Out of the Spirit of Music (Penguin Classics) - The Birth of Tragedy

Nietszche:Beyond Good and Evil, reviewed by [email protected] In the early chapters, Nietzsche in effect wipes the slate clean, showing how previous philosophers and moralities were in their grasp inadequate. There is a "definite fundamental scheme of possible philosophies"(Aphorism 20), as there is of possible moralities(260), and particular philosphers and moralists merely fill in their respective places on these spectrums. Nietzsche offers a comprehensive critique of all such systems. The philosophers are unable to perceive even what in themselves wishes for truth, and they do not see that truth and virtue may in fact derive from deceptiveness and wickedness, which may be necessary functions for life itself. (Aph. 2-4) The will to truth may be merely a refinement of the will to ignorance.(24) Certain falsehoods may be nourishing and necessary physiologically. Deceptive appearance is necessary for life itself. (34) In a voice of irony, he acknowledges that we might need mathematical science, despite its falsehood. Philosophers and scientists wish to impose their morality, their ideal, their concepts on nature out of their pride, wishing to appropriate nature. Less the truthfulness of their concepts than this underlying will to power motivates the self-deceptively put "will to truth".
It is but an old moral prejudice that truth is worth more than appearance, or even that there is in reality any opposition between "truth" and "falsehood" at all. They may be merely shades of the same thing, "degrees of appearance".(34) The very existence of "stuff" or matter that underlies the "real world" is highly doubtful. Likewise, even the basic assumptions of a unitary "self" that thinks, of an "I", is also but an old falsifying superstition to which we cling for comfort and vanity. Again, " free will" being an illusion shows the importance of intentionality to be illusory. "The decisive value of an intention lies precisely in what is unintentional in it." (32) In this, he anticipates psychoanalysis.
Thinking about and questioning morality is itself immoral. (228) We have, after all, pluripotential access within to every barbarism(223). Morals, we've discovered, are a mere phenomenon of nature, not absolute nor above nature; there are no universal goods or values (194).Our modern "scientific", historic,scholarly, observations and evaluations of all moralities and cultures,then, puts us in the position at best of being parodists of all moralities, undermining every one.(223) Our "transcendent" position is empty. Thus, our intrinsic, physiological aggression (will to power), manifested as "scientific skepticism", has relentlessly critiqued all that we loved or worshipped, utterly destroying each in turn. Having diagnosed our new condition, that we have assassinated not only the "old soul concept", ie, the "subject", showing that it is a questionable mere appearance as much as the "object", Nietzsche then sketches out the grim consequences . We have sacrificed ourselves, reality, finally even God himself, leaving us with only the Nothing to worship, "the final cruelty."(55) Recognizing that there is no objective foundation for morality in the world, that there is no universal moral law (186) , that the inner essence of nature and man is no more than raw will to power, instills profound pessimism. The truth that there is no truth may be deadly, as put by Leo Strauss. It is better that few people realize this; the general propogation of this insight could be calamitous; Thus, it is good that the study of morality is boring. (But boredom denies life...) (228) Can there nevertheless somehow be life-affirmation from this insight? Finding or asserting this seems a principle goal of Nietche's.
The strength of drives per se, of the will to power, which includes the capacity to sublimate, train and cultivate that raw will to higher forms of "spirituality", may be a way out. But, without any absolute nor objective standard from any other source than that who wills, the ultimate value of what is willed can derive only from the source of will itself; it is self-posited. The one who wills most strongly creates values, creates the orientation of better and worse, and need not refer nor resort to any standard independently of his own nobility. Nietszche seems to celebrate this, but he recognizes the dangers, describing even proto-Nazism (208). The "philosopher of the future" , with these insights in hand, creates truth and value, rules and legislates, becoming himself the telos of mankind .(211) Man is both creature and Creator(225), in the image of God most literally; man created God in his own image. The"philosopher of the future" extends the sphere of his responsibility to include the all.; he might undertake "audacious and painful experiments" that "the softhearted and the effeminate tastes of democracy could not approve... They will be harder (and perhaps not always only against themselves) than humane people might wish." (210) He raises the question: Is cruelty itself a good, merely a necessity, or merely to be recognized as a primary reality of nature, or of life?
Men and values are not equal, and according to the self-posited valuation of the great men, since they are themselves the Whither and Wherefore of mankind, what is right for one is hardly fair for all. Exploitation of others might be necessary; As opposed to Kant's moral imperative, by which each human consciousness must be only regarded always as an end in itself, never a means, this new morality, truer to the nature of things, unhinged from any absolute, has all lower men as only means to the ends of the men with the strongest wills. We can see how this is a "dangerous" book, which, if misinterpreted or misrepresented, as in fact it was for political ends by some Germans in the 1930's, might be used to pervert Nietcszche, making him seem to promote the worst outrages, when in fact he was merely the sad herald. Samuel T. Goldberg, M.D.; University of Maryland School of Medicine; Dept. of Psychiatry

Interesting title and author attracted me to take a peek. This book is written superbly in old english with outdated ideas about women for which I forgive him. The book is not only fascinating reading, it is a joy to follow his poetic use of language. But the best part is the irony and wit with which he takes on such a grim sounding topic. I had to read small bits at a time to avoid becoming overwhelmed with the content and complexity but it was sheer joy to revisit to the end.

This is the clearest, most measured exposition of Nietzsche's mature philosophy, the ideal counterpoint to the parables of Also Sprach Zarathustra. The aphoristic style perfectly complements the multifaceted subtleties of the content. The language is beautiful and free of the pressured stridency of his late works. Unfortunately the translation leaves something to be desired, especially in comparison to that of Nietzsche's best translator, Walter Kaufmann. Still, it's a worthwhile read, and better still, reread. The more one delves into the works of this brilliant and often mischaracterized thinker, the more one appreciates his enormous culture, wit, and prescience. Drop your preconceptions and read him for yourself! It can be a lifechanging experience, and even if you don't agree with him, he's never boring or obtuse. Five stars.

After his "Zarathustra" and "Ecce Homo" this MASTERPIECE is very probably the most read book that is signed with the unique pen of Friedrich NIETZSCHE. We can define the ESSENCE of this work as a radical form of criticism towards modernity. With the well known fury of this master - and his so particular style, "HIS" way of writing and thinking - he opposes and attacks "modern" science, politics and arts, without even the slightest bit of mercy. However "HIS TIME", people of that period were so proud (even still today) of that modernity. CONCEPTS like "scientific objectivity", "sympathy" and "ethic responsability" are minutely dissected here and "downsized" to their REAL ORIGIN: THE WILL FOR POWER.

It was in fact Nietzsche's intention, even his deepest wish that the book would be read as a programmatical discourse with which he tried to reach his spiritual "relatives", the "free" spirits, PEOPLE OF THE FUTURE, who saw Nietzsche as "one of them", or rather: wanted to see him as their spiritual leader and guide.

This quite "special book" is built, constructed in 296 paragraphs (some only a few lines some several pages) and can be seen as the PENDANT of his "ZARATHUSTRA", which he had accomplished the year before and in which the author made his first attempt to resume his way of philosophical reasoning and thinking. As "Thus spake Zarathustra" excells in symbolism and literary presentation, his "Beyond Good And Evil" is famous thanks to the numerous concise aphorisms than can extremely well be cited, quoted again and again, above all with an extraordinary ease.

THIS IS LITERATURE OF THE HIGHEST QUALITY AND RANKING, very well readable for all human beings (sic!!!). What is more: this wonderful, magnificent book STAYS being read and re-read all over again. Very much so because of THE SPLENDID APHORISMS AND QUOTATIONS. IT IS AN UNEQUALLED, UNFORGETTABLE WORK IN ITS GENRE. A GREAT AND TRUE PLEASURE TO READ ... FOR EVERYBODY.

RECOMMENDED MASTERPIECE TO ALL OF YOU: TO BE READ HOWEVER WITHOUT CHEAP PREJUDICES.

If Nietzche were not already dead, this book would convince you to kill him. Plodded through about half of the book and then realized I was doing permanent brain damage to myself. Nietzche - please! stay dead.

Forget Wagner, whose disgruntled cacophony posing as music is nicely dispatched by Oscar Wilde in one of his plays with a comparative quip when somebody rings an old and disturbingly noisy doorbell. Forget Wagner because The Birth of Tragedy is the greatest work of art criticism ever written. It is also, despite being in print for a century, an underexplored gold mine for artists and intellectuals. This is Nietzsche's first book: it contains en ovo the thoughts of this great writer and thinker who had a formative influence on Heidegger and through him Derrida, the two greatest post-Nietzschean philosophers. Nietzsche's great theme is the infinite possibility opened up by Greek culture in 6th century B.C., in the time of Heraclitus and the birth of tragedy-the culture that spawned not only democracy and science but which, like a brood of many eggs only some of which have hatched (or quantum possibility before measurement "collapses" the wave function into reality)-much more besides--the culture beside whose tragedic productions (by Aeschylus and Sophocles, not Euripedes, whom Nietzsche shows lost touch with the essence of tragedy) modern cultural productions not only do not measure up, but often seem at best, as Nietzsche says, like a "caricature." The loss of art traced by Nietzsche is itself-well, not tragic, no-less than tragic: sad let us say. Not only a highly creative artist-like philosopher, but a multilingual philologist who read ancient Greek in the original, Nietzsche beams his laser-like analysis with astounding clarity into this lost realm of possibility. It is as if he stuck a bookmark into the Tome of Time, showing us the very best part of an otherwise often dry and rather bad (and perhaps overly long!) book of which we collectively are the author, called Culture. What is crucial to emphasize in B of T is Nietzsche's conclusion (or assumption) that (in its most famous line) "existence is only justified as an aesthetic phenomenon." Thus ancient Greek tragedy is not just a random subject, or one art form among others. It is the aesthetic experience par excellence, the greatest overcoming of the perils of existence into a worthy production of art humans ever developed. Nietzsche links the success of Aeschylean and Sophoclean tragedy to the brief fruitful intercourse (like that between men and women, which keeps new people coming despite often-fractious sexual relationships) between two aesthetic strains. One he identifies with the Greek messenger god of the sun, Apollo, the other with the dismembered god of wine, Dionysos. Dionysos also is not one god among others. Rather, it was to him that all the (originally religious) tragedies were devoted and, Nietzsche tells us, when other actors appeared on the sacred precursor to the Greek stage they were not to be taken as realistic but as avatars, idealized other versions, of Dionysos. Now the most crucial thing to realize about Dionysos is that "he" is split into pieces and his split pieces represent the fundamental, and contradictory, fact of the universe: that although all is one (to borrow a philosophical truism) this One is split into many. This primordial splitting (cf. Heidegger's distinction between individual beings and Being) is, according to Nietzsche, regarded by the ancient Greeks as itself the ur-source of human suffering. From Dionysos's tears came mankind, from his smile the gods. Now Nietzsche says that the Apollinian aesthetic strain manifests in the clarity of dreams-which show discrete-although ultimately illusory-images. These images are similar to those that appear before the chorus (crucial to tragedy but dispensed with by Euripedes), and before the spectators, in the form of the actors of the tragic spectacle. Thus the tragical spectacle displayed shows itself to be a dreamlike illusion of the culture, not a representation of reality per se. Just as, after we stare at the sun, we see spots before our eyes so, Nietzsche says, after we stare into the abyss we see the tragedy with its chorus and ideal human characters. The Dionysian element Nietzsche identifies with drunkenness and dissolution, the opposite of the clarity of dream imagery, made public on the Greek stage. The Dionysian in a sense represents the One, or the movement from the individual (seen a la Schopenhauer and Vedic metaphysics as a mayan illusion of universe that "I"s itself) back to the One; the Apollinian the illusory clarity of the skin-encapsulated individual. (Nietzsche's own individuality, and brain, were compromised by Treponema spirochetes, real Dionysian avatars of the syphilis that eventually killed him.) One of the most fascinating things about Nietzsche's exquisitely crafted analysis is the way it shows science, no less than Euripides, to be motivated by Socrates' false humility and dreams of total knowledge. "Who is this demigod?" Nietzsche asks of Socrates-whose reign of reasonableness, passed on to Plato, Aristotle, and the Church scholastics-defines much of the modern world. Socrates created the secular tradition, raising knowledge over aesthetics and giving mysticism a bad name. Nietzsche points out that Plato burnt his plays after coming into contact with his teacher-and that the compromise, the Platonic dialogues, were in fact the prototype of a new, Socratized art form-the novel. Thus, startlingly Nietzsche suggests the novel itself is a debased form of art-a Euripideanized, Socratized attempt to make the primal aesthetic experience more representative, reasonable, and realistic. Euripedes (he later recanted, but his influence went on) dispensed with the tragic core of stagecraft, and today we accept that drama is about individual characters in all their oddity and imperfections-rammed at us unremittingly with the hegemony of plot and wordy deus ex machina explanations in the aesthetically poisonous, hyperrationalistic aftermath of Euripides's Socratic capitulations. In sum, today we have all but forgotten the Dionysian origins of acting-more real than realism-which originally was centered around not fleeting emotions and empathy, but the central cosmological fact of the individuals tragic separation from the All. Highly recommended.

Though it contains some thought-provoking aphorisms, when it comes to its longer, more substantive passages, Beyond Good and Evil is not what its title proclaims. Nietzsche certainly does not move beyond the realm of value judgments altogether (which is about the best thing I can say for him in this regard). Nor does he even offer a genuine alternative to conventional conceptions of good and evil. Rather, he simply takes the flip-side of that coin and reverses the labels, ascribing (at least by strong implication) moral superiority to what would conventionally be called the "evil" and moral inferiority to what society had generally come to accept as the "good". On this last, much of his criticism of Christianity, which he aptly described as "slave-morality", is quite accurate; but in his own positive views, he unfortunately failed to move beyond the Christian moral framework and offer a genuine alternative. For example, instead of saying that the strong should sacrifice themselves to the weak, he held that the strong should sacrifice the weak to themselves. He completely accepted the view that morality was about masters and slaves, and only argued as to who should be sacrificed to whom.

He writes, for instance: "The essential thing, however, in a good and healthy aristocracy is that it should...accept with a good conscience the sacrifice of a legion of individuals, who, FOR ITS SAKE, must be suppressed and reduced to imperfect men, to slaves and instruments. Its fundamental belief must be precisely that society is NOT allowed to exist for its own sake, but only as a foundation and scaffolding, by means of which a select class of beings may be able to elevate themselves to their higher duties, and in general to a higher EXISTENCE..."

This illustrates the problem with this sort of Nietzschean pseudo-egoism very well: one cannot accept egoism except on the basis of individualism---the "ego" is, after all, the "I", the individual self as distinct from other selves. Nietzsche senses this and tries to uphold the individual (e.g., "the individual dares to be individual and detach himself")---but one cannot uphold the individual while at the same time speaking of sacrificing legions of individuals. It's simply not consistent...if it is right for some people to exist for their own sake as individuals, then by the same token every other individual has that same right (Nietzsche's separation of them into "noble" and "despicable" classes notwithstanding).

The alternative to populism is not elitism, but individualism...and elitism is by definition not individualism. As one dictionary aptly puts it, elitism is "consciousness of or pride in belonging to a select or favored group"...it may be a smaller group, but it is still defining oneself primarily in terms of and in relation to the group. Indeed, Nietzche writes: "...egoism belongs to the essence of a noble soul, I mean the unalterable belief that to a being such as 'we,' other beings must naturally be in subjection, and have to sacrifice themselves..." Note the "we" where one would expect an "I", followed by the calls for sacrifice of one group to another...clearly, Nietzsche is not a genuine individualist, but a common elitist merely posing as one.

All of this follows from what might be called his metaethical principles, for example that "...life itself is ESSENTIALLY appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation..." This is of course true of animals, but not of human beings in the moral sense. You might think that Nietzsche recognizes this as he describes the egoist as a "CREATOR OF VALUES", but he means that only in the sense that he subjectively defines values for himself, not that he actually creates the values his life requires rather than appropriating them from those who do create them. So for Nietzsche, the "egoist" is existentially a parasite on those who are actually creative and productive.

Nietzsche does insist that the highest men are not simply those who are physically superior, but spiritually (for lack of a better word---Nietzsche uses the term "psychically" in the translation I'm using) as well---the great individuals who shape a culture rather than merely being shaped by it, the Wagners, the, well...the Nietzsches! But given that these men are simply those who have the greatest concentration of the Will to Power, and not through any morally praiseworthy choices of their own, as Nietzsche denies freedom of the will, it's not clear that their superior status is in any sense "deserved". And whether their domination over others is through sheer force of will, or by actual physical domination, it still basically comes down to "might makes right".

The "Will to Power" is itself a sort of half-baked idea. Robert C. Solomon makes a lot out of Nietzsche's rejection of Plato and Schopenhauer, and of metaphysics in general, but interpreting his "Will to Power" as a merely psychological phenomenon (even a universal one) is a bit of a stretch, when he largely took the idea from Schopenhauer's "Will" or "Will to Live" and when its place in Nietzsche's philosophy is similar in form and function (if not in content) to Plato's Form of the Good. But to be fair, interpreting Nietzsche is not exactly a clear-cut undertaking, considering the unsystematic nature of his writings.

Even Nietzsche's comments on peripheral subjects don't stand up very well in retrospect. Many of his remarks about women are extremely unfortunate, and his attempt at music criticism is almost laughable as he dismisses Mendelssohn, Schumann, and the Romantics (and even Beethoven as the transition between Mozart and them) as unsubstantial and therefore short-lived and already forgotten---when his own musical compositions (yes, Nietzsche was himself something of an amateur composer!) have actually been forgotten (though they're not too bad) much more so than those.

So is there any value in reading Nietzsche today? Certainly, for those interested in the history of philosophy...it is interesting, for example, how Nietzsche's emphasis on feeling or "the passions" over rational thought bridged the gap between Hegel as well as the German Romantic philosophers such as Schelling, and the existentialists, on the one hand; and on the other how his proto-phenomenology bridged the gap between Kant and not only the existentialists but also the pragmatists.

And Beyond Good and Evil does contain some beautifully expressed thoughts, including one of my all-time favorite passages: "...it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about itself, something which is not to be sought, is not to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost.--THE NOBLE SOUL HAS REVERENCE FOR ITSELF." That is a beautiful, and (properly understood) profoundly true, idea. If only Nietzsche could have lived up to it in the rest of the work.

The ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche has had considerable influence on much of twentieth century philosophy and other areas as well. Indeed, the modern dance technique of Doris Humphrey is one of the many, and was taken to be based on his distinction between the Apollinian and Dionysian duality. Walter Kaufmann, the translator and commentator of this book, has given the reader a distinct view of Nietzsche in two of his works, the "Birth of Tragedy" being his first, and one of his last, "The Case of Wagner".
Nietzsche was one of the few philosophers who engaged in self-criticism, and is the most honest of all philosophers who took to the pen. This is indeed manifest in his "Attempt at a Self-Criticism", which was added to the 1886 edition of "The Birth of Tragedy". Nietzsche attempted to view the nature of truth without any masks, and his need to do this resulted in his works perhaps being more of a dialog with himself than with his readers. With every line written, Nietzsche was making sure that he himself was convinced of what was put down on paper. But this must at all times be done without "arresting the play" and negating the "terrors of existence".
Kaufmann represents "The Birth of Tragedy" as a work that allowed Nietzsche to justify his appointment to a full chair of philology at the young age of 25, but also a book that would not appeal to anyone in German academic circles. It would appear that Nietzsche was determined to remain independent, and not become intoxicated with the "prestige" of being appointed to such a position at such an early age. Nietzsche's later criticism of his own work would seem to justify this interpretation. This total intellectual honesty of Nietzsche is unique in the history of philosophy.
What is most valuable about "The Birth of Tragedy" is its restatement of Greek life and culture, which up to Nietzsche's time was conceived in terms of the "Winckelmann view" according to Kaufmann. The "noble simplicity, calm grandeur" of Goethe and the "sweetness and light" of Matthew Arnold were the appropriate adjectives for Greek culture. But Nietzsche brought in the Dionysian festivals, as another aspect of it, and its longing, in the words of Kaufmann, to "exceed all norms". This insight of Nietzsche has wide-ranging applications, for it points to the need of all cultures, and thus all individuals, to at times attend the Dionysian festival and get out of equilibrium, remain for awhile off-balance, and get intoxicated with the dance of unreason.
But with intellectual honesty towards oneself comes the same for others, and Nietzsche did not hesitate to depart with friends when there was conflict with this honesty. Thus Nietzsche wrote "The Case of Wagner", a very damning indictment against his former friend Richard Wagner, and a book which Nietzsche subtitled "A Musician's Problem". Nietzsche describes his reasons for writing at it as a consequence of a "special self-discipline: to take sides against everything sick in me". This included Wagner, Schopenhauer, and all of what Nietzsche called "modern humaneness". According to Nietzsche, Wagner was just one of his sicknesses. But sickness can be a stimulant to life, he says, but only if one is healthy enough for this stimulant.
So what about Wagner bothered Nietzsche? It was the fact in Nietzsche's view, Wagner's music was nongenuine. Wagner was an "actor in music", according to Nietzsche, and a lack of honesty or genuineness was intolerable to Nietzsche. The integrity and "authenticity" of musicians has never been put to the test so dangerously, he says. Wagner's music is a sign of a declining culture, and in such a culture, believed Nietzsche, authenticity becomes superfluous and a liability. Thus the passion that Wagner's music instilled in people, and the boredom it alleviated in orchestra musicians, was more of a sign of decadence, rather than achievement. It was an attempt to "arrest the flow", to negate the original "difficulty of life", and this, in Nietzsche's view, was its essential crime, a crime that Christianity and other forms of decadence also committed. The ninth part of the book ends with the following lines which make Nietzsche's Wagnerian complaint particularly manifest: "That the theatre should not lord it over the arts. That the actor should not seduce those who are authentic. That music should not become an art of lying. "

"The Birth of Tragedy Out Of The Spirit Of Music" is Nietzsche in the raw. This is before the later, "mature" posturing armchair philosopher took over. This is the philologist unearthing a great treasure - the Ancient Greeks REALLY lived, and in their super-abundance of LIFE, they had room for Tragedy/Pessimism! The opposite then, is also true, our modern society that cries out for OPTIMISM and "positive-thinking" is therefore the clearest sign that we are less than alive. This book is Nietzsche seeing in ART, that blazing passion for being ALIVE. This is Nietzsche as the young, unsystematic YEA-SAYER to LIFE. Aesthetics as the true metaphysics - not morality, since LIFE is beyond temporal, earthly taboos. ART-LIFE as the representation of transcending good and evil (later formulated more fully in "Beyond Good And Evil". This is art seen under the lens of life.

Nietzsche is the most inspiring of all modern philosophers excepting Ayn Rand, who used a very different approach for exposing her philosophy (The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged). Beyond Good and Evil is often touted as Nietzsche's greatest work, but I like Geneology of Morals ( On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo) at least as much, since I think it asks some questions that are at least as interesting as these, especially "Meaning of the Aesthetic Ideal". Some people imagine that philosophers are boring, and of course this book, like all important books, does take some work, but I often find myself laughing out loud when reading Nietzsche, since he has a really funny and often unexpected turn of phrase.

The important concepts in this book include the difference between slave morality and master morality. Nietzsche tries to help the reader understand that there are no absolutes and that everything can be understood differently from a different point of view. He sees the greatest danger as the mindless, instinctive herd, and warns strongly against it, including especially the flawed and oxymoronic concept of the "common good". Since the rise of the Jacobins, more people have been murdered, starved to death or enslaved for the "common good" than for any other excuse.

After Nietzsche went insane from syphillus, his sister tried to "reengineer" his works and portray him as anti-Semitic, which he definitely was not. The Nazis also propagandized that he was, or would have been, one of them. None of this was true, but it led many to avoid his work. What IS true is that he was an anti-Christian (read The Anti-Christ and Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for None and All) and THAT has led to his shunning by a different group.

Read Nietzsche for yourself and don't depend on some guide to tell you what he says. Ignore the boring Cliff Notes and get any translation by Walter Kaufmann, who is a terrific translator and famous Nietzsche scholar.

The work is not a dogma based moral philosophy. You will find no guide to your life within its pages. This book is a prelude to a philosophy for the future, something for which Nietzsche recognized a need, but never did create.
That said, many of the criticisms will be hard for the simple minded to understand or appreciate.
Some will rail against his criticisms of Christians and Jews, but is not criticizing their person per say, but their Christian and Jewish way of living.
Today, women in particular seem to take offense at his writings supposedly against women. The behavior of women was no different then as it is now. Nietzsche is not condemning women as a gender, but criticizing female behavior, in the hopes that a new philosophy can be created for them.
In a day when the nihilism of women is made obvious by rampant materialism and sexuality, it is absolutely imperative that women gain a new philosophy or the human race is doomed. It is this nihilism that existed amongst the better of women of Nietzsche's day and what he attempted to expose.
We can dance around the issue and pretend that women are free from male oppression and everyhing is wonderful, but a glance at any chick magazine (ie Cosmo et al) will quickly prove that all is not well in the heads of our female population. In fact, Nietzsche's criticisms of women can easily be applied to any issue of Commo.

This work is Nietzsche's first major publicaiton. In it, he is not yet the philosopher he would become a decade later. "The Birth of Tragedy" presents an interesting account of the tragedy of the Greeks--its origins and function. Nietzsche's contention seems to be that, in addition to being rational and rationalistic, the Greeks were strong enough to face the irrational, or Dyonisian, element of life. And they used tragedy to embrace that necessary element. As a powerful metaphor, Nietzsche's account of tragedy is compelling, but I do not know whether this can be regarded as the real cultural origin of the tragedy.

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The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche's first book. Why have I read it? Three reasons. One, I am studying ancient Greek culture. Secondly, I love to learn anything from mysticism, spiritual and Eastern thought, psychology and philosophy and again Grecian thought of Plato, Socrates, Aristophanes, Sophocles and etc. Third, I've always admired Jim Morrison, a Rock singer and poet who was also influenced by Nietzsche, primarily his interpretation of ancient Greek tragedy, more specifically, "The Birth of Tragedy. And so I've read it. Now Walter Kaufman's translation agrees with me and I think it one of the best in understanding and clarity. This book is a great read and answers so many questions and thoughts.
But ultimately I found something I never intended on thinking and it's staring me right in the face with bold assertiveness. I honestly never expected to find this. First Nietzsche does a superb job in slamming the Socratic culture of logic, science and optimism, which I agree, has destroyed the real chaotic nature of true art, the Dionysus nature and that of the real meaning of tragedy. He is right on the money here. "Existence is only justified as an aesthetic phenomenon." Euripides has destroyed the Aeschylean and Sophoclean tragedy into Socratized thinking. The Dionysian element of chaos, of drunkenness and dissolution, of irrational art in it's raw existence is imaged by Apollo and necessary in conceptualization of the fleeting moment of depth that only resides in temporal flow of Dionysus and yet is destroyed by the scientific Socratized analysis. Euripides's plays have adopted such logic, lost the Dionysus, taken the optimism and linguistic clarity in destroying the satyr's chaotic hold of frenzy and creativity found in formless tragedy of music. The Apollonian form is imagery while the Dionysian forms the Apollonian. "Dionysian speaks the language of Apollo, and Apollo, finally the language of Dionysus and so the highest goal of tragedy and all art is obtained." P. 130
All of this, and much more, is brilliant and profound, but then, this now leads to something about German history, and is there in the flagrant words, of Nietzsche who calls for "The rebirth of tragedy," the rebirth of Greek tragedy. Where is this? In the German spirit.
"Out of the Dionysian root of the German spirit a power has arisen which, having nothing in common with the primitive conditions of Socratic culture, can neither be explained nor excused by it, but which is rather felt by this culture as something terribly inexplicable and overwhelming hostile, the German music we must understand it. from Bach to Beethoven, and to Wagner." p. 119
What is this Dionysian root, this power from the German spirit.? Nietzsche symbolically calls it a "demon, " a power one that cannot be easily subdued, and it is rising from the unfathomable depths, which is against the Socratic logic and superficial optimism. And here Nietzsche goes further than music into a Dionysian spirit of German philosophy that he believes transcends the boundaries of Socratic thinking into adrenaline flowed tragic rediscovery, a rebirth of Greek tragedy.
"Let us recollect further that Kant and Schopenhauer made it possible for the spirit of German philosophy, streaming from similar sources to destroy scientific Socratism's complacent delight in existence by establishing its boundaries; how through this delimitation was introduced an infinitely profounder and more serious view of ethical problems and of art, which we may designate as Dionysian wisdom comprised in concepts. . . ." p. 120
In the earlier sections Nietzsche brought home the point that lyrical composition and most certainly concepts of any nature could not contain any shape or form of Dionysian, as it is only found in the raw and creative form of music. And now I find a contradiction, as Nietzsche is telling us of Kant's and Schopenhauer's thoughts to be comprised in Dionysian wisdom. It has now planted the seed for German readers and thinkers.
What this philosphical Dionysian wisdom and the German spirited power of Dionysian music now needs is a new political leader.
"And if the German should hesitantly look around for a leader who might bring him back again into his long lost home whose ways and paths he scarcely knows anymore, let him merely listen to the ecstatically luring call of the Dionysan bird that hovers above him and wants to point the way for him." p. 139
I don't know about you, but this sounds like the Dionysan "furor" to me. A new tragic, ecstatic leader, a non-Socratic leader with charisma and power. Now who later fits this bill?
Just imagine the adrenaline flow as the German people leave their Socratic constraints of logic and enter into their Dionysian nature of power and run down the street and smash the Jewish windows declaring in ecstasy, the Dionysian power of the new German spirit, the rebirth of Greek tragedy. Do you see what I'm leading to here? Real history! Don't get me wrong, please. Nietzsche does not talk hatred, or anti-Semitic, no not at all! But he sets the stage for chaos, for hate to come out of the depths of men and women that already contain Dionysian nature deep inside their non-Socratic nature, the "primitive man" as Nietzsche calls it, when the Apollonian is disregarded and the rational, optimistic Socratic man is destroyed and the Dionysian can come out and "tragedy be reborn."
Don't get me wrong, I think Nietzsche is amazing in his acknowledgment and connection to the real depth of the Dionysian spirit. But do get me right on this; this is dangerous teaching, dangerous enough to let educated people loose their Socratic, scientific nature and enter places they should not be. Nietzsche even writes in a letter 10/8/1868 to Rohide, (p. 120 ftn.) that the dimension of feelings of Wagner's music are greater than the "weak eyes and feeble legs of the educated."
Live life to the fullest without Apollo to conceptualize and form you, which subdues and constrains, and you will most assuredly mis-translate William Blake's words (as Jim Morrison did) in telling us "to live the road to excess." Live Socratic thinking alone, without Dionysus, and you will be destroyed, dead to the aesthetic, inner creative and primordial self. Live Dionysus without Apollo and without Socratic thinking and you will either destroy yourself or those around you.

Beyond Good And Evil (1886) was German existentialist philosopher Friedrich Nietzche's attempt to completely devalue religon, science and philosophy, and replace it with a universal reality that allows man's true spirit, his "will to power", to be left unbridled by spirit-draining, intellectual and timid conventions. The human spirit must never be stifled! Let man's passions and desires be set free! Nietzsche rips into Voltaire:

Oh Voltaire! Oh humanity! Oh imbecility! There is some point to 'truth', to the search for truth; and if a human being goes about it too humanely - I wager he finds nothing!

Nietzsche will offend almost everyone who reads Beyond Good And Evil. Women, Christians and Jews are all portrayed by Nietzsche as either inferior or misguided. He calls working people (and others) "herd-animals" who need a master, and he scorns France at every turn. You can't take everything here to heart. This was written in the 19th century by a very unconventional and passionate existentialist philosopher. Just the same, Nietzsche was a poetic and optimistic visionary of his day who had keen insights into human behavior:

To talk of oneself a great deal can also be a means of concealing oneself.

Who has not for the sake of his reputation - sacrificed himself?

One does not hate so long as one continues to rate low, but only when one has come to rate equal or higher.

Poets behave impudently towards their experiences: they exploit them.

Beyond Good And Evil is a short book of around 230 pages, and Nietzsche has divided his thoughts into 296 aphorisms, some as short as a sentence, and others several pages long.

While Beyond Good And Evil isn't as comprehensive or influential as his "Thus Spake Zarathustra", it does give the reader a basic overview of Nietzsche's philosophy. God has died. Will To Power. Science, religon and philosophy are misleading, and glorify weakness and lack of courage. Live passionately, unabated by convention!

Nietzsche and his works aren't for everybody, but Beyond Good And Evil is an important work from one of the most influential and important existentialist philosophers in history. His works have been twisted and especially misinterpreted, and while I don't subscribe to his philosophy as a way of life, I admire his poetic spirit, passion, intelligence and courage to explore unconventional ideas.

Beyond Good And Evil?

"That which is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil."

In THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY, Friedrich Nietzsche makes initial use of several themes that would preoccupy him for the remainder of his literary career: the "will to power," the homo superior who stands above the general herd of common man, excessive individualism, self-annihilating mysticism, and a call for a newly created humanity that can slough off the shackles of humdrum circumstances that have plagued mankind for at least two millennia.

Early in his career, Nietzsche idolized two well-known figures both of whom he would repudiate in future books: writer Arthur Schopenhauer, whose references to patterns of eternal recurrence formed the basis of Nietzsche's nascent worldview and composer Richard Wagner, whose symphonies formed the visual objective correlative to that same incipient worldview. THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY is Nietzsche's attempt to promote the combined philosophies of Schopenhauer and Wagner in such a way to explain what had heretofore been an inexplicable mystery--how Greek tragedy had evolved from classical times to produce what was to Nietzsche was a dispirited and enervated German volk.

Nietzsche divides his book into two overlapping sections: his explanation for the origin of Greek tragedy and how and why that same Greek tragedy went off track to emerge in his day as bereft of the power that should have invigorated the German people. Both tragedy and art Nietzsche suggests share an uneasy balance between a duality of conflicting worldviews--the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The former is named after the god Apollo, who stood for traits that on the surface would surely be deemed crucial to the survival of any culture: self-discipline, self-awareness, and respect for the myriads of ways that form the subsection of all civilized peoples. Nietzsche gives this tendency the catch-all name of principium individuationis. The latter is named after the Greek god Dionysus, who represents Apollo's reverse qualities: wild drunken orgies, ferocious unthinking action, and a general sense of intoxication of self, power, and aggressiveness. Nietzsche demands that his readers acknowledge that the Greece of pre-Socratic times was hardly the stereotype of peace and glorious achievement currently held to be true. This Greece was a brutal and bloodthirsty era that was so over the top with Dionysian violence that the Greeks had to pretend that things were much calmer than they truly were. Greek writers, artists, and assorted intellectuals deliberately created an illusion of man's gentleness that could permit both Greek citizen and Greek god to act as if the raw bestiality that was right there in front of their eyes did not exist. Thus, there was an uneasy stasis between the overt viciousness of Dionysus and the covert and muted restraint of Apollo. This balance worked well enough until Socrates came along to insist that man's innermost self was based on prudence, respect, and intelligence--just the sorts of traits of Apollo. And right there, Greek tragedy, Greek art, and indeed all of Greek culture went seriously askew. Nietzsche laments bitterly that Socrates failed to grasp an essential truism about human nature--that human achievement, human culture, even human existence were inexorably commingled into a package best exemplified by Prometheus, whose guts were daily ripped out by vultures for having dared to give fire to man. The pain of Prometheus is surely a small price to pay to aspire to godhood. Without pain, there is no gain.

Suffering then could be redeemed only through the Promethean pain of challenging the gods or other human beings. Victories and defeats did not matter. Art, drama, and music were to be the levers by which Nietzsche could nudge the German race back on track. As long as theoretical and well-intentioned men like Socrates could offer the soothing balm of peace and tranquility, then human culture was inevitably consigned to live in a universe of nihilism that did not appreciate its inhabitants wearing blindfolds of goodness that they mistook for god-ness. In the decades following Nietzsche's death in 1900, numerous philosophers, artists, and thinkers were to take up his call for a revival of the Ubermensch that would result in the crematoria of Buchenwald, Dachau, and Auschwitz.

I read this book years ago and I fell in love with the ideas of Nietzsche. I think every teenage intellectual goes through an existentialist phase, it fits so well with the pubescent and oncoming adulthood experience. His theories opened up my mind in a way I never thought it could. The time for me was one of emense confusion, vacillation and angst. It opened up for me a love of philosophy that has carried through to this day as I prepare to further my education on the subject. It helped guide me creating myself into a better man and for that this book and his philosophy will always have a certain affection. Now I have mixed feelings about some of the things that he has written, but this book is incredible. I am a lover of art and theatre, and as an amatuer playwright this book gave insights that I still find breathtaking. I have always believed that history is not the story of stone hard facts and dates but the spectrum of human thought, philosophy, art, music, notions, inventions and a constant state of progress and change. This book is one large key to that spectrum. I would recommend this to any teenager in a place that I was in or any member of the human race for that matter. If you love theatre and want to engage in it in any fashion, then you really need to read this book.

While I don't worship Nietzsche as I did when I was young, I think this is a very challenging and worthwhile book. Even people who don't accept Nietzsche's basic approach to life can learn much from it, if they read it with an open (but skeptical) mind. All of Nietzsche's key ideas are here and are presented more lucidly than in Zarathustra and more sanely than in his last works. Even better than the big ideas are the seemingly random insights that can illuminate a whole new area of thought. There are also, it's true, some really stupid passages, such as the comments on women, but overall the gold far outweighs the dross.

I was introduced to Nietzsche with this book, and have become addicted. The language is absolutely beautiful, and I think Hollingdale's translation brings out a lot of subtleties that the other translations don't. (If you can, compare passage 16 of various translations to see what I mean.)

A lot of Nietzsche's most prominent ideas (history of morality, noble vs. common types, nihilism) are present in this work, which makes me say that it's a good place to start to get a basic understanding of his ideas. Another recommendation would be The Gay Science, although that one's a bit more radical in that it's the first time that Nietzsche mentions the death of god.

A warning, though. If this is indeed your first encounter with Nietzsche, read him slowly. Let the ideas sink in before going on. Since the passages and aphorisms are short, the tendency is to read them through quickly, which causes you to overlook the underlying meaning.

Got this and to my surprise it looks like it was printed from someone's home. The book looks like a graphic novel - it's 8 1/2" by 12". Thought buying a book from the store meant getting an actual book. Looked at an actual edition of this book later on and it was $3 cheaper.

I consider anything by Nietzsche worth reading but particularly this little tome.One of the basic tenets of his world view are that knowledge of anything worthwhile lies really in the sphere outside of formal logic or any philosophic system and that Art is the only worthwhile activity of humankind that can give us real knowledge of ourselves.This is a view I wholeheartedly endorse both intuitively and by experience and I am in full agreement with Nietzsche on this point.I do however refute completely his view of Wagner as a musical or artistic messiah,in fact I think Wagner the greatest fraud in musical history-but that said I think Nietzche's views apply to great art as a whole.There is also some beautiful writing and some wonderful speculation-in short a great book.

This work is Nietzsche's first major publicaiton. In it, he is not yet the philosopher he would become a decade later. "The Birth of Tragedy" presents an interesting account of the tragedy of the Greeks--its origins and function. Nietzsche's contention seems to be that, in addition to being rational and rationalistic, the Greeks were strong enough to face the irrational, or Dyonisian, element of life. And they used tragedy to embrace that necessary element. As a powerful metaphor, Nietzsche's account of tragedy is compelling, but I do not know whether this can be regarded as the real cultural origin of the tragedy.

.
The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche's first book. Why have I read it? Three reasons. One, I am studying ancient Greek culture. Secondly, I love to learn anything from mysticism, spiritual and Eastern thought, psychology and philosophy and again Grecian thought of Plato, Socrates, Aristophanes, Sophocles and etc. Third, I've always admired Jim Morrison, a Rock singer and poet who was also influenced by Nietzsche, primarily his interpretation of ancient Greek tragedy, more specifically, "The Birth of Tragedy. And so I've read it. Now Walter Kaufman's translation agrees with me and I think it one of the best in understanding and clarity. This book is a great read and answers so many questions and thoughts.
But ultimately I found something I never intended on thinking and it's staring me right in the face with bold assertiveness. I honestly never expected to find this. First Nietzsche does a superb job in slamming the Socratic culture of logic, science and optimism, which I agree, has destroyed the real chaotic nature of true art, the Dionysus nature and that of the real meaning of tragedy. He is right on the money here. "Existence is only justified as an aesthetic phenomenon." Euripides has destroyed the Aeschylean and Sophoclean tragedy into Socratized thinking. The Dionysian element of chaos, of drunkenness and dissolution, of irrational art in it's raw existence is imaged by Apollo and necessary in conceptualization of the fleeting moment of depth that only resides in temporal flow of Dionysus and yet is destroyed by the scientific Socratized analysis. Euripides's plays have adopted such logic, lost the Dionysus, taken the optimism and linguistic clarity in destroying the satyr's chaotic hold of frenzy and creativity found in formless tragedy of music. The Apollonian form is imagery while the Dionysian forms the Apollonian. "Dionysian speaks the language of Apollo, and Apollo, finally the language of Dionysus and so the highest goal of tragedy and all art is obtained." P. 130
All of this, and much more, is brilliant and profound, but then, this now leads to something about German history, and is there in the flagrant words, of Nietzsche who calls for "The rebirth of tragedy," the rebirth of Greek tragedy. Where is this? In the German spirit.
"Out of the Dionysian root of the German spirit a power has arisen which, having nothing in common with the primitive conditions of Socratic culture, can neither be explained nor excused by it, but which is rather felt by this culture as something terribly inexplicable and overwhelming hostile, the German music we must understand it. from Bach to Beethoven, and to Wagner." p. 119
What is this Dionysian root, this power from the German spirit.? Nietzsche symbolically calls it a "demon, " a power one that cannot be easily subdued, and it is rising from the unfathomable depths, which is against the Socratic logic and superficial optimism. And here Nietzsche goes further than music into a Dionysian spirit of German philosophy that he believes transcends the boundaries of Socratic thinking into adrenaline flowed tragic rediscovery, a rebirth of Greek tragedy.
"Let us recollect further that Kant and Schopenhauer made it possible for the spirit of German philosophy, streaming from similar sources to destroy scientific Socratism's complacent delight in existence by establishing its boundaries; how through this delimitation was introduced an infinitely profounder and more serious view of ethical problems and of art, which we may designate as Dionysian wisdom comprised in concepts. . . ." p. 120
In the earlier sections Nietzsche brought home the point that lyrical composition and most certainly concepts of any nature could not contain any shape or form of Dionysian, as it is only found in the raw and creative form of music. And now I find a contradiction, as Nietzsche is telling us of Kant's and Schopenhauer's thoughts to be comprised in Dionysian wisdom. It has now planted the seed for German readers and thinkers.
What this philosphical Dionysian wisdom and the German spirited power of Dionysian music now needs is a new political leader.
"And if the German should hesitantly look around for a leader who might bring him back again into his long lost home whose ways and paths he scarcely knows anymore, let him merely listen to the ecstatically luring call of the Dionysan bird that hovers above him and wants to point the way for him." p. 139
I don't know about you, but this sounds like the Dionysan "furor" to me. A new tragic, ecstatic leader, a non-Socratic leader with charisma and power. Now who later fits this bill?
Just imagine the adrenaline flow as the German people leave their Socratic constraints of logic and enter into their Dionysian nature of power and run down the street and smash the Jewish windows declaring in ecstasy, the Dionysian power of the new German spirit, the rebirth of Greek tragedy. Do you see what I'm leading to here? Real history! Don't get me wrong, please. Nietzsche does not talk hatred, or anti-Semitic, no not at all! But he sets the stage for chaos, for hate to come out of the depths of men and women that already contain Dionysian nature deep inside their non-Socratic nature, the "primitive man" as Nietzsche calls it, when the Apollonian is disregarded and the rational, optimistic Socratic man is destroyed and the Dionysian can come out and "tragedy be reborn."
Don't get me wrong, I think Nietzsche is amazing in his acknowledgment and connection to the real depth of the Dionysian spirit. But do get me right on this; this is dangerous teaching, dangerous enough to let educated people loose their Socratic, scientific nature and enter places they should not be. Nietzsche even writes in a letter 10/8/1868 to Rohide, (p. 120 ftn.) that the dimension of feelings of Wagner's music are greater than the "weak eyes and feeble legs of the educated."
Live life to the fullest without Apollo to conceptualize and form you, which subdues and constrains, and you will most assuredly mis-translate William Blake's words (as Jim Morrison did) in telling us "to live the road to excess." Live Socratic thinking alone, without Dionysus, and you will be destroyed, dead to the aesthetic, inner creative and primordial self. Live Dionysus without Apollo and without Socratic thinking and you will either destroy yourself or those around you.

Beyond Good And Evil (1886) was German existentialist philosopher Friedrich Nietzche's attempt to completely devalue religon, science and philosophy, and replace it with a universal reality that allows man's true spirit, his "will to power", to be left unbridled by spirit-draining, intellectual and timid conventions. The human spirit must never be stifled! Let man's passions and desires be set free! Nietzsche rips into Voltaire:

Oh Voltaire! Oh humanity! Oh imbecility! There is some point to 'truth', to the search for truth; and if a human being goes about it too humanely - I wager he finds nothing!

Nietzsche will offend almost everyone who reads Beyond Good And Evil. Women, Christians and Jews are all portrayed by Nietzsche as either inferior or misguided. He calls working people (and others) "herd-animals" who need a master, and he scorns France at every turn. You can't take everything here to heart. This was written in the 19th century by a very unconventional and passionate existentialist philosopher. Just the same, Nietzsche was a poetic and optimistic visionary of his day who had keen insights into human behavior:

To talk of oneself a great deal can also be a means of concealing oneself.

Who has not for the sake of his reputation - sacrificed himself?

One does not hate so long as one continues to rate low, but only when one has come to rate equal or higher.

Poets behave impudently towards their experiences: they exploit them.

Beyond Good And Evil is a short book of around 230 pages, and Nietzsche has divided his thoughts into 296 aphorisms, some as short as a sentence, and others several pages long.

While Beyond Good And Evil isn't as comprehensive or influential as his "Thus Spake Zarathustra", it does give the reader a basic overview of Nietzsche's philosophy. God has died. Will To Power. Science, religon and philosophy are misleading, and glorify weakness and lack of courage. Live passionately, unabated by convention!

Nietzsche and his works aren't for everybody, but Beyond Good And Evil is an important work from one of the most influential and important existentialist philosophers in history. His works have been twisted and especially misinterpreted, and while I don't subscribe to his philosophy as a way of life, I admire his poetic spirit, passion, intelligence and courage to explore unconventional ideas.

Beyond Good And Evil?

"That which is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil."

In THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY, Friedrich Nietzsche makes initial use of several themes that would preoccupy him for the remainder of his literary career: the "will to power," the homo superior who stands above the general herd of common man, excessive individualism, self-annihilating mysticism, and a call for a newly created humanity that can slough off the shackles of humdrum circumstances that have plagued mankind for at least two millennia.

Early in his career, Nietzsche idolized two well-known figures both of whom he would repudiate in future books: writer Arthur Schopenhauer, whose references to patterns of eternal recurrence formed the basis of Nietzsche's nascent worldview and composer Richard Wagner, whose symphonies formed the visual objective correlative to that same incipient worldview. THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY is Nietzsche's attempt to promote the combined philosophies of Schopenhauer and Wagner in such a way to explain what had heretofore been an inexplicable mystery--how Greek tragedy had evolved from classical times to produce what was to Nietzsche was a dispirited and enervated German volk.

Nietzsche divides his book into two overlapping sections: his explanation for the origin of Greek tragedy and how and why that same Greek tragedy went off track to emerge in his day as bereft of the power that should have invigorated the German people. Both tragedy and art Nietzsche suggests share an uneasy balance between a duality of conflicting worldviews--the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The former is named after the god Apollo, who stood for traits that on the surface would surely be deemed crucial to the survival of any culture: self-discipline, self-awareness, and respect for the myriads of ways that form the subsection of all civilized peoples. Nietzsche gives this tendency the catch-all name of principium individuationis. The latter is named after the Greek god Dionysus, who represents Apollo's reverse qualities: wild drunken orgies, ferocious unthinking action, and a general sense of intoxication of self, power, and aggressiveness. Nietzsche demands that his readers acknowledge that the Greece of pre-Socratic times was hardly the stereotype of peace and glorious achievement currently held to be true. This Greece was a brutal and bloodthirsty era that was so over the top with Dionysian violence that the Greeks had to pretend that things were much calmer than they truly were. Greek writers, artists, and assorted intellectuals deliberately created an illusion of man's gentleness that could permit both Greek citizen and Greek god to act as if the raw bestiality that was right there in front of their eyes did not exist. Thus, there was an uneasy stasis between the overt viciousness of Dionysus and the covert and muted restraint of Apollo. This balance worked well enough until Socrates came along to insist that man's innermost self was based on prudence, respect, and intelligence--just the sorts of traits of Apollo. And right there, Greek tragedy, Greek art, and indeed all of Greek culture went seriously askew. Nietzsche laments bitterly that Socrates failed to grasp an essential truism about human nature--that human achievement, human culture, even human existence were inexorably commingled into a package best exemplified by Prometheus, whose guts were daily ripped out by vultures for having dared to give fire to man. The pain of Prometheus is surely a small price to pay to aspire to godhood. Without pain, there is no gain.

Suffering then could be redeemed only through the Promethean pain of challenging the gods or other human beings. Victories and defeats did not matter. Art, drama, and music were to be the levers by which Nietzsche could nudge the German race back on track. As long as theoretical and well-intentioned men like Socrates could offer the soothing balm of peace and tranquility, then human culture was inevitably consigned to live in a universe of nihilism that did not appreciate its inhabitants wearing blindfolds of goodness that they mistook for god-ness. In the decades following Nietzsche's death in 1900, numerous philosophers, artists, and thinkers were to take up his call for a revival of the Ubermensch that would result in the crematoria of Buchenwald, Dachau, and Auschwitz.

I read this book years ago and I fell in love with the ideas of Nietzsche. I think every teenage intellectual goes through an existentialist phase, it fits so well with the pubescent and oncoming adulthood experience. His theories opened up my mind in a way I never thought it could. The time for me was one of emense confusion, vacillation and angst. It opened up for me a love of philosophy that has carried through to this day as I prepare to further my education on the subject. It helped guide me creating myself into a better man and for that this book and his philosophy will always have a certain affection. Now I have mixed feelings about some of the things that he has written, but this book is incredible. I am a lover of art and theatre, and as an amatuer playwright this book gave insights that I still find breathtaking. I have always believed that history is not the story of stone hard facts and dates but the spectrum of human thought, philosophy, art, music, notions, inventions and a constant state of progress and change. This book is one large key to that spectrum. I would recommend this to any teenager in a place that I was in or any member of the human race for that matter. If you love theatre and want to engage in it in any fashion, then you really need to read this book.

While I don't worship Nietzsche as I did when I was young, I think this is a very challenging and worthwhile book. Even people who don't accept Nietzsche's basic approach to life can learn much from it, if they read it with an open (but skeptical) mind. All of Nietzsche's key ideas are here and are presented more lucidly than in Zarathustra and more sanely than in his last works. Even better than the big ideas are the seemingly random insights that can illuminate a whole new area of thought. There are also, it's true, some really stupid passages, such as the comments on women, but overall the gold far outweighs the dross.

I was introduced to Nietzsche with this book, and have become addicted. The language is absolutely beautiful, and I think Hollingdale's translation brings out a lot of subtleties that the other translations don't. (If you can, compare passage 16 of various translations to see what I mean.)

A lot of Nietzsche's most prominent ideas (history of morality, noble vs. common types, nihilism) are present in this work, which makes me say that it's a good place to start to get a basic understanding of his ideas. Another recommendation would be The Gay Science, although that one's a bit more radical in that it's the first time that Nietzsche mentions the death of god.

A warning, though. If this is indeed your first encounter with Nietzsche, read him slowly. Let the ideas sink in before going on. Since the passages and aphorisms are short, the tendency is to read them through quickly, which causes you to overlook the underlying meaning.

Got this and to my surprise it looks like it was printed from someone's home. The book looks like a graphic novel - it's 8 1/2" by 12". Thought buying a book from the store meant getting an actual book. Looked at an actual edition of this book later on and it was $3 cheaper.

I consider anything by Nietzsche worth reading but particularly this little tome.One of the basic tenets of his world view are that knowledge of anything worthwhile lies really in the sphere outside of formal logic or any philosophic system and that Art is the only worthwhile activity of humankind that can give us real knowledge of ourselves.This is a view I wholeheartedly endorse both intuitively and by experience and I am in full agreement with Nietzsche on this point.I do however refute completely his view of Wagner as a musical or artistic messiah,in fact I think Wagner the greatest fraud in musical history-but that said I think Nietzche's views apply to great art as a whole.There is also some beautiful writing and some wonderful speculation-in short a great book.

Among the most influential philosophers of modern times, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) declared in this classic study that Greek tragedy achieved greatness through a fusion of elements of Apollonian restraint and control with Dionysian components of passion and the irrational. In Nietzsche's eyes, however, Greek tragedy had been destroyed by the rationalism and optimism of thinkers like Socrates. Nevertheless, he found in these ancient works the life-affirming concept that existence is still beautiful, however grim and depressing it may sometimes be...

This book isn't just about moral, Nietzsche himself despices those who dare write about moral. This book, as most of Nietzsche talks about a wide variety of subjects and demonstrates his importance as Philosopher. Beyond good and evil is not only one of the most important and descriptive phrases by Nietzsche, but is also one of his best books. If, however, you're unfamiliar to Nietzsche's books, you should try "Human, all too Human" or rather look for "The day Nietzsche wept" this will help you decide whether Nietzsche is for you or not.

After Nietzche summed up his philosophy in his previous book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he must have realized if someone wasn't acquainted with his writings before, they wouldn't know what he was talking about. With this in mind, Nietzche takes everything he sees wrong about the world and writes it down here. He discusses his views on religion in that Judeo-Christian morality is simply a guise to give those who promote it power over their followers. He also criticizes other philosphers for their self-righteous dogmatist thinking and how they, in seeking the truth, end up looking at all their views as objective, and warp their idea of truth into what they want it to be. Nietzche is shunned my many because of his views on women, but for anyone interested in existentialist writings that questions systematic reasoning, I highly recommend this.

Birth of Tragedy represents a crossroads for Nietzche, from the classical philologist to the philosopher. Pregnant with themes that will find expression in his later works, Nietzche makes clear his guiding purpose in this book as well, namely the overthrow of Platonism (no matter what Heidegger thinks). The analysis of the Apollolian and Dionesian that is the fulcrum of the analysis in The Birth of Tragedy is also a theme that will play out in Nietzche's more mature work.
This book is a must for anyone interested in Nietzche's philosophy, as it provides a look into the genesis of his thought.

Walter Kaufmann's translation offers helpful footnotes and comments for the reader. The translation is fluid and easy to read. Kaufmann captures Nietsche's often humorous critiques as well as his fabulous aphorisms ("Where man cannot find anything to see or to grasp, he has no further business"). Regardless of one's point of view "Beyond Good and Evil" is a must read for anyone who takes a serious interest in the development of philosophy, especially existentialism and nihilism. Compared to the works of Immanuel Kant the writings of Nietsche are a sheer delight - but that is another review...

I checked the index to Walter Kaufmann's translation to this book to see if it had anything to recommend on war. In the section listed, 273 I think, Nietzsche happened to mention how much comedy and concealment there is in war. The rest of the aphorism probably tries to point out something that living people might be able to use. I think it was something about having objectives. What I find so interesting in Nietzsche is how often he can get carried away with some point that living people would not want to know, like how much comedy there is in war. As a famous lonely thinker, he must keep track of his mind like someone whose friends are all dead or in jail. The apostle Paul used to write letters when he was in prison, so Nietzsche could probably imagine what he was really thinking while he diverted himself by writing letters to the churches who get major mention in the New Testament, the kind of thing which Nietzsche's mother wanted him to study for a truly holy occupation. Nietzsche was wild enough to try a few things that had not been done so thoroughly before, and writing on a few themes that philosophers had tried in milder forms in the centuries after hemlock had been given to Socrates to express how the living political crowd in Athens felt about all his questioning might have given him the courage to declare a war on the dead, in his own way, as his form of life. Those who confuse Nietzsche's efforts with the steps taken by political crowds in their attempts to govern might not be crazy enough to understand what philosophy is all about when the comic elements in war become the primary reason for embracing war. I lack a better explanation for this book.

_Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future_ is a translation of _Jenseits von Gut und Bos_ by the tormented German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, first published in 1886. This edition is translated by Walter Kaufman and includes notes by him, some of which are useful and some of which are less so. _Beyond Good and Evil_ was Nietzsche's seventh book written after his _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_ and is an attempt to systematize his philosophy. This book is divided into nine sections with a preface at the beginning and a poem at the end. The book details Nietzsche's opposition to Judeo-Christianity, his radically aristocratic philosophy for "free spirits", his atheism (although some might say that Nietzsche does indeed have a "god" only a god that is much different from the Judeo-Christian conception) and nihilism, and his thoughts on Germany, England, and France (Fatherlands). The book also includes epigrams - short pithy statements by Nietzsche which he believed to sum up his philosophical viewpoint. Nietzsche challenges the prejudices of philosophers including such concepts as "self-consciousness", "free will", and "either/or" thinking. Nietzsche also provides a history of morals in which he seeks to move "beyond good and evil" overcoming "slave morality" and adopting the morality of the masters.

This book begins in the preface famously with these words, "Supposing truth is a woman - what then?" in which Nietzsche explains that while the philosophers have grappled with truth they fail to understand it in the same way that they fail to understand woman. (Nietzsche's thoughts on woman are certainly interesting and much could be said about them.) The first section of this book following the preface is entitled "On the Prejudices of Philosophers". Here, Nietzsche argues in a series of separate sections against the prejudices of the philosophers and metaphysicians, against Platonic philosophy, Kant's "thing-in-itself", and the "causa sui" as well as Christianity. Nietzsche mentions the ancient Greeks including the Stoics, Socrates (his relationship to Socrates is complex), and Plato, as well as the German philosophers Kant and Schopenhauer (while Nietzsche was originally infatuated with Schopenhauer, his infatuation grew less especially after his break with Wagner). Nietzsche seeks a philosophy of the future for "free spirits". The next section of this book is entitled "The Free Spirit". Here, Nietzsche explains the "new species of philosopher", the "free spirits" and contrasts the false free spirits (the levelers) with the true free spirits. Nietzsche mentions the French Revolution, Voltaire, Stendhal, and "modern ideas". The next section of this book is entitled "What is Religious". Here, Nietzsche discusses the soul and God (belief in which he regards as weakness) as well as Christianity and such Christians as Pascal and Luther. Nietzsche also discusses modern unbelief, particularly among modern (at the time) German middle-class Protestants. Nietzsche firmly opposes Christianity as a religion of weakness for the "herd animal". The next section of this book is entitled "Epigrams and Interludes" and consists of various short remarks and poems by Nietzsche. These remarks cover a wide range of topics covering his thinking on religion, morality, women, and the new philosopher. Perhaps two of the more famous ones are as follows: "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." and "Jesus said to his Jews: "The law was for servants - love God as I love him, as his son. What are morals to us sons of God!"" The next section is entitled "A Natural History of Morality" and shows the development of morality as the values of the herd came to prevail. Nietzsche notes how the Jews "a people born for slavery" (Tacitus) brought about an inversion of values, in which the meek and lowly came to replace the proud and great as the highest values. Nietzsche mentions for example Cesare Borgia as the "man of prey" and contrasts him with those slaves who revolted against the powerful. The next section of this book is entitled "We Scholars" in which Nietzsche distinguishes between the true philosophers of the future, a high world into which one must be born or cultivated to, and the values of the herd animal. The next section of this book is entitled "Our Virtues". Here, Nietzsche contrasts the noble virtues with such ideals as hedonism, pessimism, utilitarianism, and eudaemonism. The next section of this book is entitled "Peoples and Fatherlands". Here, Nietzsche brings to the fore his thoughts on the Germans (represented perhaps by Richard Wagner and other "anti-Semites", who he castigates), the French, and the English (who he has little good to say for). Nietzsche contrasts these peoples to the "good Europeans" who represent the philosopher to come. Nietzsche's relationship to the Germans and the "anti-Semites" remains problematic. The final section of this book is entitled "What is Noble". Here, Nietzsche distinguishes between the aristocrat (representing the master morality) and the slave and lowly. The book ends with a poem entitled "From High Mountains: Aftersong" which expresses his profound loneliness with much sentimentality.

This book provides an excellent introduction to Nietzsche's philosophy of aristocratic radicalism. While Nietzsche is best in his rejection of herd values and the plagues of modernism brought on by the French Revolution, socialism, and liberalism, his rejection of Christianity, his remarks about the Germans, and his remarks regarding Platonic philosophy seem to me to be weaker points in his argument. Nietzsche remains one of the more important thinkers of the Nineteenth century, and his philosophy would see its pinnacle in the Nazi state (an arguable point perhaps). This book is perhaps a first attempt by Nietzsche to formalize and systematize his philosophy following his _Zarathustra_ and thus remains a most important part of his works and a classic of modern thought.

F. Nietzsche expresses in a raging and delirious style loudly his vision on life, through his interpretation of the Attic tragedy and its history. He exposes himself as an anti-rational, anti-scientific, amoral romanticist, for whom art is the only truly metaphysical activity of man.

Apollo v. Dionysus
The gods Apollo and Dionysus represent two completely antagonistic lifestyles.
The Apollinian one stands for measured restraint and freedom from wild emotions. It is based on the principium individuationis (the individual). Its main art form is sculpture; in literature the epic form (Homeros).
The Dionysian one stands for ecstasy, intoxication, orgiastic frenzy, sexual licentiousness, savage natural instincts. It is the life of the bearded satyr, a symbol of the sexual omnipotence of nature, of the abolition of the individual man. Its art form is music, song and dance; in literature, it is the poetry of an Archilochus with its cries of hatred and scorn, with his drunken outburst of desire.

Socrates
For Nietzsche, Socrates has the profound illusion that thought, using the thread of causality, can penetrate the deepest abyss of being. He is guided by the instinct of science, which for Nietzsche is a chain for humanity. Socrates stands for morality with its dictum: `knowledge is virtue; man sins only from ignorance; he who is virtuous is happy.' Socratism stands for morality, for `the anarchical dissolution of the instincts.'

The Attic tragedy
For Nietzsche, the Attic tragedy is born out of the Dionysian. It arose from the tragic chorus, the mirror image in which the Dionysian man contemplated himself. It was a chorus of natural beings who were (are) living ineradicably behind all civilization. It represents the rapture of the Dionysian state.
The choral parts gave birth to a dialogue. Drama began with the attempt to show the god in real. The earliest forms of the Greek tragedy had the sufferings of the tragic hero, Dionysus, (the agony of individuation) as sole theme.
The decline began with Sophocles who portrays complete characters and the Attic tragedy ended with Euripides, who draws prominent individual traits of character. Euripides is the exponent of the degenerate culture of Socratism and its morality. For him, `to be beautiful, everything must be conscious.'
Only after the spirit of science and its claim to universal validity is destroyed may we hope for a rebirth of tragedy.

Art, Hellenism and pessimism
The Hellene lost his Dionysian instincts. He became an individual confronted with the horror and absurdity of life. But art was (is) a saving sorceress. She alone knew (knows) how to turn the nauseous thoughts about life into the sublime which tamed the horrible and into the comic which discharged absurdity.

Of course, this book is not Nietzsche's best one. It constitutes a highly personal interpretation of the Greek tragedy. But, its overall vision of art as the savior and the solace of the ex-Dionysians will strongly appeal to many.
Not to be missed.

The title, Beyond Good & Evil, can make the author seem a bit (perhaps a lot!) crude, but only if the title is to be interpreted (without reading the whole book) at face value. This is precisely what Nietzsche was against: reaching a conclusion that is ‘certain’ based on the ‘name,’ ‘idea,’ or ‘concept’ given to things and persons from a bias of superficiality. From this ‘labeling’ the ‘simple man’ becomes prejudiced, and therefore, locked into his ‘tradition’ of thought and language, and as a consequence, cannot rise to a height ‘beyond’ this ‘good & evil’ man has created for himself. It is Nietzsche’s task to drive his readers ‘beyond’ this ‘good & evil’ (where it is possible to create higher values), to shift perspectives, to a height where one cannot look up nor look down. At this height there exists no god, no mask, no prejudice. There is only the “great-souled man.” There is a lesson to be learned, but to learn it one only has to read Nietzsche in his spirit to find it.

The philosophical side to the occult actually led me to this book (or rather the author). I have read many of his books and each of them outshine the last. Nietzsche's beliefs, ideas, and arguments are strong and still valid in today's society. For what I can say about this book is that Nietzsche presents a very interesting point of view on other philosophers, morality and, of course, religion. The language that this what written with is extrordinary, and the concepts are very focused. I have not been impressed reading books very often, but when I got to the end of this one I wondered why I wasn't drawn to Nietzsche earlier. And if you are looking for other titles by this author might I recommend "The Antichrist," "The Gay Science," or "Twilight Of The Idols." If you are least bit interested in dark philosophy this book was made for you. "Do not go into churches if you want to breathe clean air." - Nietzsche (Beyond Good And Evil)

Beyond Good and Evil is one of the most important works of modern philosophy, and I can't imagine I have anything to say about it that hasn't already been said. Nietzsche essentially argues that the majority of philosophy is simply the extension and logical extrapolation of an unfounded belief, or prejudice. Philosophical declarations of morality are typically baseless, and merely reflect the inner opinions of the philosopher. Well, there are more ideas in this book than I could possibly summarize. Read it and decide for yourself.

This volume has good printing and is a quality translation.
I read Nietzsche even though I disagree with him. It is valuable to have an understanding of other scholars' ideas, for we all shape the world.

Many of the epigrams and sections of Beyond Good and Evil refer to the denouement of organzied religion, the superiorty of men over women, other philosopher's works, and Nietzsche's own personal opinions. Most people who are interested in philosophy, regardless of personal preferences, will find Nietzsche's somewhat erratic and meaningful passages to be very interesting and thought provoking and would make fdder for a good debate.

This is simple a great piece of scholarship. Kaufmann's translation are livid with Nietzsche's emotional character, and supplemented by extensive footnotes on the context of the work (especially helpful with the Case of Wagner). Each work is also given a very interesting introduction, mostly biographical. I happily recommend this to anyone interested in reading these works. Also, it should be noted that Kaufmann translates several pages of correspondence at the end of the two essays.

Nietzsche's first book, it provides an excellent analysis of Greek tragedy, the tragic life, and music. The distinction between the Apollynian (image arts) and the Dionysian (music and dance)is important for those who appreciate the Arts. While this book is not scholarly in the usual, research sense (no citations), it is still a classic analysis that is a must read for people interested in Nietzsche.

This review is only for the audiobook reading. The audiobook reading is terrible. There is a different reader for each section. The readers go too fast, and don't emphasize key points. They don't break logically, so it's difficult to understand. You won't like the rendition at all. The actual book is amazing. But the reading of this book is terrible.

Essential! Nietzsche at his best. His most focused work.
BGE is essentially a collection of notes from underground expounding how we should reassess ourselves & evolve to higher states (individuate?). Nietzsche, as a man, experiences & relays depths perhaps previously unplundered.
Like all of Nietzsche's writings BGE is unerringly enigmatic, intense, & mesmeric if, however, fraught with a certain paradox.
I have greatly enjoyed this book, although in retrospect I don't think Nietzsche ever quite became the Ubermench/Superman he sought to be. Just because everything mentioned is true (what isn't?) doesn't necessarily make it good for the soul!
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Many of us disagree with Nietzsche's ideas, but he is a valuable read to understand the thinking of many people who make policy and shape the world.
Large print is always a bonus for eyes like mine.

Since the only other review is fairly obtuse about this book, it seems necessary to write another. If you consider yourself a creative entity, an artist, a musician, a filmmaker, a writer; then this book should be required reading. It describes two opposing "forces", Apollo and Dionysus, who are in perpetual conflict. From this conflict, all great art is born.

It is a dialectic, Thesis meets Antithesis to beget Synthesis.

The real point is though, after reading the book, you look for these opposing forces in everyday life and find them everywhere. Man and woman, religion and science, good and evil (for rudimentary examples). After reading the book it was apparent how much of this world is constructed out of, and centered on, opposition. It's like Matt Modine's helmet in Full Metal Jacket, man is a creature with inherent duality.

The Birth of Tragedy touches on something so essential and instinctually true to our existence that it can only vaguely be explained in words. Nietszche knows this and presents the concept as eloquently and clearly as it allows. It is up to the reader to take this knowledge as a starting point and explore deeper into their own individual experience and perspective.

One can easily note this is Nietzsche's first book. First, it's written in an essay form, not in his most known aphorisms. Second, it only speaks of classic thought, presocratics and dyonisian abandonment. This book is not Nitezsche's best, but it's always Nietzsche, if you are really interested in his work, this book is a most, if you are interested in the classics, this book is a most too. However, if you're only interested in philosophy, there are buch better books, specially when referring to Nietzsche.

The Kaufman translation is highly regarded, so that is what I purchased in the Kindle format.

The book seems to have been scanned but not proof-read at all. For example, there is missing punctuation at the end of the second sentence in the book. Obviously no investment was made at all in making sure the Kindle scan was accurate.

I guess a lot of people are not able to bask in the wisdom of Friedrich Nietzsche. "Beyond Good and Evil" is an extraordinary tour de force of philosophy. The questions that the German philosopher asks forces one to rethink about all of what he believes to be "true". Yes, Nietzsche's philosophy is cryptic, agressive and pretty much uncomfortable for many of us, yet he breaks down barriers of thought like no one did before him. Please, don't be repulsed by his extreme opinions. Let yourself be tempted by his thought (even if it means embracing for mere moments what we would gladly call mysogyny) and you shall see that Nietzsche was no mere madman (remember though that madness and genius are often well aquainted). I'm not saying that Nietzsche is always right. Yet, I find many of his aphorisms (even the most extreme) at least seductive. Christians beware : this book may not please you at all for it attacks relentlessly the Christian faith and its values. For those who dare, do yourself a favor and read through this masterpiece.

The first essay of this giant philosopher is deeply influenced for the echoes of Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner and pretends expose a new conception of the world : the tragic thought, , the intuition of the unity of the things , the converse affirmation of the life and death , the timeless return , the innocence of becoming .

Fundamental text if you want to get ready for the Apollonian and Dionisus duel!

Recognizing that this is a translation from not-quite-modern German doesn't much help. Nor does it help that the man is quite often right on the mark, (once he gets around to making a point). What really turned me off about this work, (and Nietzsche's work in general), is the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that he puts down women. For Nietzsche, displaying what he considered feminine qualities is a bad thing, for men or women. Insults to women are rampant throughout the book. I found it difficult to square my sensitivity to this issue with the philosophy that Nietzsche was trying to describe. But I now understand the subterranean relationship between certain interpretations of this philosophy and the later rise of Fascism in Europe. For that, I'll the book two stars rather than one.
If you are willing to tough it out, you'll find yourself at least conversant in the philosophy of a key player of the early twentieth century. Hardly seems worth while for anyone but a student of Philosophy or History, though.
Frederick, if you were still alive, I'd have to say that, though you may be right about Christianity, you still have a lot to learn about the human equation (as do we all). Thanks, but no thanks.

Never have I seen a writer who can wield language like weapon, a writer who draws spiritual blood from his reader with rapier-like thrusts. If you have not experienced the phenomenon that is Nietzche, then maybe it's time. The writing is quite possibly the best I've ever seen, and though it is heavy and difficult at times, the spirit of Nietzche himself will find his way through. This book is not for the "faint of heart" i.e. self-righteous dogmatists, so expect to get your toes stepped on. In the end you'll better for it.

I've found Kaufmann's translations, with frequent annotations, to be the best for someone that does NOT speak German. The problem with many is they annotate here and there, but do not really dig into the text by comparison. Mr. Kaufmann's work should be held as a benchmark because he shows multiple possible meanings for words and his thought process as to why he chose a word.

First off This book is so long which is why i got the audio so I wouldn't have to read it. It also isn't split into chapters or give you the time each chapter starts it just read the whole book without stopping. To top it all off it wasn't even the version I needed! I needed The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner and this wasn't it.

This is probably one of the most influential books I have ever read in my life. I will no longer elaborate the infinite number of reasons why you should not continue to live your life without reading this work. I have read two versions of this work published by different publishers. But what I can say is that I like this one by Vintage. First I like the translators preface as this will give the reader a birds eye view of Nietsche's philosophy.But the best part of this edition is that offers an inclusive index of subjects ,persons and tons of footnotes that will make reading Nietzche a wonderful experience.

This is my favorite book of all time. From reading BGE I have found a kindred spirit in Nietzche. He presents in this book an amazing view of the world; it might seem over-critical to many but I find it humorous and uplifting.
When I have been found reading this book by other people, I always hear: "Nietzche? Oh, he's interesting, just too pessimistic for me." "Nietzche? You shouldn't read his works; you'll get depressed." These people obviously don't understand his works: this is one of the most truthfully optimistic books I have ever read.
This is a book for those who love life and the world but dislike society.

This is the book Nietzsche wrote right after Zarathustra, and which more clearly expresses the ideas of the earlier work, but it stands on its own. If you wish to truly think here is the book to tackle with. There is enlightenment on every page.

I had been wanting to read into some of Neitzsche's ideas and wasn't sure which book to pickup until I found this one. The translation is very good, but a bit hard to understand at times. I had to read some sentences over and over to fully understand them, but that is expected with someone like Neitzsche, especially in a translation. The translation was beautifully written, and presented Neitzsche's thoughts and ideas very well.

If you are looking into Neitzsche for the first time I highly recommend this book. Mainly because it offers a very broad summary of his ideas for the newcomer. After reading this I would suggest moving onto his more specific works. Regardless, this was a great thought-provoking read.

When I first reviewed this book, I gave it one star. The basic problem I felt was that Nietzsche's method, applied to his own word, provided nothing but pessimism. I now wonder this was what Nietzsche intended, perhaps as a point that his own work was not above criticism.

Over time, I have come to a greater appreciation for this book. In fact, while Nietzsche tears down some previous attempts at philosophy, his solutions are so problematic that they leave a fertile void where new solutions can take root. Many of his demands are entirely impossible to meet. For example, I believe it is impossible to escape, in the course of any sort of symbolic discourse (whether based on natural language or something like mathematics) the "tyranny of words" as he puts it. After all, language is a system of differences, and unless we draw arbitrary boundaries, we cannot discuss at all.

Nietzsche is quite right that a lot of philosophy ends up being reduced to lexicography (how do we define "truth" or "good" for example) and that this does not get us any closer to essence.

I would recommend reading this book with a healthy dose of skepticism and letting it sit for some time before arriving at any discussion regarding the merits of the author's work.

nietzsche is the only man who dares to speak truth. he is the antagonist of the lepers of the heart who claim to possess knowledge.if you have a weak stomach, you should never eat the raw truth beyond good and evil has to feed you. the truth he speaks contains no additives,the truth he speaks is a conviction laxative. if you are "stout-hearted" enough for this book you will love it. if you are fed up with lies and have nihilist tendencies, this book will revive you. his craft is brutal honesty, his prose is beyond comparison, and his books are magic portals into "truth".

If you're new to Nietzsche, let me give you a quick overview I could have used when I started out. All philosophy aside, Nietzsche was, very long story short, basically a very smart guy who lived in Europe during the 19th century and who due to illness retired at the age of 35 from his university post as a professor (NOT of philosophy), with a cool six-year pension. He spent the next ten years of his life basically walking around in the mountains, and writing highly unorthodox and creative books that I guess you could call philosophy because that's what everyone calls them. I like the phrase "psychology of philosophy", but nothing could possibly sum it all up. And of course, after that he went nuts. Or more precisely, ten years later, in January of 1889, while his publisher was preparing the first editions of some of the four or five (marvelous, intricate, very widely studied) books he pumped out over the course of the previous year, he lost control of his mind, and a few months later, he was picked up at his mountain cottage, or whatever it was, and taken back to Germany and compassionately placed in an asylum by his family. And he died ten years later...but that's enough for an overview.

In your approach, take everybody's advice with a grain of salt. He's a very personal writer, who deserves a very personal read. You can start anywhere you want, but Nietzsche is like a christmas tree that you can just keep reaching under and pull out more presents that have your name on the tag, so don't ever walk away feeling like you've earned the I've-read-Nietzsche badge. His more literary stuff is in The Gay Science and in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. This one, Beyond Good and Evil, is incredibly good and should be read. My personal favorite is Ecce Homo because it's so odd and outrageous. It's one of the late works, the so-called "books of the collapse". You can go all over the place with Nietzsche. He was a genius, it's even possible that he was everything he claimed he was. But then again, he claimed he was the most important man in history, so, hmm.

Feel free to laugh, object, draw offense, be provoked, be awed, be terrified. The best thing about Nietzsche is that he understood that philosophy ought to be READABLE, that it should emotionally engage, in the same way as art.

Because personally, if you ask me, this [...] just ain't as serious as some people make it out to be. :-))) ----LTS

This is as good a place as any to start your exploration of Nietzsche. The problem is, even though it is supposed to be a more straightforward approach at communicating the message found in Zarathustra, this is still written very pithily. The prose is very joyful, poetic, and requires thought. Then again, if you weren't willing to commit some thought to Nietzsche, then it's not worth picking up Nietzsche.
However, it is worth mentioning that you shouldn't pick up this book. Now that Kaufmann's Basic Writings of Nietzsche, which contains this book along with four others (Birth of Tragedy, On the Genealogy of Morals, The Case of Wagner, and Ecce Homo) is in paperback for only slightly more money, it's best to buy that instead.

I am not providing a review of the book itself, as Beyond Good and Evil is simply beyond the need for critical input. Nietzsche, right or wrong, is simply brilliant, positively enjoyable to read, and easily misunderstood by those who do not read deeply. This, rather, will be a review of the translation.

Marion Faber's translation is, for the most part, well done. She keeps alive much of Nietzsche's wit and rhetorical spirit, but there are some major flaws in this translation. The first is positively unacceptable: the paragraphing in this text is not Nietzsche's own. Walter Kaufmann is guilty of the same sin; I guess they are trying to make Nietzsche more "accessible". Nietzsche has quite a unique style, and usually indicates where a different subject is being pursued by having a dash before the sentence. Faber and Kaufmann both opt to break up Nietzsche's paragraphs along these dashes, which really does Nietzsche a disservice. If Nietzsche wanted his work to be broken up into those paragraphs, he would've done it himself. This further does a disservice to the reader, because he is missing a key anomaly of punctuation and style. If you don't want to spend the time figuring Nietzsche out, then don't bother reading his works at all.

The second major problem I had with this translation was the laughable attempts to make Nietzsche's language sound more politically correct. This is simply a ludicrous endeavor. If you want a book that is inoffensive, go read something else. Nietzsche is not a writer meant to be understood and appreciated by everyone. The German word for 'man' ought to be translated as 'man', not 'human'. The most ridiculous instances are when Faber translates 'overman' as 'overhuman', a clunker of a word that really unnecessarily bogs down the text. Words like 'man' and 'human' are not interchangeable, and it really is necessary to have continuity in the terms. But, thanks to the translator, anyone will surely miss key aspects in Nietzsche's application of the term 'man' and when he uses 'human' (and he does distinguish between them).

Between the translation by Kaufmann and that of Faber's, I would probably recommend Faber, as her work is livelier than Kaufmann's. But it isn't without it's major problems that really should've been avoided, because she had to work to put them in. Mistranslations of terms are much more forgivable (that's the difficult part, and she has errors here too), but tampering with the style and structure simply did not and should not have been done.

There is no denying Nietzsche's genius. But there is denying mine. I found this book very hard to follow. It is not a book to stop and scrutinize every line. One must know a fair bit about Greek mythology to follow it adequately. His thoughts on Socrates compared to the Dionysian is very compelling. If anyone who has read this book wishes to share what they understood, please e-mail me.

I read this piece of work about 6 years ago. Maybe I rushed the process and read it like a novel - its not. 'Beyond...' is the summary of a trouble minded genius in what should be considered his most accessible form; unfortunately "accessible Nietzsche" may still be too much for 99.99 percent of the world.

Nietzsche is often adopted by young nihilistic men to help them find an explanation of the crazy world around them. To be honest I believe John Locke would be a better first step in to philosophy and a good counter to some of Nietzsche's ideas. In fact he shows signs of objectivism (a-la Ayn Rand) with statements such as "As long as you still experience the stars as something 'above you' you lack the eye of knowledge." Maybe this is out of context but I'm sure Ayn would have said the same thing. Funny, Ayn would probably hate such a comparison as she despised Fred's dogmatic or formulaic views of how man should be. For this Fred is equally a hypocrite for his criticism of the Catholic Church.

What I consider to be a fault of the English edition is the translator and his preface, he writes as though he is a member of some sort of Nietzsche Cult. Should a translator really tell the reader that what he is reading is "brilliant, unforgettable?" [p xv] I would honestly love to hear from an objective German on this point.

All said, Nietzsche IS required reading for anyone who sees value in developing some sort of intelligence... for that I guess I should do a second reading ;)

This is one of maybe five reviews I've ever written online. I only do so if I absolutely love a product or am absolutely appalled by something I wish a fellow the store addict had included in an online review. This will be the latter. This book is rife with translation errors. Not even so much translation errors because I don't speak German but basic grammatical mistakes; "From another perspective we see the force of this un-Dionysian spirit in action directing its effects against myth, when we turn our gaze toward the way in which the way in which the presentation..." -page 56 (this is just one in a long list of examples). Another weird fact about this book is that it is the size of a magazine? I have no fundamental problem with that, I loved JG Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition which had the same dimensions; however because this book is a mere 80 pages it's just awkward to read. Do yourself a favor and buy another version of this book that doesn't have an abundance of errors. The only saving grace for this POS are the ideas contained therein.

The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

This is a wonderful work of one of the great philosophical thinkers. If you like Aeschylus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristophanes, Euripides - this ebook is for you!

This book is one of Nietzsche's classics, but I am not rating the content of this book rather this unfortunate edition. the store has recently gotten into a bad habit of selling cheap reprints of classic works, I had a similar problem with a copy of Ulysses I purchaced a few months back. This book is poorly bound, has a horrible cover design, has no notes or annotations (which are almost a necessity for a book like this), and it opens with a disclaimer so politically correct it would make poor Friedrich roll over in his grave. The bottom line? Don't buy this version.

It's not necessary for me to review the work of my friend, Fred.

I simply wanted to point out that this is the translation by Helen Zimmern--I have a Dover edition that matches the introduction, word for word.

There are 3 other translations--Walter Kaufmann (scholarly and poetic, 70's American), R.J. Hollingdale (a bit officious, British and precise, perhaps), Marion Faber (new and very good)--in addition to the Helen Zimmern translation.

I have all 4, and read them in parallel when I read BG&E. It's a good idea to have at least 2 translations--otherwise you mistake someone else's voice for Fred's, unless of course you can read German well enough. I can't, being a dumb chauvinistic American who only speaks....Ahmericun.

Having several translations gives you something analogous to binocular or trinocular or quadrocular vision--there's a sense of depth, a delightful sense of saying the same thing in slightly different ways.

So, get this if you don't have the Zimmern translation. If you already have that, then there may be some minor differences in this edition, and it has a pretty green cover.

God is dead (proclaimed previously in __The Gay Science__as already accepted among the cultural elite) and so is Fred. Long live God, & long live Fred.

I took Latin in high school, became president of the Latin Club after my older sister stopped taking Latin, sang some Christian music in Latin in church choirs, and grew up when Latin was associated with the Roman Catholic official church that Martin Luther defied by having his translation of the Bible into German printed so ordinary people could see what a difficult book covering thousands of years could find to complain about between Egypt, Babylon, Cyrus, and Romans trying to dominate the special holy family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph before the son of a Roman soldier turned it all into the childhood of pornography with the observation of:

circulus vitiosus deus.

I read this piece of work about 6 years ago. Maybe I rushed the process and read it like a novel - its not. 'Beyond...' is the summary of a trouble minded genius in what should be considered his most accessible form; unfortunately "accessible Nietzsche" may still be too much for 99.99 percent of the world.

Nietzsche is often adopted by young nihilistic men to help them find an explanation of the crazy world around them. To be honest I believe John Locke would be a better first step in to philosophy and a good counter to some of Nietzsche's ideas. In fact he shows signs of objectivism (a-la Ayn Rand) with statements such as "As long as you still experience the stars as something 'above you' you lack the eye of knowledge." Maybe this is out of context but I'm sure Ayn would have said the same thing. Funny, Ayn would probably hate such a comparison as she despised Fred's dogmatic or formulaic views of how man should be. For this Fred is equally a hypocrite for his criticism of the Catholic Church.

What I consider to be a fault of the English edition is the translator and his preface, he writes as though he is a member of some sort of Nietzsche Cult. Should a translator really tell the reader that what he is reading is "brilliant, unforgettable?" [p xv] I would honestly love to hear from an objective German on this point.

All said, Nietzsche IS required reading for anyone who sees value in developing some sort of intelligence... for that I guess I should do a second reading ;)

This is one of maybe five reviews I've ever written online. I only do so if I absolutely love a product or am absolutely appalled by something I wish a fellow the store addict had included in an online review. This will be the latter. This book is rife with translation errors. Not even so much translation errors because I don't speak German but basic grammatical mistakes; "From another perspective we see the force of this un-Dionysian spirit in action directing its effects against myth, when we turn our gaze toward the way in which the way in which the presentation..." -page 56 (this is just one in a long list of examples). Another weird fact about this book is that it is the size of a magazine? I have no fundamental problem with that, I loved JG Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition which had the same dimensions; however because this book is a mere 80 pages it's just awkward to read. Do yourself a favor and buy another version of this book that doesn't have an abundance of errors. The only saving grace for this POS are the ideas contained therein.

The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

This is a wonderful work of one of the great philosophical thinkers. If you like Aeschylus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristophanes, Euripides - this ebook is for you!

This book is one of Nietzsche's classics, but I am not rating the content of this book rather this unfortunate edition. the store has recently gotten into a bad habit of selling cheap reprints of classic works, I had a similar problem with a copy of Ulysses I purchaced a few months back. This book is poorly bound, has a horrible cover design, has no notes or annotations (which are almost a necessity for a book like this), and it opens with a disclaimer so politically correct it would make poor Friedrich roll over in his grave. The bottom line? Don't buy this version.

It's not necessary for me to review the work of my friend, Fred.

I simply wanted to point out that this is the translation by Helen Zimmern--I have a Dover edition that matches the introduction, word for word.

There are 3 other translations--Walter Kaufmann (scholarly and poetic, 70's American), R.J. Hollingdale (a bit officious, British and precise, perhaps), Marion Faber (new and very good)--in addition to the Helen Zimmern translation.

I have all 4, and read them in parallel when I read BG&E. It's a good idea to have at least 2 translations--otherwise you mistake someone else's voice for Fred's, unless of course you can read German well enough. I can't, being a dumb chauvinistic American who only speaks....Ahmericun.

Having several translations gives you something analogous to binocular or trinocular or quadrocular vision--there's a sense of depth, a delightful sense of saying the same thing in slightly different ways.

So, get this if you don't have the Zimmern translation. If you already have that, then there may be some minor differences in this edition, and it has a pretty green cover.

God is dead (proclaimed previously in __The Gay Science__as already accepted among the cultural elite) and so is Fred. Long live God, & long live Fred.

Beyond Good and Evil (Jenseits von Gut und Boesen) is a classic of western philosophy and culture criticism. Those of us whose eyes are not what they were at the dawn, and who spend a lot of time driving, love to have books like this recorded, so we can enjoy them without getting out the specs and instead of driving along idiotically listening to commercials or the nostrums of PBS. Unfortunately, this particular product was a disappointment.

This is a very dense CD that needs a special player, so anyone who has anything but a recent vintage car will have to get the mp3-DVD-whatever player to listen to it. That is not such a big deal, but the quality of the readers cannot be improved with any machinery.

This is a translation into English, which is fairly fluent, but the various graduate students (I presume) who read the chapters cannot handle the English language into which it is translated. There is one reader with a thick accent that indicates some language other than English to have been his mother tongue who reads a completely incomprehensible chapter, but he can be forgiven (although the choice of this lad for this assignment is to be questioned.) The native speakers frequently don't know how to pronounced English words. Mispronunciations are common, and often so far from the actual word that the sense of the sentences get lost. Bits in French or Latin are simply relayed as gibberish.

Another odd touch is that, possibly because Nietzsche is so famously radical and immoral in his writings, the readers feel a need to add a dash of drama to the presentation, so a few of them affect the hushed inflections of children reading ghost stories. This comes of as particularly asinine when they then mispronounce the big words and come with a surprise to more words in sentences they thought they had finished.

I was appalled that readers couldn't read.

The book itself is great.

I took Latin in high school, became president of the Latin Club after my older sister stopped taking Latin, sang some Christian music in Latin in church choirs, and grew up when Latin was associated with the Roman Catholic official church that Martin Luther defied by having his translation of the Bible into German printed so ordinary people could see what a difficult book covering thousands of years could find to complain about between Egypt, Babylon, Cyrus, and Romans trying to dominate the special holy family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph before the son of a Roman soldier turned it all into the childhood of pornography with the observation of:

circulus vitiosus deus.

If you are going to read just one text from Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil should be it. This was the volume in which he coined the term "that which doesn't kill me makes me stronger," and the book seems to span a the full range of themes on which Nietzsche was interested.

"There are "scientific minds" who make use of science, because it gives a gay appearance, and because scientificness leads to the conclusion that a person is superficial--they WISH to mislead to a false conclusion." (§ 270)

Nietzsche-you love him, you hate him, or you have to read him for a class or to be well-rounded. From what I have read of him, I would not suggest this book as an intro. Rather, I think "Twilight of the Idols" is a better thumbnail of his ideas, presented in a more coherent and staccato manner.

This book's main weakness is that it lacks a central thesis. Therefore the writing tends to be chatty, meandering, and filled with tedious asides. His prose is still embryonic, and does not have the refinement that his later works have. Unlike Aristotle, he says half as much in twice the space, which means we must do four times the work to separate the wheat form the chaff.

Furthermore, he makes indirect assertions, and never provides evidence to substantiate his ideas. In this way he is a bit like a political pundit who sings to his ideological choir.

Another speed bump is his foreign language quotes. The Dover Thrift edition lacks translations, so you are left clueless to Nietzsche's point.

This book is not without merit. I found it helpful to see where many of Ayn Rand's ideas come from. For example, § 265 is an almost ad verbatim description of Ayn Rand's concept of egotism. Although she distanced herself from some of his ideas (see the Ayn Rand Lexicon for an in-depth discussion), she did maintain a love for his deal about the noble soul having reverence for itself. (See Fountain head, p. x).

Furthermore, I enjoyed chapter four. Nietzsche does have a gift for saws and memorable one-liners. Sadly, most of the time his wisecracks are obscure, like a bad fortune cookie. Other times, he can crystallize his ideas. If all of his writing could be this crisp!

This book was good and very helpful to me. If you are looking to free your mind especially from organized religion it is very helpful. Nietzche to me was a prophet; he told the truth as it is with no fear. Dont beleive what they say about him; he is a good man; and seeks to help you empower yourself. He has long passed away now, but his works still apply to today; and his works are truely artistic. Be very patient reading this book, the truth of it sort of comes not the way you want it to. The truths in this book are scattered, so read it all the way through. I highly recommend this book for free spirited individuals.

I think that the entire book is fascinating, but the one part that I read over and over is the aphorisms section. The entries are, at once, deceptively simple, sometimes offensive, always provocative, and ultimately mind-blowing. Similar in tone to the aphorisms in "Twilight of the Idols", but somehow more incisive and memorable.

Because of the several other reviews already made, it really doesn't make any sense for me to write another. I will just say that this book holds a great majority of the roots of Nietzsche's thought and is actually a remarkable analysis on tragedy and its implications for the nature of our human spirit. This book deserves the full five stars.

Here's your hero, guys:
page 89, sect 145: "Comparing man and woman on the whole, one may say: woman would not have the genius for finery if she did not have an instinct for a secondary role"
page 116, sect 202: "They are at one, the lot of them, in the cry and the impatience of pity, in their deadly hatred of suffering generally, in their almost feminine inability to remain spectators, to let someone suffer."
Froderick does more than argue against these traits. He clearly associates them with women, while he discounts them. Not that you big dumb brutes need any more rationalization for subjugating women. It's too bad there's no such thing as reincarnation, 'cause I'd love to see Frayderick reborn as a woman. Then maybe he'd see things in a new way.
The cerebral cortex is just a place to reason away all the lusty things that come in the lower mind. But of course Frederick didn't know that, because he didn't much care for science, and was too busy justifying his hatred of Jews, Christians, and women.
I realize I'm probably horning in on some mutual admiration society developing about this particular site. So go ahead and zap me a negative feedback. I absolutely don't care. This one woman's opinion remains, like a mentrual stain, on your perfect little page.
How's that for "Finery"?

Don't get me wrong: This is a marvelous game boasting the smoothest, most sophisticated and enjoyable action world I've ever had the pleasure of visiting; yet it is also cursed with the worst, unforgivably insane system for saving the game in the history of computer gaming, and this is a serious flaw.

Michel Ancel, its creator, does not even know the real purpose of the Game Save, which is to give the PLAYER the ability to take a break whenever HE (yeah, yeah, s/he) needs or wants to. Instead, Ancel is the first designer in history to put this ability in the hands of a game's CHARACTER, who is forced to run around -- in her world, mind you -- looking for a MACHINE that has the power to suspend time, supposedly whenever SHE wants or needs a break, which is NEVER! She doesn't even need to eat, sleep, or go potty, f'crissake; but when I want or have to quit playing for a while, I have to push her around until she finds a completely incongruous MACHINE that has nothing to do with her or her world, in order for ME to stop playing IN MY WORLD (in which such a creator who has suffered such a loss of touch with reality is known as a "schizo").

On top of this, there's even one place where Ancel has gone wacko with his "Jade-just-died-and-has-to-return-to-an-earlier-point-in-the-battle" gimmick. This occurs where there's two rotating killer beams she must run and crouch through before tumbling over more beams and under the closing door. Get killed here and you're diabolically propelled back to -- not just the beginning of the ordeal -- but instead all the way back to grabbing the pearl and kicking ten (count 'em, TEN) of those stupid pocket-change boxes.

As if all this were not bad enough, Ancel has elected to make some of his save machines either inaccessible or unavailable right in the middle of a long series of exceedingly difficult trials/battles, so that when I become frustrated, exhausted, or just plain late for dinner I have no other choice but to quit the game -- a curse for which I am doomed, upon returning, to suffer through seemingly endless reruns of cut scenes and step-retracings in order to get back to the tedious section I couldn't bear earlier.

One can only imagine what poor Jade must be thinking the entire game, which is undoubtedly along the lines of, "Why do I have to keep running around to these huge dvd machines to do some task called 'Save'? Save what? -- my entire life up to this point in time? Why would I want to do that? I experience no benefit whatsoever from doing this crazy thing. I hit 'Save'; nothing happens to me or my world; and I'm right back to standing in front of this humongous dvd machine, exactly as I was before "saving" something I know absolutely nothing about. What an idiotic waste of time and energy."

Jade, I couldn't agree more.

This edition of Beyond Good and Evil, translated by Walter Kaufman, is presented as the only one based on Nietzsche's original text. In various places it is described as Nietzsche's attempt to "sum up his philosophy in a less flamboyant and more systematic form." In addition, Kaufman inserts numerous footnotes, most of them quite brief but a few lengthy but still instructive, to clarify an especially obscure passage or translate into English a word, phrase, or aphorism from Latin, Greek, or French. For the most part, the footnotes are quite helpful, and they are not so numerous or intrusive as to interfere with the flow of the text.

Beyond Good and Evil had, by contemporary standards, an odd and unpromising entry into the literary market place. In 1886, two years before his career-ending breakdown, Nietzsche himself financed publication of the first three hundred copies. During its first year in print, the volume sold only one hundred fourteen copies, and Nietzsche concluded that prospective readers were not interested in his work. After his untimely death at age 40 in 1900, however, Beyond Good and Evil became a book that was much in demand, and it remains so today.

Nietzsche's prose style is a good deal less obscure than that of many other German philosophers, including Kant, Hegel, and, more recently, Gadamer and Sloterdijk. Often, however, the reader finds himself trying to decide if Nietzsche means a passage to be taken literally or if he is engaging in mischievous word play that requires deciphering.

Again, the translator's footnotes help with some of Nietzsche's less straightforward accounts, and they provide assistance judiciously, not intruding needlessly. Nietzsche's fairly liberal use of word play may be one of the stylistic tools that makes him attractive to contemporary post-modernists, accounting in part for the renaissance or recrudesence, take your pick, of interest in Nietzsche during the past thirty years.

Much like Foucault, Nietzsche seemed to enjoy keeping his readers a bit off balance. Beginning his preface to Beyond Good and Evil with the question "Suppose truth is a woman -- what then?" certainly came as a surprise to me. This unexpected beginning alerts the reader to the fact that, throughout Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche gives voice to a peculiarly mixed assessment of women that occasionally generates uncertainty and confusion. (It would also have been a great line for Andera Martin in the old Second City TV show. After all, why shouldn't talented comedians do epistemology.)

It may or may not be the case that Nietzsche's puzzling evaluations, and occasional caricatures, of women were determined, in good part, by the fact that when illness forced him to give up his professorship in philology at the University of Basel, he was cared for first by his mother, until her death, and then by his sister, until Nietzsche died.

To the best of my very limited knowledge, Nietzsche's only other relationships with women were with those whose literary and scholarly attainments were substantial, though Nietzsche thought this sort of intellectual cultivation ill-suited to women. Though his overall perspective on the second sex may have been unfavorable, I have read only one instance in which in which he seems to disparage the character or intentions of a particular woman. In Section 235 of Beyond Good and Evil he quotes Madame de Lambert, a French writer and author of Advice from a Mother to Her Son as follows: "My friend, permit yourself nothing but follies -- that will give you great pleasure." Nietzsche described this as the most "motherly and prudent words ever directed to a son." But Nietzsche viewed "motherly" and "prudent" circumstances as distorting man's true nature and potential, certainly suppressing the will to power. So do we have a condemnation or a compliment? Since the words were those of a woman, and since Nietzsche ironically coupled "motherly" and "prudent" with "follies", perhaps the latter, it's difficult to say. After all, "follies" are hardly the stuff of steel-souled men in whom the will to power is being cultivated.

Writing a book, by the way, is not something Nietzsche thought a woman should do. Such work, he had concluded, made women more man-like, an especially ugly outcome given his take on the mediocrities that were the men of his era. Nevertheless, in at least one instance, Nietzsche acknowledges that women, too, can exercise the will to power. They do so, however, in a peculiarly feminine and subordinate fashion that can be frittered away if they lose touch with their female nature.

If Nietzsche is not a misogynist it is because his judgment as to the qualities of men of his time, with the exception of the few "free spirits" such as himself, rendered them no more virtuous and capable than women generally. Men, to their lasting discredit, had forgotten or sought to escape the legitimate boundaries of class and race. Men, all too often, were caught up in what Nietzsche saw as the herd-like spirit of democracy, a political system he found leveling and otherwise destructive. He condemned women for crossing newly blurred sexual boundaries. He condemned men for being denatured by the softening and hypocrisy of civilizing influences. And he condemned both men and women for being democrats. Among the historically specific kinds of human beings who shared his time on earth, Nietzsche might be best characterized as a misanthrope.

The primary difficulty in reading Nietzsche, however, is the very high level of abstraction at which he presents his argument. An abstract mode of presentation is certainly not uncommon among philosophers, especially those who, like Nietzsche, wish to deal with vast and varied expanses of time, geography, and culture. Nevertheless, by eschewing concreteness, Nietzsche invites many more "can he really mean what he's saying?" sorts of questions than otherwise would be the case.

In addition, when, for example, Hegel, working at a high level of abstraction, used the dialectical method to explain the emergence of an individuated self, the result seemed quite consistent with a very thorough analysis, one that the reader who is willing to exert the effort can follow. The result is quite persuasive, and struck me as brilliant.

Similarly, Kant's observation that ideas are experientially determined but only after an encounter with the peculiar organization of the central nervous system, strikes a responsive chord. After all, the set of complex structures that intervenes between us and the world as it is may never be understood. This leaves us unable to say what the world is really like, as we remain prisoners of phenomena.

By contrast, Nietzsche's central concept of the "will to power" has neither an analytical genesis nor, as far as I can tell, intuitive appeal. (Schopenhauer's will-to-live strikes me as a very different idea.) Yes, it may appeal to him, but otherwise it seems adventitious, something that lacks a solid basis of any sort and retains the character of something that has central importance -- or even simple existence -- just because Nietzsche wills it so.

For Nietzsche, however, this may have been a virtue. He had had enough of analysis and critique. Real philosophers, according to Nietzsche, were called to a much higher task: the creation of values! What could be more in keeping with the will to power than trusting one's instincts and intuition enough to impose whatever standards one wanted?

One is tempted to categorize Nietzsche as a philosopher of the ID, as Freud used that term, with "free spirits" grabbing for whatever they want without restraint. Totally devoid of impulse control, contemptuously lacking in charitable inclinations, hostile and rejecting of tendencies toward merciful forgiveness, and derisively dismissive of usual accounts of fairness as manifestations of weakness that undercut the emergence of real men in all their strength and glory.

The ID, however, is not hospitable to discipline. And Nietzsche viewed divesting one's self of the unnatural constraints imposed from birth by the increasingly democratized civilization that accompanied the industrial revolution as requiring an iron and enduring discipline, something that could be attained by only the favored few. Those who suffered most through this arduous process of self-realization became those who were the most far-sighted, insightful, and most worthy of noble position.

Modern civilization, after all, taught prudence, temperance, tenderness, artful specialization, reciprocal kindness, thoughtful uncertainty in deference to the views of others -- all qualities that were at odds with the will to power, but all qualities that provided comfort so long as one was content with mediocrity. Escaping the bonds of modern civilization was enormously difficult because they were so numerous, subtle, unnoticed, and presented as virtues. Even more, they were sources of ease, assuring the herd-like tractability of those civilized to mediocrity. Only the strongest, most disciplined will and brutally cultivated determination could make possible the emergence of "free spirits," men who gave natural precedence to the will to power, men who were free of the strength-sapping, denaturing, influence of modern civilization, and men who knew there was no God.

The kind of society that such men found most hospitable was inevitably aristocratic, stratified across many levels from slaves to the nobility. Members of the noble class reveled in their rightful stature and attainments, full of the knowledge that they belonged in their elevated and commanding positions, and ripe with creative prowess.

Nobles never looked down, pitying those beneath them. They took the class-based order of things as right and good. They knew that those born in a class stayed in that class, as did their offspring. To think otherwise was to invite leveling and falling victim to the same fate as pre-revolutionary Seventeenth Century France, a society much admired by Nietzsche. Insofar as cross-class relations existed, they were much as implied above. Nobles looked with favor and courtesy only on other nobles, their equals, whom they could trust and with whom they found fine company.

Given the foregoing, it is no surprise that Nietzsche is sometimes suspected of being a philosopher to whom Hitler's Nazis turned for inspiration. Perhaps so, but if that was the case, the Nazis must have overlooked the following passage from Section 251: "The Jews ... are beyond any doubt the strongest, toughest, and purest race now living in Europe; they know how to prevail even under the worst conditions (even better than under favorable conditions) by means of virtues that today one would [decadently] like to mark as vices -- thanks above all to a resolute faith that need not be ashamed before modern ideas." Perhaps the Nazis were testing Nietzsche's claim that the Jews "knew how to prevail even under the worst conditions."

Those who claim that Nietzsche de-centered man, rendering his moral codes and claims to ongoing progress as no more than social conventions, may be right, but there is nothing in Beyond Good and Evil that endorses this judgment. If anything, Nietzsche's willful assertions on behalf of free spirits and their will to power forcibly return man, or at least a particular type of man, back to the center of a moral universe that he constructs.

Imagine that someone with an inexplicable fondness for Nietzsche produced a voluminous secondary literature dealing with his work. The secondary literature purported to find a great deal in Nietzsche that simply is not there. Perhaps something like that accounts for his popularity today, that and the perverse post-modernist penchant for seeing what one wants in the most dubious places and playing provocateur.

Worse yet, imagine that an earnest and promising student, entirely new to philosophy, is given something by Nietzsche as a starter. He or she might, with good reason, dismiss the whole discipline as a bad joke, a fraud, enjoyed only by histrionic, self-aggrandizing, supercilious poseurs or, to borrow George Santyana's characterization, "constitutional invalids." Santayana's work, by the way, is genuinely brilliant, a sharp departure from Nietzsche's self-indulgent crap. The Life of Reason is a fine example. Too many read Nietzsche and far too few read Santayana.

Make of it what you will.

1) One does not go beyond good and evil to do greater good- but rather to free oneself to do evil. Who then are the true spiritual heirs of Neitzsche?

2) There are sick souls whose pain is turned into a beautiful irony - but this does not make them any less sick souls.

3)What is the point of hating re-sentiment morality so much? Had the Christians only been one small part as kind as they pretended to be the Jews would have had to ask them to turn the other cheek.

4) A man who hates women is not a man

5) The will to power is not the single unifying motive of mankind, but one central one among many

6) The mass of mankind is more varied than is dreamnt of in Neitzsche's philosophy.

7) Will the superman be able to compete with an ' enhanced machine-mind programmed to create newer and newer philosophic insights?

8) Rare and bold and great and surprising are the best aphorisms of Neitzsche. And some might argue that his aphorisms are the best that have ever been. But style alone is not enough to bring the world to a real answer.

9) One must pity a great mind overthrown and the suffering this entailed.

10) No one prays to Neitzsche's thought . Many still pray to G-d.

I should preface this review by refering to my title...clawing violently at the lid of his coffin like the rest of us would!
I'll keep this review terse for the sake of the (unlikely >1) reader(s). I find many of the reader reviews I have read here on the store to be either funny or disturbing depending on my mood, since, old Fred himself would be the first to admit to the following:
1. "misogyny" or as it was so ummmmm eloquantly put "his attitude problems about women" (the truth of gender equality is DOUBTLESSLY UNQUESTIONABLE!!!!! How could he possibly not KNOW that???)
2. "failure to provide concrete examples" (or possibly PROVABLE in which case please join the despised "scientists")
3. Whatever other moral quandries instantly occured to the reviewer.
It's also more than a little disturbing that literally NONE of the "top ten" reader reviews give old fred <4 (out of five) stars.
But then again people who post reviews about a philosophy text are very likely to be as open minded as those at a G.W. Bush fundraiser or graduate nuclear physics lecture or for that matter ME.
I can offer no better advice than to think and feel for yourself....

I was expecting so much more. Nietzche has been built up as a philosophical giant. Perhaps "Beyond Good and Evil" is simply a blemish amidst his "masterpieces".

Imagine sitting down and simply writing out every random thought that comes to mind. That is this book- congratulations- you are now a world-famous philosopher!

Nietzche is a misogynist- see his discourse on women. Nietzche is an elitist- see his discourse on the wonders of aristocracy and the needs for a caste system. Nietzche is a racist- see his discourse on the Germans amongst Europe. It isn't hard to see how Germany progressed to Hitler since Germans were consuming Nietzche as their first course.

He also used this book to self-aggrandize his paltry verses, or what some may call "poetry". Obviously, I was terribly unimpressed. I am wondering how this book has so many high ratings- are people actually reading this tiresome nonsense or is it just the cool eclectic Freshman Psyche Major thing to do? Nietzche is more hype than substance.

If I could give this book less than one star, I would. It was a required text for my philosophy class and I absolutely hated it. If you type some of the sentences in to Microsoft Word, you will prompted that what you have typed contains "wordiness". Not only is this book pointless and not an easy read, but the unnecessarily difficult concepts discussed can easily be condensed into more to-the-point philosophical theories. Although I consider this book to be hard and boring, I could see how philosophy lovers could love this text.

I was shocked by how large this book is, like a coffee table size. I can't claim it was false advertising because the dimensions are available online, but it's a bizarre design choice. The book is extremely large and thin.