establishes the idea of eternal recurrence, where Zarathustra reveals to his disciples that life has to be accepted fully and repeatedly without any regrets. It asserts that all events that we experience will recur infinitely throughout eternity. Nietzsche sees this concept as a test: if one were to accept every event in their lives with complete acceptance and joy, then they have attained true liberation.

In addition,  Thus Spoke Zarathustra  demonstrates the nature of seeking the meaning of life . According to Nietzsche, no meaning can be extracted from the outside; rather, realization comes from grasping the contradiction inherent within life itself.

Nietzsche’s provocative prose and visionary allegories paint an engaging exploration of the human condition. The reader is challenged to transcend societal constraints and forge their own paths toward self-realization and personal growth.

Beyond Good And Evil, 1886

Another one of Nietzsche’s major works,  Beyond Good and Evil  was written in 1886 and provides his most focused attack on traditional moral and philosophical systems. In it, Nietzsche questions the good/evil dichotomy that dominates Western thought. He states that these concepts are not fixed or universal but rather subjective constructs fashioned out of cultural norms and prevailing power dynamics.

Nietzsche states that morality is a human interpretation as opposed to an absolute truth that is imposed upon us. Morality, according to him, cannot be divorced from individuality, freedom of will, or desire: they are basic forces in one’s actions.

Beyond Good and Evil introduces the element of the “will to power”—an elemental force in human behavior. According to Nietzsche, all living beings have an inner drive for self-affirmation and domination over their environment. This philosophy deconstructs altruism and highlights the importance of personal autonomy and ambition in shaping one’s destiny.

Also, in this book, Nietzsche resorts to the aphoristic style —using short yet intense observations—whereby readers are left to ponder each maxim individually while constructing a thorough picture of his ideas. His polemical statements strike both awe and controversy within readers, propelling them into forming their own beliefs.

Beyond Good and Evil  is a philosophical “call to arms:” a summons for people to reconsider unquestioned assumptions of truth, morality, and authority. It invites people to examine uncomfortable truths about themselves and society as a whole.

In other words,  Beyond Good and Evil  is an intellectual battlefield on which Nietzsche fights complacency—a manifesto urging us out onto an endless quest for knowledge, leading us towards asking difficult questions without shying away from “hard” answers.

On The Genealogy Of Morality, 1887

The Genealogy of Morality   was written by Friedrich Nietzsche in 1887. This is a relentless critique of traditional moral values, which constitutes a deep examination of the origins and development of human morality. In this provocative work posed as an inquiry into human culture, Nietzsche sets himself to unravel the complex genealogical roots behind our moral beliefs and throws light on how they shape our understanding of good or evil.

The book is divided into three essays. Each essay explores one aspect of morality. In the first essay, Nietzsche deconstructs the concept of “good.” He traces the idea to power and superiority. He argues that morality initially arose from a master-slave dynamic—those in positions of power created definitions of good that would serve their own interests and subjugate others.

In the second essay, “Guilt, Bad Conscience, and Related Matters,” Nietzsche explains the psychological mechanisms of morality. He says that guilt appears as a product of social pressure, conditioning people to suppress their natural instincts. In an alternative point of view suggested by Nietzsche, he says if one can live with desires without guilt or shame, then one will achieve personal growth and self-realization.

Finally, in the third essay, “What Do Ascetic Ideals Mean?” Nietzsche examines asceticism as a vital element of moral systems. He states that ascetic ideals—self-denial, renunciation, and discipline—have been propagated by cultures for centuries as a means to control people and keep social order. Yet he thinks these ideals, at last, prevent the human potential for creativity and pleasure.

This riveting work asks fundamental questions about human nature: Who decides what is good or evil? How does morality shape our lives and direct our actions? Nietzsche’s inquiry into such deep matters makes readers confront their own moral beliefs, as well as consider the constructive possibilities that emerge in breaking down convention.

Twilight Of The Idols, 1888

In  Twilight of the Idols , published in 1888, Nietzsche launches a scathing critique of various aspects of Western culture. This work is characterized by its provocative, audacious style.

One of the central themes in  Twilight of the Idols  is the notion of “ ressentiment ,” which describes feelings of resentment towards those in power and towards creativity. Nietzsche says that this ressentiment breeds reactionary thoughts or concepts that desire to uproot those who are powerful and creative. According to him, such a mentality leads to societies where mediocrity is valued above excellence.

Another central theme in  Twilight of the Idols  is the rejection by Nietzsche of conventional notions regarding morality. He advocates for a reevaluation of moral standards, arguing for one’s embrace of an individualistic approach to morality where the action is guided by personal experience and desires rather than notions imposed on society by religion or notions handed down from adults.

Again, here, Nietzsche has employed his concept of “will to power.” He believes that all living creatures are propelled by an inherent desire for power which manifests itself collectively under the heading of striving for success or seeking control over others. According to Nietzsche, this will to power is at the basis of human nature and acts as a driving force behind individual development and achievement.

Twilight of the Idols  also discusses both Nietzsche’s critiques of Christianity as well as its direct influence on Western civilization. He is vehemently opposed to what he perceives as Christian nihilism that promotes self-denial and weakness in morals instead of life with its inherent joys and challenges.

The Antichrist, 1895

The Antichrist   was published in 1895. It is among Friedrich Nietzsche’s most controversial, as well as polemical, works. Nietzsche started conceiving this work in 1888. This period also saw Nietzsche suffer from a mental breakdown which marked the end of his active philosophic career. The book harks back to his rejection of Christianity and offers scathing critiques not only regarding its morality but also its teachings.

Not wasting any time at all, Nietzsche immediately launches into provocatively titled territory with the very title itself. By framing his work as “The Antichrist,” he identifies himself as an actual adversary to Christ. Still, Nietzsche is more interested in unearthing what he feels are the faults within Christian doctrine .

In substance,  The Antichrist  analyzes Christian values and argues that they damaged humanity. According to Nietzsche, the morality of Christianity is based on weakness, resentment, and self-denial. He maintains that this morality has weakened individuals and societies because it promotes an attitude of obedience to authority figures and suppresses natural human instincts and desires as well.

In  The Antichrist , Nietzsche also traces the origin of historical characters like Socrates and Paul of Tarsus. He portrays Socrates as the corruptor leading philosophy astray by stressing rationality over instinctual wisdom. Concerning the apostle Paul , he accuses him of imposing a distortion in Jesus’s teachings to create a religion that propagates slave morality—a value system centered on meekness and submissiveness.

To call  The Antichrist  a major work within Nietzsche’s philosophical career would be an understatement. Yet, it was extremely critiqued upon its release and remains controversial today. It constitutes a total condemnation of religious dogma and an incisive look at alternate perspectives on morality and human nature.

Ecce Homo, 1888

Ecce Homo , or “Behold the Man,” is Friedrich Nietzsche’s autobiography and last completed work. It was finally published in 1888 after being kept away for several years. In this amazing book, Nietzsche gives a far-reaching account of his life, beliefs, and achievements—all presented with his characteristic wit and brilliance.

The foundations of  Ecce Homo  start from Nietzsche’s wish to reflect on what he thought was his life’s work as well as an assessment of his philosophy. It is both a retrospective exploration and an explanation of various stages within his intellectual journey. Nietzsche felt that to understand the worth and importance of his ideas for humanity, he must first understand his own life.

Among the major themes addressed by  Ecce Homo  is a radical self-confident person who breaks conventional norms and values. It’s clear that Nietzsche considered himself a transformative figure whose philosophy’s purpose is to try and overthrow old beliefs/values and pave the way for new, positive values.

One theme Ecce Homo has in common with Nietzsche’s other works is another “attack” on Christianity. He blames Christianity for many societal ills because of the emphasis on weakness, pride, conformity, and denial of individual desires. Through vivid reflections on his earlier works, such as Thus Spoke Zarathustra and The Genealogy of Morality , he offers alternative visions for human existence founded on strength, creativity, power, and personal development.

Another prominent feature of Ecce Homo is the style that Nietzsche employs in writing. He uses an autobiographical approach rich with poetic language, aphorisms, irony, exaggeration, and sometimes even self-mockery. He challenges the reader to engage interactively with his ideas in a unique and thought-provoking way.

Nietzsche Contra Wagner, 1888

Nietzsche Contra Wagner was published in 1888 and is yet another fascinating late work that speculates upon the complex relationship between Friedrich Nietzsche and Richard Wagner . In this book, Nietzsche expresses a deep-seated discontentment and disillusionment with the music of Wagner as well as with Wagner himself.

The origin of Nietzsche Contra Wagner can be traced to their earlier close friendship; first, according to him, he had felt like a brother to Wagner—an artist who had broken all those shackles of conventional aesthetics. But in time, their ideological differences became increasingly apparent.

At its core, Nietzsche Contra Wagner is not merely an attack on the musical compositions of Wagner but an exploration of the profound philosophical disagreements between them. In Nietzsche’s eyes, in Wagner’s music, he found jubilation over decadence and affirmation of what he calls “the will to negate life.”

Nietzsche blames Wagner primarily for being swayed by the cultural pressures surrounding him and allowing his artistic vision to be diluted by outside influences. Nietzsche also blames the way in which Wagner employs massive musical grandeur as well as epic themes as a mere distraction from more “deeply existential” questions regarding human life.

Further, Nietzsche finds it deplorable what he sees as Wagner’s embracement of anti-Semitic sentiments and nationalist sentiments for personal gain—a factor that becomes rather meaningful considering that at this time period, Germany was seeing rising nationalism and anti-Semitism .

In Nietzsche Contra Wagner , we see how Friedrich Nietzsche wrestles with disillusionment—a realization that someone he used to respect very much has now become representative not only of artistic differences but also deeper moral conflicts.

The Birth Of Tragedy From The Spirit Of Music, 1872

In 1872, Friedrich Nietzsche published his first major work,  The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music. The book looks at the origin stories behind Greek tragic drama and how crucial it is in gaining an understanding of human existence.

Nietzsche begins this work by looking at the opposition between two artistic principles: the Apollonian and Dionysian . The Apollonian stands for order, harmony, and rationality, while the Dionysian embodies passion, ecstasy, and irrationality. For Nietzsche, ancient Greek tragedy has merged these two elements into substantial insights into life’s complexities.

For Nietzsche, Greek tragedy appeared as a reaction to the unbearable reality of existence. The human condition is characterized by suffering and chaos, but tragedy helps individuals transcend their suffering by offering aesthetic catharsis. Through music, dance, and poetry in tragedy’s mix, individuals can experience a temporary release from their personal struggles and even move outside toward something greater than themselves.

In Nietzsche’s opinion,  The Birth of Tragedy  was not simply artistic expression alone; it had wider cultural implications. He says that modern society has become too highly rationalized and is out of touch with its fundamental Dionysian instincts. In excluding this inner chaos from our lives, we have evolved a contrived order that chokes creativity and stifles real human experience.

The Birth of Tragedy  was met with much suspicion from the academic milieu at the time, yet it laid important foundations for Nietzsche’s later works. He introduces his conceptual framework for how art, culture, and the human condition relate to one another. By exploring where Greek tragedy originally came from, Nietzsche lays deep truths about existence and reveals just how there is that same tension between order and chaos that lies underneath every human endeavor.

Philosophy In The Tragic Age Of The Greeks, 1873

In the work  Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks , Friedrich Nietzsche talks about some of the philosophical ideas and outlooks of important characters during ancient Greek times. Published in 1873, these ancient Greek philosophers were to be presented to generations as flawless individuals whose views on life and existence were relevant and worthy of being respected and appreciated.

One philosopher explored is Thales , who proposed that water is the ultimate origin of all things. Three reasons are listed by Nietzsche why this idea should be considered a serious proposition: it offers a statement about the primal source of everything, it avoids mythical or fictional language, and it reflects a vision that sees all things as fundamentally interconnected.

Another figure that the philosopher considered is that of Anaximander , who believed in the emanation of existing things from an undifferentiated source ( apeiron ) and, ultimately, return to it. He thus held that individual existence is, by nature, unjust or has no worth in itself. His way of life was therefore reflected in his philosophy, marked with a dignified, solemn demeanor.

Heraclitus offered a contrasting perspective, emphasizing continuous change as the natural order rather than perceiving injustice or guilt in it. According to him, reality demonstrates a fixed regularity amongst the constant flux. Heraclitus wittingly made paradoxical statements based on his observations of a world conditioned by constant variations.

Parmenides , according to Nietzsche, departed from the views presented by Heraclitus with his doctrine that stressed pure logic above sensory experience. He asserted that being is immutable, while the senses are deceptive. Parmenides argued that true reality lies in the realm of thought, where logic prevails over the ever-changing nature of sensory perception. In Nietzsche’s interpretation, being as portrayed by Parmenides was a subjective instead of an objective truth.

Anaxagoras also agreed with Parmenides in denying nothingness and the principle of becoming. He believed that out of infinitely many distinct prime substances, all things originate and intermingle. Anaxagoras speaks about “ nous ”, a mind or intelligence, as the first cause behind all later changes in the universe. Rather than attributing ethical or moral properties to this creative force, Nietzsche saw it as a mechanical and arbitrary process driven by playfulness.

Untimely Meditations, 1876

Untimely Meditations , published in 1876, is a collection of four essays offering a restricted view into Nietzsche’s early philosophical development and thus preparing the way for his later works. Generally neglected as compared to his more recognized books like Thus Spoke Zarathustra or Beyond Good and Evil , Untimely Meditations remains a crucial resource for untangling Nietzsche’s evolving ideas.

In these essays, Nietzsche critically examines contemporary German culture and its conformity to societal expectations. He asserts that true intellectual development is only possible through the negation of prevailing conventions and a reassessment of values. Through different mediums, such as literature, philosophy, and history, Nietzsche seeks to challenge readers to reevaluate their assumptions about tradition, morality, and education.

The essay “David Strauss: The Confessor and the Writer” is one of the more interesting in this collection. In it, Nietzsche criticizes David Strauss’s book The Old Faith and the New for misguidedly trying to reconcile religion with rationality. He states that instead of seeking to harmonize opposing worldviews, intellects should engage in radical critique so as to unearth deeper truths.

Another interesting essay is “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life.” In that piece, Nietzsche again challenges conventional historical scholarship oriented on accumulating facts about the past. He asserts that history should serve life by providing inspiration, lessons, and models for present-day existence. His call for a more life-affirming approach to history emphasizes its potential impact on shaping individuals’ values and actions.

Through Untimely Meditations , Nietzsche articulates his acute wit together with deep philosophical revelations. Each essay is an embodied argument, which adds to the general theme in Nietzsche’s work of critiquing conformity within society and motivating one’s search for truth and authenticity.

Human All Too Human, 1878

We have already touched upon Nietzsche’s famous work  Human, All Too Human . However, there were two parts. The basic difference between  Human, All Too Human  (1878) and the subsequent edition published in 1880 lies in the additional content included in the later version.

In the 1878 edition, Nietzsche presents a collection of 638 aphorisms that range over topics from metaphysics to criticism of the Christian idea of good and evil. There are also reflections on religious worship and divine inspiration in art; social Darwinism discussion; analyses of the roles of men, women, and children in society; exploring state power; and finally, a section titled “Man Alone with Himself,” which turns inward to explore individuality.

Interestingly, in the version of  Human, All Too Human , published in 1880, Nietzsche updates what he originally wrote by adding two further parts: Part II —408 aphorisms and Part III –350aphorisms. These further digressions build upon themes introduced within the first part whilst seeing beyond into new territory.

Such additions cover art and culture, science and knowledge, morality, freedom, love and relationships, religion’s command over human life, death, suffering, and solitude, among other life experiences. The inclusion of these later aphorisms widens our perspective on Nietzsche’s philosophy since it gives us deeper insights into what he thought about the above topics.

In general terms, though both editions have some similarities with respect to their content—such as Nietzsche’s criticism against religion and societal norms—the extended versions found in later editions provide readers with a deeper exploration of his philosophical ideas.

The Will to Power (& Why It’s Problematic)

Finally, right in the wide territory of philosophical works of Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power towers as a lofty monolith. It is a book that goes into the depths of human nature and explores what lies behind our actions and ambitions. But with its undeniable allure comes a heavy dose of controversy and debate.

The Will to Power brings us, metaphorically speaking, on a journey through the search for power through Nietzsche’s exploration of the basic principle that underlies every form of human behavior: the challenge for power. This will to power is inborn in every facet of human life—from our most elementary instincts and loftiest aspirations. It is a force so powerful that it can mold not only individual lives but entire cultures and societies as well.

This manuscript fueled an intense debate and critique between scholars and readers alike. Some of them say that an emphasis on power within Nietzsche’s works supports selfishness and disregards ethical considerations, painting an even more terrifying picture of a world where ruthless ambition rules supreme.

Further, the book was compiled posthumously by Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche’s sister, who perhaps tampered with or misinterpreted his original manuscripts in order to further her pro-Nazi agenda. This has led some scholars to cast doubts about the truthfulness and originality of the work.

With these controversies, however, one could not deny the deep impact The Will to Power has had on philosophical discourse. It asks us to question our own desires for power and influence, thereby inviting us to introspect about our motivations and values.

Howsoever you may want to regard Nietzsche’s ideas presented in The Will to Power , what is clear—whether you embrace or challenge them—is that they remain entrancing catalysts of intellectual stimulation and spirited debate.

So, What Is Nietzsche’s Legacy?

In this “expedition,” we overviewed 13+1 books that shed more light on the intellectual development of Nietzsche. Every book in itself is significant as it offers a new perspective or dissects a different facet of his philosophy.

From “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” with prophetic language and teachings, to “Beyond Good and Evil,” which examines prevailing moralities, every work adds another layer to our understanding of his complex worldview.

In these books, the overwhelming themes are Nietzsche’s challenges to basic questions about human nature and morality, religion, and knowledge quest for and examining conventional wisdom. He makes us confront uncomfortable truths that make us question not only societal conventions but also prevailing norms.

Nietzsche is a controversial thinker—but one can never deny the lasting effect he has had on philosophy in general. His writings still dole out generations of thinkers that seek deep insights into the human condition.

Who Was Friedrich Nietzsche?

By Viktoriya Sus MA Philosophy Viktoriya is a writer from L’viv, Ukraine. She has knowledge about the main thinkers. In her free time, she loves to read books on philosophy and analyze whether ancient philosophical thought is relevant today. Besides writing, she loves traveling, learning new languages, and visiting museums.

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Fredrich Nietzsche battled through debilitating migraines, Insomnia, and a variety of diseases to produce works that would reverberate through the ages.

Article written by Israel Njoku

Degree in M.C.M with focus on Literature from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

His thoughts ranged from speculative treatises about art forms of the classical periods to charged polemics against contemporary western morality and religious expression. His books offered a diverse range of thoughts that displayed not just a poignant and insightful mind, but a versatile one. Nietzche’s books were far from commercial successes during his time, but they still evoked strong responses then as they do now.

Human, All too Human

Published in 1878, “ Human, All too Human” sees Friedrich Nietzsche adopts a new philosophical outlook that leads to his decisive break with Richard Wagner. While his previous works had emphasized metaphysical approaches to the meaning of life, Nietzsche now takes the opposite direction to favor more naturalistic or science-based answers. He was concerned now with the biological and physiological causal determinants of how things appear to people and why they think and behave the way they do.

Stylistically, this represents the beginning of Nietzsche’s use of aphorism- a use which began as a necessity due to his incapacity to concentrate long-term on an idea due to his migraine headaches but soon turned into an art form in itself. He also introduces his perspectivist position that every description of the world and its phenomena is shaped by the perspective of the observer or interpreter. 

Nietzsche’s new anti-religious philosophical outlook was repulsive to both Richard Wagner and his wife, Cosima Wagner, and that permanently ended their friendship. In 1886, Nietzsche would publish a second edition of the book, while adding two works titled, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims “, and “ The Wanderer and his Shadow “- both works dealing with the same themes as was found in the first edition. 

Daybreak, Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

In this work, Nietzsche begins what would turn out to be a long sustained attack on Christianity. Here he focuses on Christian morality, exposing its ugly and self-serving motivations. Nietzsche believes that Christianity attacks our natural impulses as immoral and in so doing makes people think low of themselves. 

Christianity then tries to offset this feeling of filthiness by otherizing non-Christians as a more filthy group, so the Christian can feel better about himself when he judges this group. This is quite ironic as Christianity supposedly prides itself on neighborly love. Nietzsche proposes a return to a moral framework that appreciates our natural instincts. 

The Gay Science

In this work, Nietzsche introduces some of his more popular principles, such as the theme that God was dead, Amor Fati, and eternal reoccurrence. In the Gay Science Nietzsche focused his attention on the intellectual outlook of the age, advocating lightheartedness as opposed to grim scholarship.

He continues his attacks on what he sees as the nefarious motives of dominance inherent within seemingly well-intentioned and self-sacrificing Christian virtues. He announces that the predominance of science as opposed to faith will leave our conventional moral values without any strong support, which would inevitably lead to nihilism. Nietzsche however does not advocate a return to faith, but rather provides hints as to how one might develop a naturalistic sense of meaning. 

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzche fictionalizes the real historical Persian prophet, Zoroaster, and uses him to address the crisis of nihilism in contemporary Europe. Zarathustra offers humanity an alternative to its risk-aversive, mediocre nature by proposing his ideal human, the übermensch, who is devoid of human timidity, continually aspires or greatness and lives a life of creative adventure.

In this book, Nietzche also uses Zarathustra to preach about done of his more important ideas like the idea of eternal recurrence and the Will to Power. Zarathustra remains Nietzsche’s most popular work and parodies the New Testament and Plato’s dialogues in a manner that places itself among the great works of history as showing a new, fundamental way of seeing and approaching Human life. 

Beyond Good and Evil, Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

In this work, Nietzsche begins his quest of revaluating all values. He identifies contemporary Western morality and philosophy as the sentimental and subjective opinions of philosophers steeped too much or affected by the Christian worldview. Nietzsche believes that their pretext to objectivity is artificial and that the world is in need of a new conception of values, or morality that moves beyond simplistic, judgemental moral categories. Nietzsche urges philosophers to wean themselves off this bias and instead create values through a process of honest, open-minded experimentation and a clear allegiance to evidence alone.

For Nietzsche, the current moral outlook is one inspired by Slave morality which devalues all behavior that is assertive and self-assured. A better morality will be based on Master Morality which takes one own’s way of living as the standard for goodness. A much better moral system would be one capable of seeing from the depths of Slave morality, and also from the heights of master morality. 

Finally, Nietzsche conceives of both slave morality and master morality as arising out of humanity’s will to power- or a basic drive to self-preservation and enhancement in life. Through these moral systems, humans in different groups aspire to power, to strength. 

On the Genealogy of Morals

In this book, Nietzche offers a history of the development of both Slave and Master moralities. He traces their origin in the social situations of history, with the upper and lower classes developing moral systems that reflect their station, temperament, and most of all, abilities. Master morality reflects the orientation of those who are masters of their own lives, while the lack of means to exert themselves on their environment as freely and as capably as the master moralists confine the lower classes to envision a moral outlook that sees the activities of the powerful as bad and sinful. 

Next Nietzsche links the idea of bad conscience in humans to a slave morality-induced predisposition to cruelty, here turned against oneself. Humans are cruel by nature and so transfer these values to their God by making him vindictive. They turn it inward and ironically gain fulfillment from punishing themselves to satiate this primal motivation. It is out of this instinct that humanity’s ascetic predisposition cones forth- a predisposition that ordinarily should be at odds with our natural desires for pleasures. Nietzsche is able to see this ascetic sentiment in likely targets like Christianity as much as he sees it in a lot of seemingly unlikely professions and vocations like the scientific quest of truth. 

The Antichrist

This work offers a historical and psychological account of the history of Christianity that exposes its falseness, as well as its anti-life and resentful motivations. Modern Christianity is a misinterpretation and falsification of Christ’s original gospel by the likes of Paul who instead infused a doctrine and metaphysical system that directs revenge against the Jewish upper class, as well as against the individual himself whose barbaric and cruel instincts finds in himself an outlet for expression. 

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About Israel Njoku

Israel loves to delve into rigorous analysis of themes with broader implications. As a passionate book lover and reviewer, Israel aims to contribute meaningful insights into broader discussions.

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Nietzsche’s Life and Works

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher of the late 19th century who challenged the foundations of Christianity and traditional morality. He was interested in the enhancement of individual and cultural health, and believed in life, creativity, power, and down-to-earth realities, rather than those situated in a world beyond. Central to his philosophy is the idea of “life-affirmation,” which involves an honest questioning of all doctrines that drain life’s expansive energies, however socially prevalent and morally entrenched those views might be. Often referred to as one of the first existentialist philosophers along with Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), Nietzsche’s revitalizing philosophy has inspired leading figures in all walks of cultural life, including dancers, poets, novelists, painters, psychologists, philosophers, sociologists and social revolutionaries.

1. Life: 1844–1900

2. early writings: 1872–1876, 3. middle-period writings: 1878–1882, 4. later-period writings: 1883–1887, 5. final writings of 1888, 6. nietzsche’s unpublished notebooks, 7. nietzsche’s influence upon 20th century thought, other internet resources, related entries.

In the small German village of Röcken bei Lützen, located in a rural farmland area about 20 miles southwest of Leipzig, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born at approximately 10:00 a.m. on October 15, 1844. The date coincided with the 49th birthday of the Prussian King, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, after whom Nietzsche was named, and who had been responsible for Nietzsche’s father’s appointment as Röcken’s town pastor.

Nietzsche’s uncle and grandfathers were also Lutheran ministers, and his paternal grandfather, Friedrich August Ludwig Nietzsche (1756–1826), was further distinguished as a Protestant scholar, one of whose books (1796) affirmed the “everlasting survival of Christianity.” Nietzsche’s grandparents on both sides were from the Province of Saxony, with his paternal grandfather, paternal grandmother (Erdmuthe Dorothea Krause, 1778–1856), maternal grandfather (David Ernst Ohler, 1787–1859) and maternal grandmother (Johanna Elisabeth Wilhelmine Hahn, 1794–1876) having been born respectively in the small towns of Bibra (just south of Jena), Reichenbach (southeast of Jena), Zeitz (between Jena and Leipzig), and Wehlitz (just northwest of Leipzig).

When Nietzsche was nearly 5 years old, his father, Karl Ludwig Nietzsche (1813–1849) died from a brain ailment (July 30, 1849) and the death of Nietzsche’s two-year-old brother, Ludwig Joseph, followed traumatically six months later (January 4, 1850). Having been living only yards away from Röcken’s church in the house reserved for the pastor and his family, the Nietzsche family left their home soon after Karl Ludwig’s death. They moved to nearby Naumburg an der Saale, where Nietzsche (called “Fritz” by his family) lived with his mother, Franziska (1826–1897), his grandmother, Erdmuthe, his father’s two sisters, Auguste and Rosalie (d. 1855 and 1867, respectively), and his younger sister, Therese Elisabeth Alexandra (1846–1935).

From the ages of 14 to 19 (1858–1864), Nietzsche attended a first-rate boarding school, Schulpforta, located about 4km from his home in Naumburg, where he prepared for university studies. The school’s rigid educational atmosphere was reflected in its long history as a former Cistercian monastery (1137–1540), with buildings that included a 12th century Romanesque chapel and a 13th century Gothic church. At Schulpforta—a school whose alumni included the German Idealist philosopher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) and the philologist, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff (1848–1931)—Nietzsche met his lifelong friend, Paul Deussen (1845–1919), who was confirmed at Nietzsche’s side in 1861, and who was to become an Orientalist, historian of philosophy, and in 1911, the founder of the Schopenhauer Society. During his summers in Naumburg, Nietzsche led a small music and literature club named “Germania,” and became acquainted with Richard Wagner’s music through the club’s subscription to the Zeitschrift für Musik. The teenage Nietzsche also read the German romantic writings of Friedrich Hölderlin and Jean-Paul Richter, along with David Strauss’s controversial and demythologizing Life of Jesus Critically Examined ( Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet , 1848).

After graduating from Schulpforta, Nietzsche entered the University of Bonn in 1864 as a theology and philology student, and his interests soon gravitated more exclusively towards philology—a discipline which then centered upon the interpretation of classical and biblical texts. As a student of philology, Nietzsche attended lectures by Otto Jahn (1813–1869) and Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl (1806–1876). Jahn was a biographer of Mozart who had studied at the University of Berlin under Karl Lachmann (1793–1851)—a philologist known both for his studies of the Roman philosopher, Lucretius (ca. 99–55 BCE), and for having developed the genealogical, or stemmatic, method in textual recension; Ritschl was a classics scholar whose work centered on the Roman comic poet, Plautus (254–184 BCE).

Inspired by Ritschl, and following him to the University of Leipzig in 1865—an institution located closer to Nietzsche’s hometown of Naumburg—Nietzsche quickly established his own academic reputation through his published essays on two 6th century BCE poets, Theognis and Simonides, as well as on Aristotle. In Leipzig, he developed a close friendship with Erwin Rohde (1845–1898), a fellow philology student and future philologist, with whom he would correspond extensively in later years. Momentous for Nietzsche in 1865 was his accidental discovery of Arthur Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation (1818) in a local bookstore. He was then 21. Schopenhauer’s atheistic and turbulent vision of the world, in conjunction with his high praise of music as an art form captured Nietzsche’s imagination, and to this day, the extent to which the “cadaverous perfume” of Schopenhauer’s world-view continued to permeate Nietzsche’s mature thought remains a matter of scholarly debate. After discovering Schopenhauer, Nietzsche read F.A. Lange’s newly-published History of Materialism and Critique of its Present Significance (1866)—a work that criticizes materialist theories from the standpoint of Kant’s critique of metaphysics, and that attracted Nietzsche’s interest for its view that metaphysical speculation is an expression of poetic illusion.

In 1867, as he approached the age of 23, Nietzsche entered his required military service and was assigned to an equestrian field artillery regiment close to Naumburg, during which time he lived at home with his mother. While attempting to leap-mount into the saddle, he suffered a serious chest injury and was put on sick leave after his chest wound refused to heal. He returned shortly thereafter to the University of Leipzig, and in November of 1868, met the composer Richard Wagner (1813–1883) at the home of Hermann Brockhaus (1806–1877), an Orientalist who was married to Wagner’s sister, Ottilie. Brockhaus was himself a specialist in Sanskrit and Persian whose publications included (1850) an edition of the Vendidad Sade —a text of the Zoroastrian religion, whose prophet was Zarathustra (Zoroaster).

Wagner and Nietzsche shared an enthusiasm for Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche—who had been composing piano, choral and orchestral music since he was a teenager—admired Wagner for his musical genius, magnetic personality and cultural influence. Wagner was the same age Nietzsche’s father would have been, and he had also attended the University of Leipzig many years before. The Nietzsche-Wagner relationship was quasi-familial and sometimes-stormy, and it affected Nietzsche deeply. Early on, he could write (in 1869) that his friendship with Wagner was the “greatest achievement” [ die größte Errungenschaft ] of his life, and he was still energetically engaged in appraising and pondering Wagner’s cultural significance twenty years later at the end of his writing life. But Nietzsche broke with Wagner personally and intellectually in the late 1870s, and his assessments became increasingly negative (and more and more explicit) as time went on. Nevertheless, even after their break, Nietzsche was still reminiscing wistfully in 1882 about how his days with Wagner had been the best of his life. During the months surrounding Nietzsche’s initial meeting with Wagner, Ritschl recommended Nietzsche for a position on the classical philology faculty at the University of Basel. The Swiss university offered Nietzsche the professorial position, and he began teaching there in May, 1869, at the age of 24.

At Basel, Nietzsche’s satisfaction with his life among his philology colleagues was limited, and he established closer intellectual ties to the historians Franz Overbeck (1837–1905) and Jacob Burkhardt (1818–1897), whose lectures he attended. Overbeck—who roomed for five years in the same house as Nietzsche—became Nietzsche’s close and enduring friend, exchanging many letters with him over the years, and rushing to Nietzsche’s assistance in Turin immediately after his devastating collapse in 1889. Nietzsche also cultivated his friendship with Richard Wagner and visited him often at his Swiss home in Tribschen, a small town near Lucerne. Never in outstanding health, further complications arose from Nietzsche’s August-October 1870 service as a 25-year-old hospital attendant during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), where he participated in the siege of Metz. He witnessed the traumatic effects of battle, took close care of wounded soldiers, and contracted diphtheria and dysentery.

Nietzsche’s enthusiasm for Schopenhauer, his studies in classical philology, his inspiration from Wagner, his reading of Lange, his interests in health, his professional need to prove himself as a young academic, and his frustration with the contemporary German culture, all coalesced in his first book— The Birth of Tragedy (1872)—which was published in January 1872 when Nietzsche was 27. Wagner showered the book with praise, but a vitriolic, painfully-memorable and yet authoritative critical reaction by Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff—who later became one of Germany’s leading philologists—immediately dampened the book’s reception, not to mention Nietzsche’s class enrollments in Basel.

Wilamowitz-Möllendorff came from an aristocratic family of distant Polish descent and knew Nietzsche as a student at Schulpforta. In his critique, he referred to Nietzsche as a disgrace to Schulpforta, and said that in light of the latter’s prophetic, soothsaying, exaggerated and historically uninformed style of writing, Nietzsche should instead “gather tigers and panthers about his knees, but not the youth of Germany.” It is intriguing that in Thus Spoke Zarathustra , written thirteen years later, Nietzsche invokes the comparable imagery of a lion nuzzling warmly at the knees of Zarathustra in the book’s concluding and inspirational scene, as if to acknowledge that his proper audience is, indeed, not a set of university professors.

As Nietzsche continued his residence in Switzerland between 1872 and 1879, he often visited Wagner at his new (1872) home in Bayreuth, Germany. In 1873, he met Paul Rée (1849–1901), who, while living in close company with Nietzsche in Sorrento during the autumn of 1876, would write On the Origin of Moral Feelings (1877). During this time, Nietzsche completed a series of four studies on contemporary German culture—the Unfashionable Observations (1873–76)—which focus respectively upon (1) the historian of religion and culture critic, David Strauss, (2) issues concerning the social value of historiography, (3) Arthur Schopenhauer and (4) Richard Wagner, both as heroic inspirations for new cultural standards.

Near the end of his university career, Nietzsche completed Human, All-Too-Human (1878)—a book that marks a turning point in his philosophical style and that, while reinforcing his friendship with Rée, also ends his friendship with the anti-Semitic Wagner, who comes under attack in a thinly-disguised characterization of “the artist.” Despite the damage done by the unflattering review of The Birth of Tragedy , Nietzsche remained respected in his professorial position in Basel, but his deteriorating health, which led to migraine headaches, eyesight problems and vomiting, necessitated his resignation from the university in June, 1879, at age 34. At this point, he had been a university professor for ten years, and had just less than another ten years of productive intellectual life remaining.

From 1880 until his collapse in January 1889, Nietzsche led a wandering, Roma-like existence as a stateless person (having given up his German citizenship, and not having acquired Swiss citizenship), circling almost annually between his mother’s house in Naumburg and various French, Swiss, German and Italian cities. His travels took him through the Mediterranean seaside city of Nice (during the winters), the Swiss alpine village of Sils-Maria (during the summers, located near the present-day ski resort of St. Moritz), Leipzig (where he had attended university, and had been hoping to resume his teaching career in 1883), Turin, Genoa, Recoaro, Messina, Rapallo, Florence, Venice, and Rome, never residing in any place longer than several months at a time.

On a visit to Rome in 1882, Nietzsche, now at age thirty-seven, met Lou von Salomé (1861–1937), a 21 year old Russian woman who was studying philosophy and theology in Zurich. They had an active intellectual relationship and Nietzsche appears to have fallen in love with her. Their relationship did not develop on a romantic level, and their friendship took a turn for the worse when Salomé and Paul Rée left Nietzsche and moved to Berlin. In the years to follow, Salomé would write a book about Nietzsche ( Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken [Friedrich Nietzsche in his Works]) in 1894, and would later become an associate of Sigmund Freud, who she met in 1911. Salomé’s insightful book on Nietzsche is one of the first to propose the division of Nietzsche’s writings into early, middle, and late periods.

These nomadic years were the occasion of Nietzsche’s main works, among which are Daybreak (1881), The Gay Science (1882/1887), Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–85), Beyond Good and Evil (1886), and On the Genealogy of Morals (1887). Nietzsche’s final active year, 1888, saw the completion of The Case of Wagner (May-August 1888), Twilight of the Idols (August-September 1888), The Antichrist (September 1888), Ecce Homo (October-November 1888) and Nietzsche Contra Wagner (December 1888).

On the morning of January 3, 1889, while in Turin, Nietzsche experienced a mental breakdown which left him an invalid for the rest of his life. Coincidentally, on virtually the same date, viz., January 4, his little brother, Joseph, had died many years before. Nietzsche, upon witnessing a horse being whipped by a coachman at the Piazza Carlo Alberto—although this episode with the horse could be anecdotal—threw his arms around the horse’s neck and collapsed in the plaza, never to return to full sanity.

Some argue that Nietzsche was afflicted with a syphilitic infection (this was the original diagnosis of the doctors in Basel and Jena) contracted either while he was a student or while he was serving as a hospital attendant during the Franco-Prussian War; some claim that his use of chloral hydrate, a drug which he had been using as a sedative, undermined his already-weakened nervous system; some speculate that Nietzsche’s collapse was due to a brain disease he inherited from his father; some maintain that a mental illness gradually drove him insane; some maintain that he suffered from a slow-growing, frontal cranial base tumor; some maintain that he suffered from CADASIL syndrome, a hereditary stroke disorder; some maintain that Nietzsche suffered from a tumor on the surface of the brain growing behind his right eye. The exact cause of Nietzsche’s incapacitation remains unclear. That he had an extraordinarily sensitive nervous constitution and took an assortment of medications is well-documented as a more general fact. To complicate matters of interpretation, Nietzsche states in a letter from April 1888 that he never had any symptoms of a mental disorder.

During his creative years, Nietzsche struggled to bring his writings into print and never doubted that his books would have a lasting cultural effect. He did not live long enough to experience his world-historical influence, but he had a brief glimpse of his growing intellectual importance in discovering that he was the subject of 1888 lectures given by Georg Brandes (Georg Morris Cohen) at the University of Copenhagen, to whom he directed the above April 1888 correspondence, and from whom he received a recommendation to read Kierkegaard’s works. Nietzsche’s collapse, however, followed soon thereafter.

After a brief hospitalization in Basel, he spent 1889 in a sanatorium in Jena at the Binswanger Clinic, and in March 1890 his mother took him back home to Naumburg, where he lived under her care for the next seven years in the house he knew as a youngster. After his mother’s death in 1897, his sister Elisabeth—having returned home from Paraguay in 1893, where she had been working since 1886 with her husband Bernhard Förster to establish an Aryan, anti-Semitic German colony called “New Germany” (“Nueva Germania”)—assumed responsibility for Nietzsche’s welfare. In an effort to promote her brother’s philosophy, she rented the “Villa Silberblick,” a large house in Weimar, and moved both Nietzsche and his collected manuscripts to the residence. This became the new home of the Nietzsche Archives (which had been located at the family home for the three years preceding), where Elisabeth received visitors who wanted to observe the now-incapacitated philosopher.

On August 25, 1900, Nietzsche died in the villa as he approached his 56th year, apparently of pneumonia in combination with a stroke. His body was then transported to the family gravesite directly beside the church in Röcken bei Lützen, where his mother and sister now also rest. The Villa Silberblick was eventually turned into a museum, and since 1950, Nietzsche’s manuscripts have been located in Weimar at the Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv

Nietzsche’s first book was published in 1872 and was entitled The Birth of Tragedy, Out of the Spirit of Music ( Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik ). Overall, it sets forth a more visceral and existential alternative to the late 18th/early 19th century understanding of Greek culture—an understanding largely inspired by Johann Winckelmann’s History of Ancient Art (1764)—which, grounded on the aesthetics of classical sculpture, hailed ancient Greece as the epitome of noble simplicity, calm grandeur, clear blue skies, and rational serenity. In 1886, Nietzsche’s book was reissued with a revised title, The Birth of Tragedy, Or: Hellenism and Pessimism ( Die Geburt der Tragödie, Oder: Griechentum und Pessimismus ), along with a lucid and revealing prefatory essay—“An Attempt at Self-Criticism”—which expresses Nietzsche’s own critical reflections on the book, looking back fourteen years. Although he remained proud of the work, Nietzsche also describes it as questionable, strange and almost inaccessible, filled with Kantian and Schopenhauerian formulas that were inherently at odds with the new valuations he was trying to express.

Having by this time absorbed the Schopenhauerian view that non-rational forces reside at the foundation of all creativity and of reality itself, and that these forces are artistically best conveyed in music, Nietzsche identifies a strongly instinctual, wild, amoral, “Dionysian” energy within pre-Socratic Greek culture as an essentially creative and healthy force, locating its prime expression in the tragic chorus, and constituting the very life of the tragedy. Surveying the history of Western culture since the time of the Greeks, Nietzsche laments over how this Dionysian, creative energy had been submerged and weakened as it became overshadowed by the “Apollonian” forces of logical order and stiff sobriety. He concludes that European culture since the time of Socrates has remained one-sidedly Apollonian, repressed, scientific, and relatively unhealthy. Wagner expressed similar sentiments in his 1849 essay “Art and Revolution,” as he described Western society as having been on the decline since the times of the ancient Greeks.

As a means towards a cultural rebirth, Nietzsche advocates in contemporary life, the resurrection and fuller release of Dionysian artistic energies—those which he associates with primordial creativity, joy in existence and ultimate truth. The seeds of this liberating rebirth Nietzsche perceives in the German music of his time (viz., Bach, Beethoven and especially Wagner), and the concluding part of The Birth of Tragedy , in effect, adulates the emerging German artistic, tragic spirit as the potential savior of European culture. As one of his early books, The Birth of Tragedy has a strong Wagnerian and Schopenhauerian flavor, and scholars disagree about the extent to which Nietzsche departs from Schopenhauer in this work and in later works.

Some regard Nietzsche’s 1873 unpublished essay, “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” (“ Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinn ”) as a keystone in his thought; some believe that it is a peripheral, conflicted and non-representative fragment in his writings. In this essay, Nietzsche rejects the idea of universal constants, and claims, presumably as a truth, that what we call “truth” is only “a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms.” His view at this time is that arbitrariness prevails within human experience: concepts originate via the transformation of nerve stimuli into images, and “truth” is nothing more than the invention of fixed conventions for practical purposes, especially those of repose, security and consistency. Nietzsche regards our “knowledge” as human, all-too-human, mostly a matter of self-deception that issues from a deep-seated exercise of metaphorical thought. Viewing our existence from a vast and sobering distance, Nietzsche further notes that there was an eternity before human beings came into existence, and believes that after humanity dies out, nothing significant will have changed in the great scheme of things.

Between 1873 and 1876, Nietzsche wrote the Unfashionable Observations ( Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen , also translated as Untimely Meditations or Thoughts Out of Season ). These are four (of a projected, but never completed, thirteen) studies concerned with the quality of European, and especially German, culture during Nietzsche’s time. They are unfashionable and nonconformist (or “untimely,” or “unmodern,” or “out of place”) insofar as Nietzsche regarded his standpoint as culture-critic to be in tension with the self-congratulatory spirit of the times. The four studies were: David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer ( David Strauss, der Bekenner und der Schriftsteller , 1873); On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life ( Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben , 1874); Schopenhauer as Educator ( Schopenhauer als Erzieher , 1874); Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (1876).

The first of these attacks David Strauss, whose popular six-edition book, The Old and the New Faith: A Confession (1871) encapsulated for Nietzsche the general cultural atmosphere in Germany. Responding to Strauss’s advocacy of a “new faith” grounded upon a scientifically-determined universal mechanism—one, however, lubricated by the optimistic, “soothing oil” of historical progress—Nietzsche criticizes Strauss’s view as a vulgar and dismal sign of cultural degeneracy. Nietzsche’s friend, Overbeck, in his contemporaneous writings, also adopted a critical attitude towards Strauss. The second “untimely meditation” surveys alternative ways to write history, and discusses how these ways could contribute to a society’s health. Here Nietzsche claims that the principle of “life” is a more pressing and higher concern than that of “knowledge,” and that the quest for knowledge should serve the interests of life. This parallels how, in The Birth of Tragedy , Nietzsche had looked at art through the perspective of life and foreshadows Nietzsche’s hallmark theme of “life-affirmation” in his later works.

The third and fourth studies—on Schopenhauer and Wagner, respectively—address how these two thinkers, as paradigms of philosophic and artistic genius, hold the potential to inspire a stronger, healthier and livelier German culture. Nietzsche states here that we all have a duty to help nature complete its goal of producing the highest examples of the human being—these will be the “new redeemers”—which he recognizes in superb instances of the philosopher, the artist and the saint (“Schopenhauer as Educator,” Section 5). These celebratory studies on Schopenhauer and Wagner reveal how, as a recurring feature of Nietzsche’s thought, he presents us with some higher type of character—he offers different models of heroic characters as the years go by—as an ideal towards which he would have his best readers aspire.

Nietzsche completed Human, All-Too-Human in 1878, supplementing this with a second part in 1879, Mixed Opinions and Maxims ( Vermischte Meinungen und Sprüche ), and a third part in 1880, The Wanderer and his Shadow ( Der Wanderer und sein Schatten ). The three parts were published together in 1886 as Human All-Too-Human, A Book for Free Spirits ( Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, Ein Buch für freie Geister ). Reluctant to construct a philosophical “system,” and sensitive to the importance of style in philosophic writing, Nietzsche composed these works as a series of several hundred short passages and aphorisms—concise condensations of his assorted insights—whose typical length ranges from a line or two to a page or two. Here, he often reflects upon cultural and psychological phenomena by connecting them to individuals’ organic and physiological constitutions. The idea of power (for which he would later become known) sporadically appears as an explanatory principle, but he tends at this time to invoke hedonistic considerations of pleasure and pain in his explanations of cultural and psychological phenomena. Given his harsh criticisms of hedonism and utilitarianism in later works (e.g., Thus Spoke Zarathustra , re: “the Last Man”), Human All-Too-Human appears to many readers as an uncharacteristic work, more science- than art-inspired in its approach to health, where Nietzsche was struggling to break free of Wagner’s spell, and which, presupposing a fundamentally hedonistic moral psychology, does not fully embody the pain-and-power-centered approach that he later developed.

In Daybreak: Reflections on Moral Prejudices ( Morgenröte. Gedanken über die moralischen Vorurteile , 1881), Nietzsche continues writing in his aphoristic style, but he marks a new beginning by accentuating as opposed to pleasure, the importance of the “feeling of power” in his understanding of human, and especially of so-called “moral” behavior. Always having been interested in the nature of health, his emerging references to power stem from his earlier efforts to discover the secret of the ancient Greeks’ outstanding health, which he had regarded as the effects of how “ agon ” (i.e., competition, one-upmanship, or contest, as conceived in his 1872 essay, “Homer’s Contest”) permeated their cultural attitudes. In this respect, Daybreak contains the seeds of Nietzsche’s doctrine of the “will to power”—a doctrine that appears explicitly for the first time two years later in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–85). Daybreak is also one of Nietzsche’s clearest, intellectually calmest, and most intimate, volumes, providing many social-psychological insights in conjunction with some of his first sustained critical reflections on the cultural relativity at the basis of Christian moral evaluations. In this book—as he remarks retrospectively in Ecce Homo (1888)—Nietzsche begins his “crusade [ Feldzug ] against morality.”

In a more well-known aphoristic work, The Gay Science ( Die fröhliche Wissenschaft , 1882)—whose title was inspired by the troubadour songs of southern-French Provence (1100–1300)—Nietzsche sets forth some of the existential ideas for which he became famous, namely, the proclamation that “God is dead” and the doctrine of eternal recurrence—a doctrine that attends to how people of different levels of health are likely to react to the prospect of being reborn, over and over again, to replay life’s experience exactly as before in every pleasurable and painful sequence of detail. Nietzsche’s atheism—his account of “God’s murder” (section 125)—expresses in a literary manner, his philosophical condemnation of all absolute perspectives and values. His atheism also aims to redirect people’s attention to their inherent freedom, the presently-existing world, and away from escapist, pain-relieving, heavenly otherworlds.

To a similar end, Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence (sections 285 and 341) serves to draw attention away from all worlds other than the one in which we presently live, since eternal recurrence precludes the possibility of any final escape from the present world. The doctrine also functions as a measure for judging someone’s overall psychological strength and mental health, since Nietzsche believed that the doctrine of eternal recurrence was the hardest world-view to affirm. There are some differences of scholarly opinion concerning whether Nietzsche primarily intends this doctrine to describe a serious metaphysical theory, or whether he is offering merely one way to interpret the world among many others, which if adopted therapeutically as a psychologically healthy myth, can help us become stronger.

In 1887, The Gay Science was reissued with an important preface, an additional fifth Book, and an appendix of songs, reminiscent of the troubadours.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, A Book for All and None ( Also Sprach Zarathustra, Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen , 1883–85), is one of Nietzsche’s most famous works, and Nietzsche regarded it as among his most significant. It is a manifesto of personal self-overcoming, and a guidebook for others towards the same revitalizing end. Thirty years after its initial publication, 150,000 copies of the work were printed by the German government and issued during WWI as inspirational reading to the young soldiers, along with the Bible. Though Thus Spoke Zarathustra is antagonistic to the Judeo-Christian world-view, its poetic and prophetic style relies upon many, often inverted, Old and New Testament allusions. Nietzsche also filled the work with nature metaphors, almost in the spirit of pre-Socratic naturalist philosophy, which invoke animals, earth, air, fire, water, celestial bodies, plants, all in the service of describing the spiritual development of Zarathustra, a solitary, reflective, exceedingly strong-willed, sage-like, laughing and dancing voice of heroic self-mastery who, accompanied by a proud, sharp-eyed eagle and a wise snake, envisions a mode of psychologically healthier being beyond the common human condition. Nietzsche refers to this higher mode of being as “superhuman” ( übermenschlich ), and associates the doctrine of eternal recurrence—a doctrine for only the healthiest who can love life in its entirety—with this spiritual standpoint, in relation to which all-too-often downhearted, all-too-commonly-human attitudes stand as a mere bridge to be crossed and overcome.

Within Nietzsche’s corpus, Thus Spoke Zarathustra has a controversial place, owing mainly to its peculiar literary style. Nietzsche speaks in parables and short narratives populated by fictional characters—“the hunchback,” “the ugliest man,” “the soothsayer,” “the saint,” “the tightrope walker,” “the jester,” and “the Last Man,” to name a few—leaving their philosophical import open to a variety of interpretations. One of Nietzsche’s most well-known and morally troubling figures—the superhuman—also appears substantially only in this work, rendering it questionable to some interpreters whether this ideal of supreme human health is central to Nietzsche’s thought as a whole. There is also some interpretive uncertainty about whether the work, which was written across the span of three years, properly ends triumphantly at the conclusion of the Third Part, thus situating the psychologically complex Fourth Part as a question-raising supplement, or whether the book’s narrative moves smoothly and progressively across the entire four parts.

Beyond Good and Evil, Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future ( Jenseits von Gut und Böse. Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft , 1886) is arguably a rethinking of Human, All-too-Human , since their respective tables of contents and sequence of themes loosely correspond to one another. In Beyond Good and Evil , Nietzsche identifies imagination, self-assertion, danger, originality and the “creation of values” as qualities of genuine philosophers, as opposed to mere scholars engaged in positive research in the sciences and humanities, or the dusty classification of philosophical outlooks. Nietzsche takes aim at some of the world’s great philosophers, who ground their outlooks wholeheartedly upon concepts such as “self-consciousness,” “free will,” and “either/or” bipolar thinking.

Nietzsche alternatively philosophizes from the perspective of life located beyond good and evil, and challenges the entrenched moral idea that exploitation, domination, injury to the weak, destruction and appropriation are universally objectionable behaviors. Above all, he believes that living things aim to discharge their strength and express their “will to power”—a pouring-out of expansive energy as if one were like a perpetually-shining sun that, quite naturally, can entail danger, pain, lies, deception and masks. Here, “will” is not an inner emptiness, lack, feeling of deficiency, or constant drive for satisfaction, but is a fountain of constantly-swelling energy, life, and power.

As he views things from the perspective of life, Nietzsche further denies that there is a universal morality applicable indiscriminately to all human beings, and instead designates a series of moralities in an order of rank that ascends from the plebeian to the noble: some moralities are more suitable for subordinate roles; some are more appropriate for dominating and leading social roles. What counts as a preferable and legitimate action depends upon the kind of person one is. The deciding factor is whether one is weaker, sicker and on the decline, or whether one is healthier, more powerful and overflowing with life.

On the Genealogy of Morals, A Polemic ( Zur Genealogie der Moral, Eine Streitschrift , 1887) is composed of three sustained essays that advance the critique of Christianity expressed in Beyond Good and Evil . The first essay continues the discussion of master morality versus servant morality, and maintains that the traditional ideals set forth as holy and morally good within Christian morality are products of self-deception, since they were forged in the bad air of revenge, resentment, hatred, impotence, and cowardice. In this essay, as well as the next, Nietzsche’s controversial references to the “blond beast” in connection with master morality also appear. In the second essay, Nietzsche continues with an account of how feelings of guilt, or the “bad conscience,” arise merely as a consequence of an unhealthy Christian morality that turns an evil eye towards our natural inclinations. He also discusses how punishment, conceived as the infliction of pain upon someone in proportion to their offense, is likely to have been grounded in the contractual economic relationship between creditor and debtor, i.e., in business relationships. In the third essay, Nietzsche focusses upon the truth-oriented ascetic ideals that underlie and inform prevailing styles of art, religion and philosophy, and he offers a particularly scathing critique of the priesthood: the priests are allegedly a group of weak people who shepherd even weaker people as a way to experience power for themselves. The third essay also contains one of Nietzsche’s clearest expressions of “perspectivism” (section 12)—the idea that there is no absolute, “God’s eye” standpoint from which one can survey everything that is.

On the Genealogy of Morals is Nietzsche’s “polemic,” i.e., attack, against the assumptions and methods (which, incidentally, are still popular) characteristic of works such as Paul Rée’s The Origin of the Moral Sensations (1877). Inspired by utilitarianism and Darwinism, Rée offers a naturalistic account of our moral values, especially altruism, but by Nietzsche’s lights, does not question the value of the moral values themselves. In the Genealogy , Nietzsche offers a competing account of the origin of moral values, aiming to reveal their life-negating foundations and functions.

Nietzsche ultimately advocates valuations that issue from a self-confident, self-reinforcing, self-governing, creative and commanding attitude, as opposed to those that issue from reactive attitudes that determine values more mechanically and subordinatingly to those who are inherently more powerful. For Nietzsche, those who prefer to think in terms of “good vs. bad” exemplify the former, leading and superior mentality, and those who think in terms of “good vs. evil,” exemplify the latter, inferior and subservient mentality. From the standpoint of a leader, in the appropriate circumstances it is good to be able to inflict pain and instil fear among those who are led, and bad not to be able to do so. From the standpoint of those who are led, the infliction of pain and instillation of fear upon subordinates does not appear typically to be good at all, but rather evil.

The Case of Wagner, A Musician’s Problem ( Der Fall Wagner, Ein Musikanten-Problem , May-August 1888), contrasts sharply with Nietzsche’s laudatory portrayal of Wagner in The Birth of Tragedy (1872), and compares well with his 1873 meditation on David Strauss in its unbridled attack on a popular cultural figure. In The Case of Wagner , Nietzsche “declares war” upon Richard Wagner, whose music is characterized as the epitome of modern cultural achievement, but also crucially as sick and decadent. The work is a brilliant display of Nietzsche’s talents as a music critic, and includes memorable ridicule of Wagner’s theatrical style, reflections on redemption via art, a “physiology of art,” and discussion of the virtues associated, respectively, with ascending and descending life energies. As the therapeutic inversion and antithesis of Wagner’s debilitatingly serious music, Nietzsche refers us to Georges Bizet (1838–1875) whose music he finds cheerful, revitalizing, redeeming and light-hearted. Wagner himself had some years earlier (1850) condemned Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) for having confounded the public’s taste in music. Nietzsche, writing almost thirty years later, here accuses Wagner of having done the same.

The title, Twilight of the Idols, or How One Philosophizes with a Hammer ( Götzen-Dämmerung, oder Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert , August-September 1888), word-plays upon Wagner’s opera, The Twilight of the Gods ( Die Götterdämmerung ). Nietzsche reiterates and elaborates some of the criticisms of Socrates, Plato, Kant and Christianity found in earlier works, criticizes the then-contemporary German culture as being unsophisticated and too-full of beer, and shoots some disapproving arrows at key French, British, and Italian cultural figures such as Rousseau, Hugo, Sand, Michelet, Zola, Renan, Carlyle, Mill, Eliot, Darwin, and Dante. In contrast to these alleged representatives of cultural decadence, Nietzsche applauds Caesar, Napoleon, Goethe, Dostoevsky, Thucydides and the Sophists as healthier and stronger types. The phrase “to philosophize with a hammer” primarily signifies a way to test idols by tapping on them lightly; one “sounds them out” to determine whether they are hollow, or intact, etc., as physician would use a percussion hammer upon the abdomen as a diagnostic instrument.

In The Antichrist, Curse on Christianity ( Der Antichrist. Fluch auf das Christentum , September 1888 [published 1895]), Nietzsche expresses his disgust over the way noble values in Roman Society were corrupted by the rise of Christianity, and he discusses specific aspects and personages in Christian culture—the Gospels, Paul, the martyrs, priests, the crusades—with a view towards showing that Christianity is a religion for weak and unhealthy people, whose general historical effect has been to undermine the healthy qualities of the more noble cultures. The Antichrist was initially conceived of as the first part of a projected four-part work for which Nietzsche had in mind the title, Revaluation of All Values (the second part was to be entitled, “The Free Spirit”). As in most of his 1888 works, Nietzsche criticizes, either implicitly or explicitly, the anti-Semitic writers of his day. In this particular study, one of his main targets is the French, anti-Semitic, Christian historian, Ernest Renan (1823–1892), who was known for works such as The Life of Jesus (1863) and History of the Origins of Christianity (1866–1881), the fourth book of which was entitled The Antichrist (1873). Some interpret Nietzsche’s title for his book as meaning, “the Antichristian.” It should be noted that in an 1883 letter to his friend, Peter Gast [Johann Heinrich Köselitz], Nietzsche does describe himself self-entertainingly as “the Antichrist,” and also more seriously as “the most terrible opponent of Christianity.”

Nietzsche describes himself as “a follower of the philosopher Dionysus” in Ecce Homo, How One Becomes What One Is ( Ecce Homo, Wie man wird, was man ist , October-November 1888)—a book in which he examines retrospectively his entire corpus, work by work, offering critical remarks, details of how the works were inspired, and explanatory observations regarding their philosophical contents. He begins this fateful intellectual autobiography—he was to lose his mind little more than a month later—with three eyebrow-raising sections entitled, “Why I Am So Wise,” “Why I Am So Clever,” and “Why I Write Such Good Books.” Nietzsche claims to be wise as a consequence of his acute aesthetic sensitivity to nuances of health and sickness in people’s attitudes and characters; he claims to be clever because he knows how to choose the right nutrition, climate, residence and recreation for himself; he claims to write such good books because they allegedly adventurously open up, at least for a very select group of readers, a new series of noble and delicate experiences. After examining each of his published works, Nietzsche concludes Ecce Homo with the section, “Why I Am a Destiny.” He claims that he is a destiny because he regards his anti-moral truths as having the annihilating power of intellectual dynamite; he expects them to topple the morality born of sickness which he perceives to have been reigning within Western culture for the last two thousand years. In this way, he expresses his hope that Dionysus, the god of life’s exuberance, would replace Jesus, the god of the heavenly otherworld, as the premier cultural standard for future millennia.

Although Ecce Homo stands historically as Nietzsche’s final autobiographical statement, if we consider that—although the plans were in flux—Nietzsche was embarking on a new work, at one point to be entitled, Revaluation of All Values , his 1888 autobiographical excursion can be appreciated as a kind of house-cleaning and summing-up of where he had intellectually arrived at that point. Rather than being a final self-definition, it can be seen as yet another among Nietzsche’s several efforts over the years to clear the way for a freer intellectual development or metamorphosis. In this respect, it compares to Thus Spoke Zarathustra , Book IV, which appears to be Nietzsche’s squarely facing, almost as a kind of exorcism, the variety of inner characters that constituted his personality. Along the same lines, Ecce Homo recalls the interval between Human-All-too-Human and Daybreak , when Nietzsche plunged to a very low point in his health, coming close to death, and then dramatically recuperated.

Nietzsche Contra Wagner, Out of the Files of a Psychologist ( Nietzsche contra Wagner, Aktenstücke eines Psychologen , December 1888) is a short, but classic, selection of passages Nietzsche extracted from his 1878–1887 published works. Many concern Wagner, but the excerpts serve mostly as a foil for Nietzsche to express his own views against Wagner’s. In this self-portrait, completed only a month before his collapse, Nietzsche characterizes his own anti-Christian sentiments, and contemplates how even the greatest people usually undergo significant corruption. In Wagner’s case, Nietzsche claims that the corrupting force was Christianity. One cannot help remembering here how, using the same kind of rationale, Wagner claimed that Felix Mendelssohn’s corrupting force was Judaism. At the same time, Nietzsche describes how he truly admired some of Wagner’s music for its profound expressions of loneliness and suffering—expressions which Nietzsche admitted were psychologically impossible for he himself to articulate.

The writings of Nietzsche’s final active year are peppered with some wild phrasings, but they remain lucid and philosophically penetrating on the whole. Given the utter loss of Nietzsche’s intellectual capacities upon his collapse, this prior lucidity is puzzling. The abruptness of his breakdown in combination with the lucidity of his final writings has fed speculation that rather than suffering from a slowly progressive mental disease, Nietzsche had a physical condition (e.g., a brain tumor) whose silent growth eventually reached a critical mass that caused his mental composure to snap.

Nietzsche’s unpublished writings often reveal his more tentative and speculative ideas. This material is surrounded by controversy, since some of it conflicts with views he expresses in his published works. Disagreement regarding Nietzsche’s notebooks, also known as his Nachlass , centers around the degree of interpretive priority which ought to be given to the unpublished versus the published writings. One popular approach in the tradition of classical scholarly interpretation is to maintain that Nietzsche’s published works express his more considered and polished views, and that these should take precedence over the unpublished manuscripts when conflicts arise; a second attitude, given voice by Martin Heidegger (who lectured on Nietzsche in Nazi Germany, 1936–1940), and broadly consistent with a psychoanalytic approach as well, is to regard what Nietzsche published as representative of what he decided was publicly presentable, and what he kept privately to himself in unpublished form as containing his more authentic views; a third, more comprehensive, interpretive style tries to grasp all of Nietzsche’s texts together in an effort to form the most coherent interpretation of Nietzsche’s thought, judging the priority of published versus unpublished works on a thematic, or case-by-case basis; a fourth position influenced by the French deconstructionist perspective maintains that any rigid prioritizing between published and private works is impossible, since all of the texts embody a comparable multidimensionality of meaning.

In his unpublished manuscripts, Nietzsche sometimes elaborates the topics found in the published works, such as his early 1870s notebooks, where there is important material concerning his theory of knowledge. In the 1880s notebooks—those from which his sister collected together a large selection after his death under the title, The Will to Power: Attempt at a Revaluation of all Values —Nietzsche sometimes adopts a more metaphysical orientation towards the doctrines of Eternal Recurrence and the Will to Power, speculating upon their structure, implications, and intellectual strength as interpretations of reality itself. Side-by-side with these speculations, and complicating efforts towards developing an interpretation which is both comprehensive and coherent, Nietzsche’s 1880s notebooks also repeatedly state that “there are no facts, only interpretations.”

Nietzsche’s thought extended a deep influence during the 20th century, especially in Continental Europe. In English-speaking countries, his positive reception has been less resonant. During the last decade of Nietzsche’s life and the first decade of the 20th century, his thought was particularly attractive to avant-garde artists who saw themselves on the periphery of established social fashion and practice. Here, Nietzsche’s advocacy of new, healthy beginnings, and of creative artistry in general stood forth. His tendency to seek explanations for commonly-accepted values and outlooks in the less-elevated realms of sheer animal instinct was also crucial to Sigmund Freud’s development of psychoanalysis. Later, during the 1930s, aspects of Nietzsche’s thought were espoused by the Nazis and Italian Fascists, partly due to the encouragement of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche through her associations with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. It was possible for the Nazi interpreters to assemble, quite selectively, various passages from Nietzsche’s writings whose juxtaposition appeared to justify war, aggression and domination for the sake of nationalistic and racial self-glorification.

Until the 1960s in France, Nietzsche appealed mainly to writers and artists, since the academic philosophical climate was dominated by G.W.F. Hegel’s, Edmund Husserl’s and Martin Heidegger’s thought, along with the structuralist movement of the 1950s. Nietzsche became especially influential in French philosophical circles during the 1960s–1980s, when his “God is dead” declaration, his perspectivism, and his emphasis upon power as the real motivator and explanation for people’s actions revealed new ways to challenge established authority and launch effective social critique. In the English-speaking world, Nietzsche’s unfortunate association with the Nazis kept him from serious philosophical consideration until the 1950s and 60s, when landmark works such as Walter Kaufmann’s, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (1950) and Arthur C. Danto’s, Nietzsche as Philosopher (1965), paved the way for a more open-minded discussion.

Specific 20th century figures who were influenced, either quite substantially, or in a significant part, by Nietzsche include painters, dancers, musicians, playwrights, poets, novelists, psychologists, sociologists, literary theorists, historians, and philosophers: Alfred Adler, Georges Bataille, Martin Buber, Albert Camus, E.M. Cioran, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Isadora Duncan, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Stefan George, André Gide, Hermann Hesse, Carl Jung, Martin Heidegger, Gustav Mahler, André Malraux, Thomas Mann, H.L. Mencken, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jean-Paul Sartre, Max Scheler, Giovanni Segantini, George Bernard Shaw, Lev Shestov, Georg Simmel, Oswald Spengler, Richard Strauss, Paul Tillich, Ferdinand Tönnies, Mary Wigman, William Butler Yeats and Stefan Zweig.

That Nietzsche was able to write so prolifically and profoundly for years, while remaining in a condition of ill-health and often intense physical pain, is a testament to his spectacular mental capacities and will power. Lesser people under the same physical pressures might not have had the inclination to pick up a pen, let alone think and record thoughts which—created in the midst of striving for healthy self-overcoming—would have the power to influence an entire century.

A. Nietzsche’s Writings

• Kritische Gesamtausgabe Briefwechsel , G. Colli and M. Montinari (ed.), 24 volumes in 4 parts, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1975.
• The Antichrist , Walter Kaufmann (trans.), in The Portable Nietzsche , Walter Kaufmann (ed.), New York: Viking Press, 1968.
• Beyond Good and Evil , Walter Kaufmann (trans.), New York: Random House, 1966.
• The Birth of Tragedy , Walter Kaufmann (trans.), in The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner , New York: Random House, 1967.
• The Case of Wagner , Walter Kaufmann (trans.), in The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner , New York: Random House, 1967.
• Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality , R. J. Hollingdale (trans.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
• Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is , Walter Kaufmann (trans.), in On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo , New York: Random House, 1967.
• The Gay Science, with a Prelude of Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs , Walter Kaufmann (trans.), New York: Random House, 1974.
• Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits , R. J. Hollingdale (trans.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
• Nietzsche Contra Wagner , Walter Kaufmann (trans.), in The Portable Nietzsche , New York: Viking Press, 1968.
• On the Genealogy of Morals , Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (trans.), in On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo , New York: Random House, 1967.
• Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early 1870s , Daniel Breazeale (trans. and ed.), Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1979.
• Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks , Marianne Cowan (trans.), Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1962.
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra , Walter Kaufmann (trans.), in The Portable Nietzsche , New York: Viking Press, 1968.
• Twilight of the Idols , Walter Kaufmann (trans.), in The Portable Nietzsche , New York: Viking Press, 1968.
• Untimely Meditations , R. J. Hollingdale (trans.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
• The Will to Power , Walter Kaufmann (trans.), New York: Random House, 1967.

B. Books About Nietzsche

• Acampora, Christa Davis, 2013, Contesting Nietzsche , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Alfano, Mark, 2019, Nietzsche’s Moral Psychology , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Allison, David, 2000, Reading the New Nietzsche , Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing.
• Ansell-Pearson, Keith, and Rebecca Bamford, 2021, Nietzsche’s Dawn: Philosophy, Ethics, and the Passion of Knowledge , Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
• Aschheim, Steven E, 1992, The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890–1990 , Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
• Babich, Babette E, 1994, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Science , Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Bamford, Rebecca, 2014, Nietzsche’s Method of Experimentalism in Science and Mind , Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
• Bataille, Georges, 1945, On Nietzsche , Bruce Boone (trans.), London: Athlone Press, 1992.
• Berry, Jessica, 2010, Nietzsche and the Ancient Skeptical Tradition , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Bertram, Ernst, 1918, Nietzsche: An Attempt at a Mythology , Robert E. Norton (trans.), Champaign IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009.
• Bishop, Paul, and R. H. Stephenson, 2005, Friedrich Nietzsche and Weimar Classicism , Rochester, NY: Camden House.
• Blond, Lewis, 2011, Heidegger and Nietzsche: Overcoming Metaphysics , London: Continuum.
• Blue, Daniel, 2016, The Making of Friedrich Nietzsche – The Quest for Identity, 1844–1869 , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Brobjer, Thomas, 1995, Nietzsche’s Ethics of Character: A Study of Nietzsche’s Ethics and its Place in the History of Moral Thinking , Department of the History of Ideas: University of Uppsala.
• –––, 2008, Nietzsche’s Philosophical Context: An Intellectual Biography , Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
• Chamberlain, Lesley, 1998, Nietzsche in Turin: An Intimate Biography , New York: Picador.
• Clark, Maudemarie, 1990, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Cohen, Jonathan R, 2010, Science, Culture, and Free Spirit: A Study of Nietzsche’s “Human, All-Too Human” , Amherst, NY: Humanity Books/Prometheus Books.
• Conrad, Mark T., 2017, Nietzsche and the Philosophers , New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
• Danto, Arthur C., 1965, Nietzsche as Philosopher: An Original Study , New York: Columbia University Press.
• Deleuze, Gilles, 1962, Nietzsche and Philosophy , Hugh Tomlinson (trans.), New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.
• Derrida, Jacques, 1979, Spurs: Nietzsche’s Styles , Barbara Harlow (trans.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Emden, Christian J., 2008, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of History , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2014, Nietzsche’s Naturalism , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Fink, Eugen, 2003 [1960], Goetz Richter (trans.), Nietzsche’s Philosophy , Aldershot: Avebury.
• Franco, Paul, 2011, Nietzsche’s Enlightenment: The Free-Spirit Trilogy of the Middle Period , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Geuss, Raymond, 1999, Morality, Culture and History: Essays on German Philosophy , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Gillespie, Michael, 1996, Nihilism Before Nietzsche , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Gilman, Sander L, 1987, ed., Conversations with Nietzsche: A Life in the Words of his Contemporaries , David J. Parent (trans.), New York: Oxford University Press, Inc..
• Green, Michael, 2002, Nietzsche and the Transcendental Tradition , Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.
• Hales, Steven D. and Rex Welshon, 2000, Nietzsche’s Perspectivism , Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.
• Hatab, Lawrence J., 2005, Nietzsche’s Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal Recurrence , London: Routledge.
• –––, 2008, Nietzsche’s “On the Genealogy of Morality” , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Hayman, Ronald, 1980, Nietzsche, a Critical Life , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Heidegger, Martin, 1936–7a, Nietzsche, Vol. I: The Will to Power as Art , David F. Krell (trans.), New York: Harper & Row, 1979.
• –––, 1936–7b, Nietzsche, Vol. II: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same , David F. Krell (trans.), San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984.
• –––, 1939, Nietzsche, Vol. III: Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics , Joan Stambaugh and Frank Capuzzi (trans.), San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986.
• –––, 1939, Nietzsche, Vol. IV: Nihilism , David F Krell (trans.), New York: Harper & Row, 1982.
• Higgins, Kathleen Marie, 1999, Comic Relief: Nietzsche’s Gay Science , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 1987, Nietzsche’s “Zarathustra” Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
• Hollingdale, R.J., 1973, Nietzsche , London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
• Hunt, Lester H, 1991, Nietzsche and the Origin of Virtue , London: Routledge.
• Irigaray, Luce, 1980, Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche , Gillian C. Gill (trans.), New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
• Janaway, Christopher, 2007, Beyond Selflessness: Reading Nietzsche’s Genealogy , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Janz, Curt Paul, 1978–79, Friedrich Nietzsche. Biographie in drei Bänden , Munich: Carl Hanser.
• Jaspers, Karl, 1936, Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity , Charles F. Wallraff and Frederick J. Schmitz (trans.), South Bend, Indiana: Regentry/Gateway, Inc., 1979.
• Jensen, Anthony K., 2013, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of History , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Johnson, Dirk R., 2010, Nietzsche’s Anti-Darwinism , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Jung, Carl G., 1934–9, Nietzsche’s “Zarathustra” , ed. James L. Jarrett. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.
• Kain, Philip J., 2009, Nietzsche and the Horror of Existence , Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
• Katsafanas, Paul., 2013, Agency and the Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean Constitutivism , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2016, The Nietzschean Self: Moral Psychology, Agency, and the Unconscious , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Kaufmann, Walter, 1950, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Klossowski, Pierre, 1969, Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle , London: Athlone, 1993.
• Kofman, Sarah, 1972, Nietzsche and Metaphor , Duncan Large (ed. and trans.), London: Athlone Press; Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993.
• Krell, David Farrell, 1986, Postponements: Women, Sensuality, and Death in Nietzsche , Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Krell, David Farrell, and Donald L. Bates, 1997, The Good European: Nietzsche’s Work Sites in Word and Image , Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
• Lampert, Laurence, 1987, Nietzsche’s Teaching: An Interpretation of “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” , New Haven: Yale University Press.
• –––, 2001, Nietzsche’s Task: An Interpretation of “Beyond Good and Evil” , New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Leiter, Brian, 2002, Routledge Guidebook to Nietzsche on Morality , London: Routledge.
• –––, 2019, Moral Psychology with Nietzsche , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Lemm, Vanessa, 2009, Nietzsche’s Animal Philosophy: Culture, Politics and the Animality of the Human Being , New York: Fordham University Press.
• –––, 2014, Nietzsche and the Becoming of Life , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Liebert, Georges, 2004, Nietzsche and Music , David Pellauer and Graham Parkes (trans.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Loeb, Paul, 2010, The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Löwith, Karl, 1956, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same , J. Harvey Lomax (trans.), Bernd Magnus (foreward), Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
• Losurdo, Dominico, 2002 [2020], Nietzsche, The Aristocratic Rebel , Leiden: Brill, 2020; translated by Gregor Benton from the Italian, Nietzsche, il ribelle aristocratico: Biografia intellettuale e bilancio critico , Turin, 2002.
• Mabille, Louise, 2009, Nietzsche and the Anglo-Saxon Tradition , London: Continuum International Publishing Group.
• Macintyre, Ben, 1992, Forgotten Fatherland: The Search for Elisabeth Nietzsche , London: Macmillan.
• Magnus, Bernd, Stanley Stewart, and Jean-Pierre Mileur, 1993, Nietzsche’s Case: Philosophy as/and Literature , New York and London: Routledge.
• Magnus, Bernd, 1978, Nietzsche’s Existential Imperative , Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Mandel, Siegfried, 1998, Nietzsche & the Jews , New York: Prometheus Books.
• May, Simon, 2000, Nietzsche’s Ethics and his War on “Morality” , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2011, Nietzsche’s “On the Genealogy of Morality”: A Critical Guide , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Mencken, H.L., 1908, Friedrich Nietzsche , New Brunswick (USA) and London (UK): Transaction Publishers, 1993.
• Meyer, Matthew, 2014, Reading Nietzsche Through the Ancients , Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
• Moore, Gregory, 2002, Nietzsche, Biology and Metaphor , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• More, Nicholas D., 2014, Nietzsche’s Last Laugh – “Ecce Homo” as Satire , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Nabais, Nuno, 1997 Nietzsche and the Metaphysics of the Tragic , Martin Earl (trans.), London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2007.
• Nehamas, Alexander, 1985, Nietzsche: Life as Literature , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Oliver, Kelly, 1995, Womanizing Nietzsche: Philosophy’s Relation to the “Feminine” , New York and London: Routledge.
• Parkes, Graham, 1994, Composing the Soul: Reaches of Nietzsche’s Psychology , Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
• Pippin, Robert B., 2011, Nietzsche, Psychology and First Philosophy , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Pletsch, Carl, 1991, Young Nietzsche: Becoming a Genius , New York: Free Press.
• Poellner, Peter, 2000, Nietzsche and Metaphysics , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Prange, Martine, 2013, Nietzsche, Wagner, Europe , Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
• Prideaux, Sue, 2018, I am Dynamite! — A Life of Nietzsche , New York: Tim Duggan Books.
• Rampley, Matthew, 2007, Nietzsche, Aesthetics and Modernity , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Ratner-Rosenhagen, 2011, American Nietzsche: A History of and Icon and His Ideas , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Reginster, Bernard, 2006, The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Remhof, Justin, 2020, Nietzsche’s Constructivism — A Metaphysics of Material Objects , New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
• Richardson, John, 1996, Nietzsche’s System , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2004, Nietzsche’s New Darwinism , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2020, Nietzsche’s Values , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Ridley, Aaron, 1998, Nietzsche’s Conscience: Six Character Studies from the “Genealogy” , Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• –––, 2007, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Nietzsche on Art , New York and London: Routledge.
• Rosen, Stanley, 1995, The Mask of Enlightenment: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Safranski, Ruediger, 2002, Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography , Shelley Frisch (trans.), New York: W.W. Norton.
• Salomé, Lou, 1894, Nietzsche , Siegfried Mandel (ed. and trans.), Redding Ridge, CT: Black Swan Books, Ltd., 1988.
• Schaberg, William H., 1996, The Nietzsche Canon: A Publication History and Bibliography , Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
• Schacht, Richard, 1983, Nietzsche , London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
• –––, 1995, Making Sense of Nietzsche: Reflections Timely and Untimely , Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.
• Schrift, Alan D, 1990, Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation: Between Hermeneutics and Deconstruction , New York: Routledge.
• Schain, Richard, 2001, The Legend of Nietzsche’s Syphilis , Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
• Shapiro, Gary, 1989, Nietzschean Narratives , Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Shaw, Tamsin, 2007, Nietzsche’s Political Skepticism , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Simmel, Georg, 1907, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche , Helmut Loiskandle, Deena Weinstein, and Michael Weinstein (trans.), Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991.
• Small, Robin, 2001, Nietzsche in Context , London: Ashgate Publishing.
• –––, 2005, Nietzsche and Rée: A Star Friendship , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2010, Time and Becoming in Nietzsche’s Thought , London: Continuum.
• Solomon, Robert C., 2003, Living With Nietzsche: What the Great “Immoralist” Has to Teach Us , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Stambaugh, Joan, 1987, The Problem of Time in Nietzsche , John F. Humphrey (trans.), Philadelphia: Bucknell University Press.
• Steinbuch, Thomas, 1994, A Commentary on Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo , Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
• Welshon, Rex, 2004, The Philosophy of Nietzsche , Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
• White, Alan, 1990, Within Nietzsche’s Labyrinth , New York and London: Routledge.
• Wilcox, John T., 1974, Truth and Value in Nietzsche , Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Young, Julian, 2010, Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 1992, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Art , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2006, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Religion , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

C. Collected Essays on Nietzsche

• Acampora, Christa Davis (ed.), 2006, Nietzsche’s “On the Genealogy of Morals”: Critical Essays , Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
• Allison, David B. (ed.), 1985, The New Nietzsche: Contemporary Styles of Interpretation , Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
• Ansell-Pearson, Keith (ed.), 2006, A Companion to Nietzsche , Malden, USA/Oxford, UK/Carlton, Australia: Blackwell.
• Bishop, Paul (ed.), 2004, Nietzsche and Antiquity: His Reaction and Response to the Classical Tradition , Rochester, New York: Camden House.
• –––, 2012, A Companion to Friedrich Nietzsche: Life and Works , Rochester, New York: Camden House.
• Bloom, Harold (ed.), 1987, Modern Critical Views: Friedrich Nietzsche , New York, New Haven, Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers.
• Boublil, Élodie, and Christine Daigle, 2013, Nietzsche and Phenomenology: Power, Life, Subjectivity , Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Burgard, Peter J. (ed.), 1994, Nietzsche and the Feminine , Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press.
• Came, Daniel (ed.), 2014, Nietzsche on Art and Life , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Constancio, Joäo and Maria Joäo Mayer Branco (eds.), 2011, Nietzsche on Instinct and Language , Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
• Gemes, Ken, and Simon May (eds.), 2009, Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Gemes, Ken, and John Richardson (eds.), 2013, The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Golomb, Jacob (ed.), 1997, Nietzsche and Jewish Culture , London: Routledge.
• Golomb, Jacob and Robert S. Wistrich (eds.), 2002, Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism?: On the Uses and Abuses of a Philosophy , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Hemming, Laurence Paul, Bogdan Costea, and Kostas Amiridis (eds.), 2011, The Movement of Nihilism: Heidegger’s Thinking after Nietzsche , London: Continuum.
• Janaway, Christopher (ed.), 1998, Willing and Nothingness: Schopenhauer as Nietzsche’s Educator , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Janaway, Christopher and Simon Robertson (eds.), 2012, Nietzsche, Naturalism, and Normativity , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Katsafanas, Paul (ed.), 2020, The Nietzschean Mind , New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
• Kemal, Salim, Ivan Gaskell and Daniel W. Conway (eds.), 1998, Nietzsche, Philosophy and the Arts , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Knoll, Manuel and Barry Stocker (eds.), 2014, Nietzsche as Political Thinker , Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
• Koelb, Clayton (ed.), 1990, Nietzsche as Postmodernist: Essays Pro and Contra , Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Leiter, Brian, and Neil Sinhababu (eds.), 2009, Nietzsche and Morality , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Magnus, Bernd, and Kathleen M. Higgins (eds.), 1996, The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Metzger, Jeffrey (ed.), 2009, Nietzsche, Nihilism and the Philosophy of the Future , London: Bloomsbury Academic.
• Oliver, Kelly, and Marilyn Pearsall (eds.), 1998, Feminist Interpretations of Friedrich Nietzsche (Re-reading the Canon) , University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
• Parkes, Graham (ed.), 1991, Nietzsche and Asian Thought , Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
• Richardson, John, and Brian Leiter (eds.), 2001, Nietzsche , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Rosenthal, Bernice Glatzer (ed.), 1994, Nietzsche and Soviet Culture: Ally and Adversary , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Schacht, Richard (ed.), 1994, Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals , Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Scott, Jacqueline, and A. Todd Franklin (eds.), 2007, Critical Affinities: Nietzsche and African American Thought , Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Sedgwick, Peter R. (ed.), 1995, Nietzsche: A Critical Reader , Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
• Solomon, Robert C, and Kathleen M. Higgins (eds.), 1988, Reading Nietzsche , New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Solomon, Robert (ed.), 1973, Nietzsche: A Collection of Critical Essays , Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.
• Stauffer, Jill, and Bettina Bergo (eds.), 2008, Nietzsche and Levinas: After the Death of a Certain God , New York: Columbia University Press.
• Young, Julian (ed.), 2014, Individual and Community in Nietzsche’s Philosophy , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Yovel, Yirmiyahu (ed.), 1986, Nietzsche as Affirmative Thinker , Dordrecht: Martinus Nihoff Publishers.

D. Nietzsche’s Music

• Piano Music of Friedrich Nietzsche , Newport Classics, CD #85513 (1992), John Bell Young (piano)
• The Music of Friedrich Nietzsche , Newport Classics, CD #85535 (1993), John Bell Young (piano), Thomas Coote (piano), John Aler (voice), Nicholas Eanet (violin)
• Friedrich Nietzsche, Volume I: Compositions of his Youth (1857–63). Albany Music, CD #178 (1996), Lauretta Altman, Wolfgang Bottenberg, Valerie Kinslow, Eric Oland, The Orpheus Singers
• Friedrich Nietzsche, Volume II: Compositions of his Mature Years (1864–82). Albany Music, CD #181 (1997), Lauretta Altman, Wolfgang Bottenberg, Sven Meier, Valerie Kinslow, Eric Oland, The Orpheus Singers
• Friedrich Nietzsche: Piano Works and Fantasy for Violin and Piano , Talent, CD #291031 (1996), Elena Letnanova (piano), Kuniko Nagata (violin)
• The Music of Friedrich Nietzsche , The Nietzsche Music Project and Media Arts International (2003), Manolis Papasifakis (piano), Thomas Coote (piano), Christian Hebet (violin), David Blackburn (tenor)
• Friedrich Nietzsche: Selected Works for Piano , Nicholas Hopkins (ed.), New York: Carl Fischer Music, 2017.

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The Ten Best Books on or by Nietzsche

Lennox Johnson September 4, 2018 Books

From beginner-friendly introductions to classic works by Nietzsche, this page features books to suit any learning style. It’s important to note that there is no single best book on Nietzsche. The best book for you will depend heavily on your preferred learning style and the amount of time/energy you’re willing to spend reading. For example, if you tend to find classic works of philosophy difficult to understand, you might want to start with a short, beginner-friendly introduction. If you prefer more depth, you can choose a more comprehensive introduction or read Nietzsche for yourself.

It’s also worth noting that it is not a list of personal recommendations. Personal book recommendations tend to be highly subjective, idiosyncratic, and unreliable. This list is part of a collection of over 100 philosophy reading lists which aim to provide a central resource for philosophy book recommendations. These lists were created by searching through hundreds of university course syllabi , internet encyclopedia bibliographies , and community recommendations . Links to the syllabi and other sources used to create this list are at the end of the post. Following these links will help you quickly find a broader range of options if the listed books do not fit what you are looking for.

Here are the best books on or by Nietzsche in no particular order.

Simply Nietzsche – Peter Kail

Publisher’s description: Born and raised in a small town in Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) began his career in philology (the study of language), and served as a professor at the University of Basel. In 1879, he was forced to leave due to health issues, which afflicted him throughout his life. Supported by his university pension and aided by friends, he spent the next decade as an independent author, writing the books for which he would become famous, including Thus Spake Zarathustra , Beyond Good and Evil , and On the Genealogy of Morals . In 1889, at the age of 44, Nietzsche had a mental breakdown from which he never recovered, dying in 1900. Yet in just ten years, he produced a body of work that would mark him as one of the most influential philosophers of all time. …

Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist – Walter A. Kaufmann

Publisher’s description: This classic is the benchmark against which all modern books about Nietzsche are measured. When Walter Kaufmann wrote it in the immediate aftermath of World War II, most scholars outside Germany viewed Nietzsche as part madman, part proto-Nazi, and almost wholly unphilosophical. Kaufmann rehabilitated Nietzsche nearly single-handedly, presenting his works as one of the great achievements of Western philosophy.

Responding to the powerful myths and countermyths that had sprung up around Nietzsche, Kaufmann offered a patient, evenhanded account of his life and works, and of the uses and abuses to which subsequent generations had put his ideas. Without ignoring or downplaying the ugliness of many of Nietzsche’s proclamations, he set them in the context of his work as a whole and of the counterexamples yielded by a responsible reading of his books. More positively, he presented Nietzsche’s ideas about power as one of the great accomplishments of modern philosophy, arguing that his conception of the “will to power” was not a crude apology for ruthless self-assertion but must be linked to Nietzsche’s equally profound ideas about sublimation….

The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche – Gemes and Richardson

Publisher’s description: The diversity of Nietzsche’s books, and the sheer range of his philosophical interests, have posed daunting challenges to his interpreters. This Oxford Handbook addresses this multiplicity by devoting each of its 32 essays to a focused topic, picked out by the book’s systematic plan. The aim is to treat each topic at the best current level of philosophical scholarship on Nietzsche. The first group of papers treat selected biographical issues: his family relations, his relations to women, and his ill health and eventual insanity. In Part 2 the papers treat Nietzsche in historical context: his relations back to other philosophers—the Greeks, Kant, and Schopenhauer—and to the cultural movement of Romanticism, as well as his own later influence in an unlikely place, on analytic philosophy. The papers in Part 3 treat a variety of Nietzsche’s works, from early to late and in styles ranging from the ‘aphoristic’ The Gay Science and Beyond Good and Evil through the poetic-mythic Thus Spoke Zarathustra to the florid autobiography Ecce Homo. This focus on individual works, their internal unity, and the way issues are handled within them, is an important complement to the final three groups of papers, which divide up Nietzsche’s philosophical thought topically. …

Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography – Rüdiger Safranski

Publisher’s description: A seminal biography, essential reading for anyone studying the philosophy of history’s most enigmatic and fascinating thinker.

No other modern philosopher has proved as influential as Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and none is as poorly understood. In the first new biography in decades, Rüdiger Safranski, one of the foremost living Nietzsche scholars, re-creates the anguished life of Nietzsche while simultaneously assessing the philosophical implications of his morality, religion, and art. Struggling to break away from the oppressive burdens of the past, Nietzsche invented a unique philosophy based on compulsive self-consciousness and constant self-revision. As groundbreaking as it will be long-lasting, this biography offers a brilliant, multifaceted portrait of a towering figure.

Basic Writings of Nietzsche – Friedrich Nietzsche

Publisher’s description: One hundred years after his death, Friedrich Nietzsche remains the most influential philosopher of the modern era. Basic Writings of Nietzsche gathers the complete texts of five of Nietzsche’s most important works, from his first book to his last: The Birth of Tragedy, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, The Case of Wagner, and Ecce Homo . Edited and translated by the great Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann, this volume also features seventy-five aphorisms, selections from Nietzsche’s correspondence, and variants from drafts for Ecce Homo . It is a definitive guide to the full range of Nietzsche’s thought.

Beyond Good & Evil – Friedrich Nietzsche

Publisher’s description: Represents Nietzsche’s attempt to sum up his philosophy. In nine parts the book is designed to give the reader a comprehensive idea of Nietzsche’s thought and style:  they span “The Prejudices of Philsophers,” “The Free Spirit,” religion, morals, scholarship, “Our Virtues,” “Peoples and Fatherlands,” and “What Is Noble,” as well as epigrams and a concluding poem.  Beyond Good and Evil is one of the most remarkable and influential books of the nineteenth century.

This translation by Walter Kaufmann has become the standard one, for accuracy and fidelity to the eccentricities and grace of the style of the original.  The translation is based on the only edition Nietzsche himself published, and all variant reading in later editions.  This volume offers an inclusive index of subjects and persons, as well as a running footnote commentary on the text.

On the Genealogy of Morality – Friedrich Nietzsche

Publisher’s description: This new edition is the product of a collaboration between a Germanist and a philosopher who is also a Nietzsche scholar. The translation strives not only to communicate a sense of Nietzsche’s style but also to convey his meaning accurately―and thus to be an important advance on previous translations of this work. A superb set of notes ensures that Clark and Swensen’s Genealogy will become the new edition of choice for classroom use.

The Gay Science – Friedrich Nietzsche

Publisher’s description: Nietzsche called The Gay Science “the most personal of all my books.” It was here that he first proclaimed the death of God—to which a large part of the book is devoted—and his doctrine of the eternal recurrence.

Walter Kaufmann’s commentary, with its many quotations from previously untranslated letters, brings to life Nietzsche as a human being and illuminates his philosophy. The book contains some of Nietzsche’s most sustained discussions of art and morality, knowledge and truth, the intellectual conscience and the origin of logic. …

The Birth of Tragedy – Friedrich Nietzsche

Publisher’s description: The first book by the author of the classic philosophical text Beyond Good and Evil .

The youthful faults of this work were exposed by the author himself in the brilliant Attempt at a Self-Criticism , which he added to the new edition of 1886. But the book, whatever its excesses, remains one of the most relevant statements on tragedy ever penned. It exploded the conception of Greek culture that was prevalent down through the Victorian era, and it analyzed themes developed in the twentieth century by classicists, existentialists, psychoanalysts, and others.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra – Friedrich Nietzsche

Publisher’s description: Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary and subversive thinkers in Western philosophy, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra remains his most famous and influential work. It describes how the ancient Persian prophet Zarathustra descends from his solitude in the mountains to tell the world that God is dead and that the Superman, the human embodiment of divinity, is his successor. With blazing intensity and poetic brilliance, Nietzsche argues that the meaning of existence is not to be found in religiouspieties or meek submission, but in an all-powerful life force: passionate, chaotic & free.

The following sources were used to build this list:

University Course Syllabi:

• Nietzsche – Birkbeck, University of London
• An Introduction to Nietzsche: Philosophy and Cultural Criticism – Stanford University
• Nietzsche – University of Texas at Dallas
• Nietzsche – DePaul University

Bibliographies:

• Bibliography for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Nietzsche
• Bibliography for the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Nietzsche

Other Recommendations:

• Nietzsche: In what order should I read him? What translations should I buy? What other authors should I read first? What about secondary sources?
• The best books on Nietzsche recommended by Brian Leiter

The Daily Idea aims to make learning about philosophy as easy as possible by bringing together the best philosophy resources from across the internet.

• Find the best philosophy books on a wide variety of topics with this collection of over 120 philosophy reading lists .
• Find free online philosophy articles, podcasts, and videos with this organised collection of 400+ free philosophy resources .

You can also follow The Daily Idea on Facebook and Twitter for updates.

A History of Western Philosophy in 500 Essential Quotations – Lennox Johnson

Category: Reference | Length: 145 pages | Published: 2019

Publisher’s Description: A History of Western Philosophy in 500 Essential Quotations is a collection of the greatest thoughts from history’s greatest thinkers. Featuring classic quotations by Aristotle, Epicurus, David Hume, Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, Michel Foucault, and many more, A History of Western Philosophy in 500 Essential Quotations is ideal for anyone looking to quickly understand the fundamental ideas that have shaped the modern world.

The Best 17 Books by Friedrich Nietzsche [PDF]

* If you have doubts about how to download free books from InfoBooks, visit our guide to downloading books .

Today we present to you a selection of the best books by Friedrich Nietzsche in PDF format. But first, a little history about this great German philosopher.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844 in Röcken bei Lützen, a small town in Prussia (part of present-day Germany). His father, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, was a Lutheran preacher; he died when Nietzsche was 4 years old. Nietzsche and his younger sister, Elisabeth, were raised by their mother, Franziska.

Nietzsche attended a private school in Naumburg and then received a classical education at the prestigious Schulpforta School. After graduating in 1864, he attended the University of Bonn for two semesters. He transferred to Leipzig University , where he studied philology, a combination of literature, linguistics and history.

He was strongly influenced by the writings of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer . While in Leipzig, he befriended the composer Richard Wagner, whose music he greatly admired.

In 1869, Nietzsche took up the position of professor of classical philology at the University of Basel (Switzerland). During his professorship he published his first books, The Birth of Tragedy (1872) and «Human, All Too Human» (1878).

He also began to distance himself from classical scholarship, as well as from the teachings of Schopenhauer, and to become more interested in the values underlying modern civilization. By this time, his friendship with Wagner had deteriorated. Suffering from a nervous disorder, he resigned his post in Basel in 1879.

For much of the next decade, Nietzsche lived in seclusion, moving from Switzerland to France and Italy when he was not at his mother’s home in Naumburg. However, it was also a very productive period for him as a thinker and writer.

One of his most significant works, «Thus Spoke Zarathustra», was published in four volumes between 1883 and 1885. He also wrote «Beyond Good and Evil», published in 1886, «On the Genealogy of Morality» (1887) and «Twilight of the Idols» (1889).

In these works of the 1880s, Nietzsche developed the central points of his philosophy. One was his famous assertion that «God is dead», a rejection of Christianity as a significant force in contemporary life.

Others were his support for self-perfection through the creative impulse and the «will to power», and his concept of the «superman», an individual who strives to exist beyond the conventional categories of good and evil, master and slave.

Nietzsche suffered a nervous breakdown in 1889 while living in Turin, Italy. The last decade of his life was spent in a state of mental incapacity. The reason for his insanity remains unknown, although historians have attributed it to causes as varied as syphilis, an inherited brain disease, a tumor, and excessive use of sedative drugs.

After a stay in an insane asylum, Nietzsche was cared for by his mother in Naumburg and by his sister in Weimar, Germany. He died in Weimar on August 25, 1900.

1) Homer and Classical Philology

Homer and Classical Philology could be considered as the “first work” of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, which precedes his book The Birth of Tragedy. It is the inaugural speech that Nietzsche delivered on May 28, 1869 at the University of Basel.

It is a tradition in this house of studies that newly installed professors give a speech to make themselves known professionally and also the aspects and approaches of their work.

This essay is considered an important work that analyzes the language and use of mythology in two of Homer’s most representative works, The Iliad and The Odyssey, and their relationship with classical philology. It also refers to how the works attributed to the ancient Greek poet may not have been written by him.

We invite you to read what could be considered the true early work of this influential philosopher and cultural critic.

2) The Birth of Tragedy

The Birth of Tragedy is a book written between 1871 and 1872.

It is the first work of the German philosopher. In this book, controversial at the time, he not only systematically exposes the content of his study of the Greeks, but also begins to shape his philosophy, already influenced by the thoughts of Arthur Schopenhauer and the music of Richard Wagner.

This text, which is a hybrid of philosophy and philology, which is why the author called it a «centaur», deals with the birth of the Attic tragedy, the aesthetic motives that inspired it and the causes of its disappearance.

3) Thoughts Out of Season part I

Thoughts out of Season is a classic work by Nietzsche that can also be found under the name of Untimely Meditations or also as Unfashionable Observations. This publication is a compendium of 4 works and was started in the year 1873 and finished in 1876.

Friedrich Nietzsche is known for having been a man dedicated to the study of philosophy, morals, culture, religion, etc., and who usually resorted to resources such as aphorism, irony and metaphor to expound his ideas, this work being an example of this.

Perhaps for some readers unaccustomed to the narrative of this classical philologist, Thoughts out of Season may seem a somewhat complex reading, but for those who are already familiar with other works of the writer such as Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Genealogy of Morals or Twilight of the Idols, they will be able to read and understand this volume without major problems.

4) Thoughts Out of Season part II

This work includes two essays by the cultural critic and classical philologist Friedrich Nietzsche, the first entitled “Use and Abuse of History” and the second “Schopenhauer as Educator,” which form the second and third parts of the series ” Thoughts Out of Season”, also known as “Untimely Meditations” and “Unfashionable Observations”.

These essays were first published in English in 1910 and, like other works by Nietzsche, deal with philosophy, religion and psychology. And they were written at the time when the German philosopher was working as a professor of classical philology at Basel.

In the first essay, Nietzsche condemns those who use the past as a means to justify their present. And in the second he makes clear his position against state-subsidized philosophy and against those professors who trained their students with cathedral-like authority in all their pronouncements.

5) We Philologists

If we take into account that Nietzsche was a professor of classical philology – the study of ancient languages – at the University of Basel between 1869 and 1878, it is not surprising that he addressed this topic in his works.

In We Philologists , written around 1874 and published after his death in 1900, we find Nietzsche’s criticism of the professors of philology in Germany (very influential at the time) because, in his opinion, they were unfit to exercise their profession because they were mentally deficient in entering into the spirit of antiquity.

For him, both the teachers and their students were unfit when compared to the Greek ideal, which he describes as people of mental acuity and clear speech.

6) Human, All Too Human

Human, all too human is a book whose first volume was published in 1878. It was followed by two subsequent sequels, in March and December 1880 respectively: «Assorted Opinions and Maxims» and «The Wanderer and his Shadow».

These two sequels were later collected, in 1886, in a single volume, as the second volume of “Human, all too human”.

This work breaks with Nietzsche’s earlier style. In fact, it is here that for the first time he consciously rehearses the use of aphorisms, brief and penetrating, as an instrument for writing and communicating his profound, incisive and sometimes even contradictory thought.

7) Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions

Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions is a compilation that includes Nietzsche’s observations and opinions on relevant topics such as licentiousness, danger in admiration, and deception in love, among others.

This 1879 work is considered a second part of his 1878-1880 publication Human, All Too Human. And it is divided as follows: To the Disillusioned in Philosophy, Overnice, and The Wooers of Reality.

8) The Dawn

The Dawn , also translated into English as The Dawn of Day or Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, is a book written by Friedrich Nietzsche in 1881 in the author’s usual polemical, antagonistic and informal style, but without concern for persuading the reader to accept his point of view as their own.

The title may be said to represent the “dawning” of a new Nietzsche, as well as of his philosophy. For it is at this moment that he begins to regain his spiritual freedom, to stand on his own feet, and to open the way to his own vision of philosophy.

In this aphoristic work his critique of Christianity takes a more mature approach. He asserts that the universe does not come from a creator God, but is a product of physics and science.

9) Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a book written between 1883 and 1885, considered the masterpiece of the German philosopher.

The work contains the main ideas of Nietzsche, expressed in poetic form: it is composed of a series of stories and speeches that put in the spotlight some facts and reflections of a prophet named Zarathustra, a character inspired by Zoroaster, founder of Mazdayasna or Zoroastrianism.

Composed mainly of more or less independent episodes, its stories can be read in any order, except for the fourth part of the work, since they are an accumulation of ideas and independent minor stories that form a single general story.

10) Beyond Good and Evil

Beyond Good and Evil is one of the fundamental texts of nineteenth-century philosophy.

Published in 1886 at the author’s own expense, the book did not receive much attention at first. Nietzsche attacked in it what he considered the moral vacuity of the thinkers of his century, the lack of critical sense of the self-styled moralists and their passive acceptance of inherited Judeo-Christian morality.

The work runs through all the fundamental themes of Nietzsche’s philosophical maturity, and in part can be read as a development, in more direct terms, of the ideas that the author had already proposed in a more metaphorical sense in «Thus Spoke Zarathustra».

11) On the Genealogy of Morals

On the Genealogy of Morals is a work by the German philosopher published in 1887. It was an attempt to complement and clarify the point of view of his previous book, “Beyond Good and Evil”.

«On the Genealogy of Morals» criticizes current morality from the study of the origin of the moral principles that have ruled in the West since Socrates.

Nietzsche is contrary to any kind of logical and scientific reason, the Church would say, and therefore makes a fierce criticism of speculative reason and all Western culture in all its manifestations: Religion, morals, philosophy, science, art, etc.

12) The Case of Wagner

The Case of Wagner is a critical essay composed of passages from earlier works, which Nietzsche wrote in 1888 during his last year of lucidity, but which was first published in 1895.

In this criticism he relates the reason for his separation from his friend the German artist Richard Wagner, which creates a contrast between this work and the second part of The Birth of Tragedy where, on the contrary, he praises him.

In this short book, Nietzsche harshly attacks Wagner’s views, expressing his disappointment with the decisions he had made in his life, such as his conversion to Christianity. He also shows himself to be a skilled music critic, reflecting on the nature of art and its relationship to and influence on humanity.

13) Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer

Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer is a German book written in 1887 and published in 1889.

The book first describes how Apollonian and Dionysian rituals are constantly debated in the lives of human beings. Thus we have a first approach to the behavior and the longed-for explanation of the classics.

However, criticism would not be long in coming, and the idols that had presided over the thinking of many European intellectuals for nineteen centuries were this time strongly questioned by Nietzsche.

14) The Antichrist

The Antichrist , Curse on Christianity is one of the last works of the German philosopher. Although it was written in 1888, its controversial content caused Franz Overbeck and Heinrich Köselitz to delay its publication, together with «Ecce homo», until 1895.

The book is a critique of Christianity as a whole, and of modern concepts such as egalitarianism and democracy, which the author considers a persistent consequence of Christian ideals.

Nietzsche identifies in Christianity all the social evil, from which the world suffers, and the moral evil, which oppresses man. St. Paul used the masses and the oppressed to seize power, and so did the socialists at the time of Nietzsche’s writing.

15) Ecce Homo

Ecce homo is one of the German philosopher’s last books and is considered one of the most acute and desperate autobiographical portraits in modern literature.

Nietzsche, almost on the verge of the crisis that will lead him to be committed to a psychiatric hospital, presents himself as the author of the works that, according to him, would change the history of thought and perhaps the course of History. The author discovers himself as the bearer and emblem of the dichotomous value that distinguishes his philosophy: he describes his life under the happy optic of the Dionysian.

He ends his autobiography with a question: «Christ or Dionysus?» identifying Christianity with the extreme negation of the vital values postulated by him in his conception of the superman or superhuman.

16) The Future for our Educational Institutions

This book compiles the public lectures delivered by Friedrich Nietzsche between January and March 1872 (first: January 16, second: February 6, third: February 27, fourth: March 5 and fifth: March 23), when he was a professor at the University of Basel.

This collection follows his first published book, The Birth of Tragedy, although it was decided not to publish it immediately, but years later. It marks an important milestone in the development of Nietzsche’s thought.

In these lectures the philosopher expounded some of his most revolutionary statements, such as the need to revalue and reform the educational system in the search for classical values.

17) On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense

On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense is a book that is part of the German’s philosophical work dating from 1873. Nietzsche is considered one of the three «masters of suspicion», according to Paul Ricoeur’s well-known expression, along with Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud.

The text offers a very harsh critique of anthropomorphism and the human tendency to hide the singular under the abstract, the universal. Religious traditions and Platonism, which are not mentioned in the text but are mentioned in the rest of Nietzsche’s work, are paradigmatic of this tendency.

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Nietzsche, Revolutionary Subversion and the Contemporary attack on Music - Stuart Wise

On Nietzsche, music, motherfuckers and insects. From December 2007. Originally published on the Revolt Against Plenty website.

The following is fragmentary critique - there have been a few minor alterations since - that was sent to a young American woman who is hopefully putting together a re-appraisal oriented around the activities of Black Mask and the Motherfuckers rescuing them (and others?) from the repression and calumnies brutally foisted on them in the United States. It is a grim picture typified by an account of their activities plus relatively recent interview with Ben Morea conducted by an appalling, sneering Harvard professor, name of John McMillian 1 .

For American Rebecca (A young student who recently contacted us)

*************************** I am surprised Black Mask and the Motherfuckers are less well known than King Mob and the French Situationists in the States. Have you seen the recent book by Peter Doggett There's a Riot Going On , published by Canongate (Edinburgh, New York, London) that deals with the 'revolution' in music, the title taken from Sly Stone's album of the same name? There are three pages on Black Mask and the Motherfuckers. Basically the guy deals with the Fillmore East intervention against hip entrepreneur Bill Graham together with pop group MC5 and John Sinclair. Although factually reasonably accurate, Doggett is essentially a musicologist living in Hampshire, England and he just hasn't a clue re wider, world-turned-upside-down perspectives managing to make historically important subversive incidents into very dull reading indeed. It's as though he can make no comment or take sides! The uniqueness of Black Mask / Motherfuckers was they forthrightly attacked all the most advanced ultra-modern representations of capital that recuperated real living aspects of general creativity emanating from those who wanted to live completely different lives ranging from cultural mausoleums like the Rockefeller Center / Museum of Modern Art, hip police chiefs like Captain Fink and cutting edge pop musicians from Ed Sanders & the Fugs to MC5. It was a form of subversion unique in dissident 'other' America and has never been repeated there or its potential remotely fulfilled. My brother David was involved in the Ed Sanders attack just after the Fugs had brought out that record that became a hit with the lyric: "Art is nothing, nothing, nothing" turning living contestation into acceptable, saleable commodity. It meant Sanders quickly figured on the cover of Time magazine. A few days after this Black Mask inspired attack, David bumped into that first remarkable eco anarchist, Murray Bookchin on a street on New York's Lower East Side and Murray eagerly grabbed him saying "Ed Sanders is crying saying he's sold out and can't forgive himself". David laughed gleefully. It must also be clearly understood that Ben and co were the first to prioritise the role of pop music attacking its pivotal fulcrum in the vista of contemporary alienation especially the music that specifically said it was on the side of the revolution or indeed was the revolution itself, rightly pointing out it was merely hip performance which, in reality set itself against clued-in intervention from the street and the route that could clearly go somewhere definitively overthrowing the audience / performer estrangement blocking all paths to social / individual emancipation.

These facts in themselves also point to something else and a wider historical memory or historical subconscious as modern interventions like that outlined above didn't just come from nowhere. So, apropos of music and your interest in Nietzsche, I am increasingly of the view the Nietzsche contra Wagner polemic is a seminal document of modern times and of massive importance as regards the present musical panorama - for that is what it is - a visual, wrap around panorama of artistic enactments that endeavours to become all encompassing and that strives, through the aid of the increasingly sophisticated minimalist gadgetry of quantum mechanics, to encompass all of life and eventually become a substitute for life, a 'second life' (or 'skin', for quantum mechanics via computing and Craig Venter is on the verge of creating a replicant biology in tandem with implant engineering) - compensating for the absence of the first. Essentially however it has its (primitive) origins in Wagnerian stage craft that aimed at a similar total immersion having its roots in the gesamtkunstwerk prefigured by German philosophical idealism and the importance it granted to art and the intuitive imagination as a parallel making of society which had to escape the confines of art for it to become a real force (though it was never stated quite as bluntly as this, all the elements are there that allow one to do so) as well as being a response to the revolution of 1848 and in some subtle, unremarked measure and one never given the slightest credence by musicologists influenced by Bakunin and revolutionaries of the same ilk whom for a short time Wagner befriended. In place of the twilight of the gods, the gotterdamerung, there arose the god of music as exclusively masterminded and choreographed by Wagner, that demiurge that Nietzsche denounced as being unable to save music though without taking his insight to the its most extremes it patently cries out for. As you probably know the young Nietzsche idolised Wagner and would embarrassingly abase himself in front of him and for several year was his step 'n' fetch it before turning on Wagner with a vengeance, and which turned out to be the most painful blow ever to land on Wagner.

Nietzsche's first book The Birth of Tragedy brimming with all the naïve verve of youth was effusive in its praise of Wagner. Debord rated the book highly, a fact I have only recently become aware of and indeed one can see how some of its concepts shaped Debord's theorising. In later introductions to this book penned by Nietzsche it becomes apparent that Nietzsche's aversion to Wagner has become unbearable though brilliantly obsessive with Nietzsche worrying over every detail of Wagner's music, life and the influence of the man himself who now, in Nietzsche's eyes, could not do right for doing wrong. As I recall the intros' stress the immediate background - the Paris Commune of 1871 - though Nietzsche refers to it as the Franco-Prussian war, unawares that this signal event in the history of class struggle had perhaps affected his profound enquiry into the nature of Greek drama and its codicil, the apotheosis of Wagner as a contemporary recreation of the spirit of Greek drama. In the decade long interval between the two intros something had happened for Nietzsche by now finding the auditorium and the company of performers / singers /actors - "miming maniacs" - suffocating, glad to be away from it all in the clean air of mountain passes humming with the sounds of insects in which he finds a new innocence beyond the Judaic Christian morality that Wagner has become a declining and interminable prisoner of, not least because of his belief in total artistic envelopment as a panacea possessing the power to cure the catastrophic alienation of man under capitalism. In so far as he once could accurately diagnose alienation, it has to be said that Wagner was closer to Marx than Nietzsche ever was, though neither Marx or Engel's (the latter especially seeing he was contemporaneous with Wagner's greatest triumphs) could even begin to contemplate engaging on a critique of Wagner or even see it as essential. Here Nietzsche, as a reluctant 'communist' even indeed Situationist, increasingly alive to the decay of artistic form, definitely had the drop on both of them.

In any case the growing theatricalization of music, the triumph of the means of production over performance goes back to Wagner though no one, but no one has the wit today to compare the Live 8 nonsense and Live Earth gore with the sound / performance orgies emanating from Bayreuth, the latter's obvious influence on the Nuremberg rallies and their gradual morphing into today's pop spectaculars with a penetration amounting to billions of viewers that Wagner and Hitler would have died for.

I also think it unfortunate Nietzsche never had much to say about Hegel. Though describing him somewhere as a "brother genius" (the other brother being Schopenhauer) I am inclined to think he had only cursorily dipped into Hegel much preferring Kant. And it is Kant's philosophy that we see peering through the shades of The Birth of Tragedy time and again, particularly the importance Kant grants to the "thing in itself" and the limitation such a concept imposes on scientific knowledge. As such Nietzsche looks to destructive, galvanic "creativity" (as prefigured in the drunken Dionysian hordes out of which Greek drama sprang and which is also a mythologisation of the Indo-European migration that, reading between Nietzsche's lines, posed the key question of quiescence - Buddhism - or action) to provide meaning in preference to the knowing - and passive - distance of science, though I think it entirely false to claim that Nietzsche repudiated science and that his entire philosophy was a repudiation of reason (as for instance George Lukacs wilfully alleged) in the name of an altogether different epistemology ultimately derived from a defeated religion and renascent 'art', though one conceived as a principle of life. For instance he followed with considerable interest Helmholtz's investigations into quicker-than-thought reflex actions and he was much taken with Nageli's researches into amoebal life forms, the latter in particular prompting thoughts on alimentation and the psychology of hunger that many years later were to knock Freud sideways. However Nietzsche's claim that these amoebal forms show a rhythmic, aesthetic propensity goes well beyond Kant even if Nietzsche's assertion that "life can only be grasped as an aesthetic phenomena" is indebted to Kant - though it clearly transgresses the restricted sense Kant grants to the aesthetic as alone able to bridge the otherwise unbridgeable antinomy of pure and practical reason.

As you are probably aware both David and myself are fascinated by insects particularly butterflies and moths and have been since we were in short trousers.

Rereading The Genealogy of Morals after a time span of thirty years I was particularly struck by the number of references to insects (there is a distinct buzz to the entire book) even going so far as to list the number of occasions insects are mentioned - and never unfavourably. To my mind it is an altogether less strained work than Thus Spoke Zarathustra (and that reflects Nietzsche's jealously as regards Christianity never entirely able to overthrow the myth of the saviour) where biblical images of eagles and serpents abound, insects rarely appearing in the bible other than negatively, like the plagues of locusts for example. Nietzsche as an entomologist? Why, I even wrote a few lines on the subject several years ago with a eye to the founding fathers of modern entomology like Hooke, Leevanhoek, Ray, Schwammerdam all four coincidental with the rise of Protestantism (described by Marx as "religion's self-criticism") - and capitalism, insects acting in various ways as living picture writing and one that by emphasising the astonishing formal variety of insect morphology and range of insect behaviours implies a critique of the growing uniformity of life under capitalism. Though, to begin with, this admonition is far from obvious in the work of the aforementioned individuals, by the time Keats came to write his Ode to Psyche it certainly was. To my mind Nietzsche in The Genealogy of Morals and in other stray references throughout his oeuvre had taken the subject a stage further by impishly, and perhaps involuntarily, linking entomology to a rejection of the past and a rebirth of wonderment, innocence and a freedom from guilt. And, it should be added, to the abolition of money for there is a nascent critique of political economy in The Genealogy of Morals evident from the attention Nietzsche pays language, pointing in particular to the verb deber meaning both to owe a sum of money and to do ones amoral duty. Need I say more? It certainly goes some way in helping elucidate the extraordinary hold entomology has over the both of us twins. And could the increased interest in insects we see appearing everywhere be a basis for a deeper, more larval, and yet soaring critique of capitalism and which will help this downtrodden, desperately saddened humanity to eventually take wing and become inspired? That Nietzsche was a proto-ecologist is also never noticed. He arraigned industrial capitalism in the 'Genealogy' for its hubris in full expectation of the nemesis to follow: "Our whole attitude to nature, our violation of nature with the help of machines and the heedless ingenuity of technicians and engineers is hubris". In the next breath he describes god as some putative spider, that spider taking the place of Kant's categorical imperative and forever weaving a web of deception in terms of final causes we must combat and which is our categorical imperative. This is the only time arthropods, as far as I can recall, are treated, if not in a wholly negative manner, then certainly ambiguously in the 'Genealogy'. Otherwise to be in the presence of insects is an ennobling experience, and beyond good and evil as these 'opposites' have hitherto been conceived.

Nietzsche's final work written when he was 'mad', correct me if I am mistaken, was Ecce Homo . It is a work not easy to come by in this country or in America - and not because it is sacrilegious but because it is vain glorious, especially so to English ears. To me it stinks of religious envy and to my mind it would have made more sense to have written a work entitled Ecce Arte - behold the artist or art. Its consequences could have been, would have been, far more profound - and relevant. Zarathustra sought to be a creator of life, of people, rather than art but unfortunately he comes across as something of a crank prophet obsessed with replacing Christ though unable to do much more than emulate what he was striving to overcome. And with nothing like the equivalent degree of success - in fact when all is said and done Zarathustra is not much more than a ridiculously still-born literary figure. Hegel also made Christ out to be an artist in his Philosophy of the Fine Arts but Hegel, despite paying lip service to Christianity for career reasons, was a less religiously obsessed man than Nietzsche and it never detracted for one moment from his main task which was to historicize the forms of art, a stupendously productive enterprise and which willy-nilly influenced Nietzsche and everyone else who subsequently has given a moment's thought to art's history. And though now conveniently forgotten that is what Hegel wanted to do: make art history.

But to get back to Nietzsche as a critique of art rather than art critic. Would for instance that Nietzsche had been able to update his critique of music with a consideration of Debussy for example, that other founding contemporary musical influence almost on a par with Wagner and whose importance grows by the minute with each commissioned piece of nature schmaltz especially composed to accompany yet another wild life TV programme. Though often dazzling solely on account of the photography they still leave the viewer feeling empty, who, even in this moment of direst emergency, is only ever there to be entertained. Nothing unsettling, like incisive critique which could be a prelude to changing nature (i.e. restoring it), must ever be allowed to intrude upon these nature spectaculars. Debussy like Wagner also anticipates filmic modes, the endless melodies of his tone poem perfectly lending themselves to the minute, never-ending variations required by the serial production of nature films on an industrial scale that caters to a market demand that is now global. Under the weight of formulaic nature recitatives that aspire to outlive nature and narratives both spoken and unspoken that do not have to be anthropomorphic in order to falsify content, nature becomes essentially a fictionalised nature. Without barely a word said in protest, nature ends up succumbing to art long before it is finally destroyed by capitalism and climate change. Considering just how trenchant Nietzsche's critique of Wagner is, and one that is capable of effortlessly spanning the 120 year gap in between, I have often wondered what he would have heard in Debussy that would resonate down to our own times. The sound of silence? For that is more than likely in a musician in which the sounds of nature have a tendency to take over, the medley of rustling leaves continuing where Debussy left off and finally leading to an artistic crisis of vast proportions and consequence.

When did the reclaiming of Nietzsche for the revolution begin and by whom? I think that ultimately we have the Frankfurt School to thank for that, particularly Herbert Marcuse in his book on Freud entitled Eros and Civilization . This book dotted with numerous references to Nietzsche certainly changed the way I thought about Nietzsche and led me on to unearth yet more Freudian anticipations in the nooks and crannies and highways and byways of Nietzsche's thoughts than those cited by Marcuse. Though I was then inclined to think that without the scientific grounding that Freud supplied, Nietzsche's intuitions, like his notion of the primal crime on which civilization is based, would forever remain inspired guess work, I also never wavered in my conviction that civilization and its discontents was experienced in an altogether more razor like and total manner by Nietzsche than it ever was by that respectable bourgeois, Sigmund Freud.

Did Georges Bataille help reclaim Nietzsche for the radical revolution envisaged by the International Lettrists, the Situationist International, King Mob and the Motherfuckers and others in America? All three volumes of his The Accursed Share were some of the most influential books of the post war years, though ones that were hopelessly vitiated by a conception of communism that owed everything to Stalin and next to nothing to Marx. To this arid Russian soviet alternative Bataille counter poses Nietzsche though recognising that Zarathustra's revolt is also doomed to failure, as fascism has in a sense demonstrated, though he never once unequivocally insists that Nietzsche would have unhesitatingly rejected Hitler with the same vehemence as Marx would have done Stalin. It showed how much Bataille was affected by the ruling discourse and more's the pity that he did not see fit to attend the seminal discussions around Rouge et Noir and the nascent Socialisme ou Barbarie group who were then beginning to develop a theory of state capitalism. Had Bataille understood the tenor of what they were saying it could have fundamentally changed everything regarding his reworking of Mauss's Essai sur le Don and what society did with its surplus and which gave humanity its sovereign purpose? This fundamental category, and until Bataille, ignored category of political economy, and which is so resistant to analysis in terms of labour value and the reproduction of labour power, took the 'science' well beyond the realm of necessity and mere survival - though it is questionable if Bataille ever really understood what was meant by the abolition of political economy. My history is hazy here and I'm unable to say exactly how Bataille's study of the potlatch contributed to a deeper understanding of the first violent, spontaneous revolts against consumer society and its inevitable corollary - work itself. Or to what degree he influenced Lettrisme then International Lettrisme and finally the Situationists. It is a hidden history and one that could do with being exposed to the clear light of day, particularly in the English-speaking world. The Bataille that comes down to us, and that is so big both here and in the States and has such a market appeal, is the one that justifies art (e.g. the Chapman Bros, Genesis P-Orridge etc) and is mired in the aestheticisation of De Sade and Lautreamont turning them into erotic novelists and instigators of a sadoporn art genre. Also Bataille cannot escape the charge that he helped prepare the sewer of post modernism, particularly so in Michael Foucault's case. Though Bataille was hostile to academia, his writing often suffers from a typically academic lack of directness and thus prefigures the get-out clauses post-modernism is littered with. Following the Second World War and reflecting the rise of social democracy whether in a 'right' or 'left' form, there was a huge increase in higher education establishments, their baneful influence doing much to weaken and finally destroy revolutionary theory. It is more imperative today than ever to keep clear of academic institutions, even if only for the sake of one's mental health.

Finally there was also a post war Stalinoid rehabilitation of Nietzsche led by Louis Althusser who was in turn much influenced by the philosopher of psychoanalysis, Jacques Lacan, who in the manner of the philosophes attempted to reduce Freud to a series of algebraic equations. However even Lacan drew back from carrying out a similar mathematical diminution on Nietzsche, though Thomas Mann's fictionalised portrait of Nietzsche in the person of Adrian Leverkuhn in Dr Faustus has him steeped in the mathematical relations of music. A more un-Nietzschean preoccupation cannot be imagined and to think, as Mann obviously does, that Nietzsche would have been an aficionado of Schoenberg is completely mistaken to my mind. No matter whether tonal or atonal, the musical score per se would have come under the philosopher's hammer.

And as to the Stalinoid rehabilitation of Nietzsche ---- I have my own personal story to relate. I doubt if you have heard of Dick Pountain but suffice to say he is now worth around a cool million quid or so and is the business partner of Felix Dennis, currently one of the top richest people in Britain worth just this side of £1 billion though formerly one of the editors of Oz magazine. (The same company that made Notting Hill is presently making a film of the Oz trial entitled Hippie, Hippie Shake in Notting Hill). Dick in his earlier days hung around with King Mob before abandoning libertarian critiques to embrace 'scientific Marxism' as preached by Louis Althusser. To mark his conversion he pinned up a photograph of---Friedrich Nietzsche! Casual visitors mistakenly took it to be a photograph of Stalin for by this time Pountain had begun to relate to BICO (British and Irish Communist Party) who were engaged among other things in reprinting transcripts of the Moscow Trials to prove that Stalin was right and that e.g. Bukharin was a running dog lackey of capitalism after all! He was. But so was Stalin though under another form that 'bent' the law of value so to speak and suppressed the internal market by bringing commerce completely under the control of the state. (Mark my words this beast is due for a revival). Louis Althusser had built his entire life around the concept of the 'epistemological break' (though 'brake' would more accurately describe this dead-end) to explain the moment Marx definitely broke with Hegel and on the slenderest evidence from that time forwards purportedly dropped any mention of dialectics as idealist and pre-scientific. Pountain had intended inscribing his pin-up of Nietzsche with the words "Hegel is dead, killed by Nietzsche" believing him to be a thorough going determinist. But so in a sense was Hegel who was no stranger to the hidden hand of history, of forces operating behind people's backs. Indeed he could be said to have 'invented' the idea, for it was a notion that was central to his entire system. 2

Looking back this latter-day adulation of Nietzsche from a Russian soviet perspective could be said to herald the break-up of the nomenclature and marked a transitional stage prior to some members of it becoming filthy rich from Yeltsin's reckless privatisations of state companies. Wallowing in regret - and money - Pountain now lashes himself for ever having supported the soviet system and crying foul whenever the operations of the free market are obstructed. Now both Hegel and Nietzsche are dead - killed by money!

Strange to say Nietzsche's reputation has rarely been higher than it is today whilst Freud's star continues to decline. He is rated highly by Daniel C. Dennett ( Darwin's Dangerous Idea ) and, given that Richard Dawkins has a great regard for Dennett, no doubt also by Dawkins, who in turn has no time at all for the 'soft science' of either Freud or Marx. According to Dawkins the god delusion can only be dispelled through rigorous scientific demonstration and the notion that religion is the alienated essence of man is a complete anathema to him. Thus he cannot begin to understand the hold religion has over mankind. The only way to abolish religion is to abolish the conditions that give rise to religion, and that prevent every last one of us from experiencing fulfilment. To Dawkins capitalism is not a problem, never mind the problem and the very last thing Dawkins wants to see is the drawing down of heaven to earth, as took place in the Paris Commune of 1871. And so we are back to where we more or less started in the discussion of Nietzsche, the Paris Commune of 1871 and before that in a few remarks on Black Mask and the Motherfuckers, on a developing total intervention against a growing total alienation that demands total revolution. Do we ever really get away from these momentous events, events that will inevitably return to haunt the last days of mankind if we don't finally succeed in overthrowing this goddamned system?

• 1 Libcom note: https://libcom.org/article/ben-morea-garbage-guerrilla
• 2 Memories of Dick Pountain similar to these views in the paragraph can be found in another text in this compilation: 'Comparisons: From Mass Observation to King Mob'. Equally the discussion on Georges Bataille and his hangers-on can be found in 'On Georges Bataille: The Accursed Share versus sado-masochism and Shock Marketing' .
• Up Against the Wall Motherfucker
• Friedrich Nietzsche
• Richard Wagner

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The Wild Blood Dynasty

What a little-known family reveals about the nation’s untamed spirit

A merican Bloods —what a title! Hammering out agreement on the meaning of American is hard enough, but factor in blood —our precious bodily fluid, susceptible to poisoning in the fevered fascist imagination—and a brawl might just be brewing. If you’ve figured out that Blood is a surname, the subtitle of John Kaag’s new book ( The Untamed Dynasty That Shaped a Nation ) could possibly defuse the situation, but it too is provocative: If the Blood dynasty shaped the nation, why have we never heard of it?

The Unique Burial of a Child of Early Scythian Time at the Cemetery of Saryg-Bulun (Tuva)

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Pages:  379-406

In 1988, the Tuvan Archaeological Expedition (led by M. E. Kilunovskaya and V. A. Semenov) discovered a unique burial of the early Iron Age at Saryg-Bulun in Central Tuva. There are two burial mounds of the Aldy-Bel culture dated by 7th century BC. Within the barrows, which adjoined one another, forming a figure-of-eight, there were discovered 7 burials, from which a representative collection of artifacts was recovered. Burial 5 was the most unique, it was found in a coffin made of a larch trunk, with a tightly closed lid. Due to the preservative properties of larch and lack of air access, the coffin contained a well-preserved mummy of a child with an accompanying set of grave goods. The interred individual retained the skin on his face and had a leather headdress painted with red pigment and a coat, sewn from jerboa fur. The coat was belted with a leather belt with bronze ornaments and buckles. Besides that, a leather quiver with arrows with the shafts decorated with painted ornaments, fully preserved battle pick and a bow were buried in the coffin. Unexpectedly, the full-genomic analysis, showed that the individual was female. This fact opens a new aspect in the study of the social history of the Scythian society and perhaps brings us back to the myth of the Amazons, discussed by Herodotus. Of course, this discovery is unique in its preservation for the Scythian culture of Tuva and requires careful study and conservation.

Keywords: Tuva, Early Iron Age, early Scythian period, Aldy-Bel culture, barrow, burial in the coffin, mummy, full genome sequencing, aDNA

Information about authors: Marina Kilunovskaya (Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation). Candidate of Historical Sciences. Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dvortsovaya Emb., 18, Saint Petersburg, 191186, Russian Federation E-mail: [email protected] Vladimir Semenov (Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation). Candidate of Historical Sciences. Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dvortsovaya Emb., 18, Saint Petersburg, 191186, Russian Federation E-mail: [email protected] Varvara Busova  (Moscow, Russian Federation).  (Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation). Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences.  Dvortsovaya Emb., 18, Saint Petersburg, 191186, Russian Federation E-mail:  [email protected] Kharis Mustafin  (Moscow, Russian Federation). Candidate of Technical Sciences. Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.  Institutsky Lane, 9, Dolgoprudny, 141701, Moscow Oblast, Russian Federation E-mail:  [email protected] Irina Alborova  (Moscow, Russian Federation). Candidate of Biological Sciences. Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.  Institutsky Lane, 9, Dolgoprudny, 141701, Moscow Oblast, Russian Federation E-mail:  [email protected] Alina Matzvai  (Moscow, Russian Federation). Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.  Institutsky Lane, 9, Dolgoprudny, 141701, Moscow Oblast, Russian Federation E-mail:  [email protected]

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Sergei Ryakhovsky

The balashikha ripper, the hippopotamus,   active for 6 years (1988-1993) in russia, confirmed victims, possible victims.

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Sergei Ryakhovsky (Sergei Vasilyevich Ryakhovsky) a Soviet-Russian serial killer known as the Balashikha Ripper and The Hippopotamus. Ryakhovsky was convicted for the killing of nineteen people in the Moscow area between 1988 and 1993. Ryakhovsky's mainly stabbed or strangulated his victims, he mutilated some bodies, mainly in the genital area. Allegedly Ryakhovsky carried out necrophilic acts on his victims and stole their belongings. Ryakhovsky standing 6’5" tall and weighting 286 pounds, gaining him the nickname, The Hippo. Sergei Ryakhovsky died on January 21st 2005 from untreated tuberculosis while serving his life sentence in prison.

Sergei Ryakhovsky Serial Killer Profile

Serial Killer Sergei Ryakhovsky (aka) the Balashikha Ripper, The Hippopotamus, was active for 6 years between 1988-1993 , known to have ( 19 confirmed / 19 possible ) victims. This serial killer was active in the following countries: Russia

Sergei Ryakhovsky was born on December 29th 1962 in Balashikha, Moscow Oblast, Soviet Union. He had a physically defect. During his education he had academic, social or discipline problems including being teased or picked on.

Sergei Ryakhovsky a necrophile male citizen of Russia.

Prior to his spree he had killed, commited crimes, and served time in jail.

In 1988 (Age 25/26) Sergei Ryakhovsky started his killing spree, during his crimes as a serial killer he was known to rob, commit acts of necrophilia , torture , strangle , rape , mutilate, and murder his victims.

He was arrested on April 13th 1993 (Age 30), sentenced to death by firing squad at a maximum-security penal colony in Solikamsk, Perm Oblast, Russia. He was convicted on charges of murder and other possible charges during his lifetime.

Sergei Ryakhovsky died on January 21st 2005 (Age 42), cause of death: natural causes, untreated tuberculosis at a maximum-security penal colony in Solikamsk, Perm Oblast, Russia.

Profile Completeness: 62%

Sergei Ryakhovsky has been listed on Killer.Cloud since November of 2016 and was last updated 4 years ago.

Sergei Ryakhovsky a known:

( 651 killers ) serial killer.

The unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s), in separate events. Serial Killer as defined by the FBI at the 2005 symposium.

( 308 killers ) RAPIST

Rape is usually defined as having sexual intercourse with a person who does not want to, or cannot consent.

( 60 killers ) NECROPHILIAC

Necrophilia, also called thanatophilia, is a sexual attraction or sexual act involving corpses. Serial Killer Necrophiliacs have been known to have sex with the body of their victim(s).

( 89 killers ) TORTURER

Torture is when someone puts another person in pain. This pain may be physical or psychological. Tourturers touture their victims.

( 251 killers ) STRANGLER

Strangulation is death by compressing the neck until the supply of oxygen is cut off. Stranglers kill by Strangulation.

Sergei Ryakhovsky Serial Killer Profile:

Updated: 2019-06-30 collected by killer.cloud, 8 timeline events of serial killer sergei ryakhovsky.

The 8 dates listed below represent a timeline of the life and crimes of serial killer Sergei Ryakhovsky. A complete collection of serial killer events can be found on our Serial Killer Timeline .

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The following serial killers were active during the same time span as Sergei Ryakhovsky (1988-1993).

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Paul rowles 2 victims during 21 years, andrás pándy 6 victims during 5 years, serhiy tkach 37 victims during 22 years, serial killers by active year, books that mention sergei ryakhovsky.

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External References

• Sergei Ryakhovsky on en.wikipedia.org , Retrieved on Sep 18, 2018 .
• Juan Ignacio Blanco , Sergei Vasilyevich RYAKHOVSKY on murderpedia.org , Retrieved on Sep 18, 2018 .
• Q372816 on www.wikidata.org , Retrieved on Oct 9, 2018 .

Sergei Ryakhovsky is included in the following pages on Killer.Cloud the Serial Killer Database

• #3 of 45[ Page 1 ] of Serial Killers with birthdays in December
• #10 of 60[ Page 1 ] of Serial Killer Necrophiliacs sorted by Confirmed Victims
• #10 of 29[ Page 1 ] of Serial Killers active in Russia
• #10 of 55[ Page 1 ] of Capricorn Serial Killers sorted by Confirmed Victims
• #11 of 89[ Page 1 ] of Serial Killer Torturers sorted by Confirmed Victims
• #27 of 250[ Page 2 ] of Serial Killer Stranglers sorted by Confirmed Victims
• #35 of 307[ Page 3 ] of Serial Killer Rapist sorted by Confirmed Victims
• #63 of 651[ Page 5 ] of serial killers sorted by Confirmed Victims
• #264 of 651[ Page 18 ] of serial killers sorted by Years Active
• #381 of 651[ Page 26 ] of serial killers sorted by Profile Completeness
• #516 of 651[ Page 35 ] of the A-Z List of Serial Killers

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Moscow Oblast Regional Investment and Business Guide Paperback

• Publisher Int'l Business Publications, USA
• ISBN-10 073970849X
• ISBN-13 978-0739708491
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• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 073970849X
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