Nietzsche referred to his critique of Judeo-Christian moral values as philosophizing with the hammer. On the Genealogy of Morals (originally subtitled A Polemic) is divided into three essays. The first is an investigation into the origins of our moral values, or as Nietzsche calls them moral prejudices. The second essay addresses the concept of guilt and its role in the development of civilization and religion. The third essay considers suffering and its role in human existence. What might be of most (...) value to today's reader is not necessarily Nietzsche's views on particular ethical issues, but rather his encouragement to think independently and to actualize the self. (shrink)
Nietzsche called The Gay Science "the most personal of all my books." It was here that he first proclaimed the death of God -- to which a large part of the book is devoted -- and his doctrine of the eternal recurrence. Walter Kaufmann's commentary, with its many quotations from previously untranslated letters, brings to life Nietzsche as a human being and illuminates his philosophy. The book contains some of Nietzsche's most sustained discussions of art and morality, knowledge and truth, (...) the intellectual conscience and the origin of logic. Most of the book was written just before Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the last part five years later, after Beyond Good and Evil. We encounter Zarathustra in these pages as well as many of Nietzsche's most interesting philosophical ideas and the largest collection of his own poetry that he himself ever published. Walter Kaufmann's English versions of Nietzsche represent one of the major translation enterprises of our time. He is the first philosopher to have translated Nietzsche's major works, and never before has a single translator given us so much of Nietzsche. (shrink)
"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him." This is the book in which Nietzsche put forth his boldest declaration. It is also his most personal. Essential reading for students of philosophy, history, and literature, it features some of Nietzsche's most important discussions of art, morality, knowledge, and, ultimately, truth.
Published posthumously in 1908, Ecce Homo was written in 1888 and completed just a few weeks before Nietzsche’s complete mental collapse. Its outrageously egotistical review of the philosopher’s life and works—featuring chapters called Why I Am So Wise and Why I Write Such Good Books—are redeemed from mere arrogance by masterful language and ever-relevant ideas. In addition to settling scores with his many personal and philosophical enemies, Nietzsche emphasizes the importance of questioning traditional morality, establishing autonomy, and making a commitment (...) to creativity. Essential reading for students of philosophy, this unique memoir is crucial to an understanding of Nietzsche’s other works. (shrink)
A 19th-century literary masterpiece, tremendously influential in the arts and in philosophy, uses the Persian religious leader Zarathustra to voice the author’s views, including the introduction of the controversial doctrine of the Ubermensch, or "superman," a term later perverted by Nazi propagandists. A passionate, quasi-biblical style is employed to inspire readers to become more than they have been and to transcend the limitations of conventional morality. A provocative work that remains a fixture of college reading lists.
This remarkable collection of almost 1,400 aphorisms was originally published in three instalments. The first (now Volume I) appeared in 1878, just before Nietzsche abandoned academic life, with a first supplement entitled The Assorted Opinions and Maxims following in 1879, and a second entitled The Wanderer and his Shadow a year later. In 1886 Nietzsche republished them together in a two-volume edition, with new prefaces to each volume. Both volumes are presented here in R. J. Hollingdale's distinguished translation (originally published (...) in the series Cambridge Texts in German Philosophy) with a new introduction by Richard Schacht. In this wide-ranging work Nietzsche first employed his celebrated aphoristic style, so perfectly suited to his iconoclastic, penetrating and multi-faceted thought. Many themes of his later work make their initial appearance here, expressed with unforgettable liveliness and subtlety. Human, All Too Human well deserves its subtitle 'A Book for Free Spirits', and its original dedication to Voltaire, whose project of radical enlightenment here found a new champion. (shrink)
This English translation—the first since 1909—restores Human, All Too Human to its proper central position in the Nietzsche canon. First published in 1878, the book marks the philosophical coming of age of Friedrich Nietzsche. In it he rejects the romanticism of his early work, influenced by Wagner and Schopenhauer, and looks to enlightened reason and science. The "Free Spirit" enters, untrammeled by all accepted conventions, a precursor of Zarathustra. The result is 638 stunning aphorisms about everything under and above the (...) sun. (shrink)
Skillful, sophisticated translations of two of Nietzsche's essential works about the conflict between the moral and aesthetic approaches to life, the impact of Christianity on human values, the meaning of science, the contrast between the Apollonian and Dionysian spirits, and other themes central to his thinking.
Nietzsche regarded 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' as his most important work, and his story of the wandering Zarathustra has had enormous influence on subsequent culture. Nietzsche uses a mixture of homilies, parables, epigrams and dreams to introduce some of his most striking doctrines, including the Overman, nihilism, and the eternal return of the same. This edition offers a new translation by Adrian Del Caro which restores the original versification of Nietzsche's text and captures its poetic brilliance. Robert Pippin's introduction discusses many (...) of the most important interpretative issues raised by the work, including who is Zarathustra and what kind of 'hero' is he and what is the philosophical significance of the work's literary form? The volume will appeal to all readers interested in one of the most original and inventive works of modern philosophy. (shrink)
A work of Nietzsche's later years, The Antichrist was written after Thus Spoke Zarathustra and shortly before the mental collapse that incapacitated him for the rest of his life. The work is both an unrestrained attack on Christianity and a further exposition of Nietzsche's will-to-power philosophy so dramatically presented in Zarathustra. Christianity, says Nietzsche, represents "everything weak, low, and botched; it has made an ideal out of antagonism towards all the self-preservative instincts of strong life." By contrast, Nietzsche defines good (...) as: "All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to Power, and power itself in man. What is bad?-All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness?-The feeling that power is increasing,-that resistance has been overcome." In attempting to redefine the basis of Western values by demolishing the formative influence of the Judeo-Christian tradition, The Antichrist has proved to be highly controversial and continuously stimulating to later generations of philosophers. (shrink)
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher. His writing included critiques of religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science, using a distinctive style and displaying a fondness for aphorism. Nietzsche s influence remains substantial within and beyond philosophy, notably in existentialism and postmodernism. He began his career as a philologist before turning to philosophy. At the age of 24 he became Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Basel, but resigned in 1879 due to health problems, which would (...) plague him for most of his life. In 1889 he exhibited symptoms of serious mental illness, living out his remaining years in the care of his mother and sister until his death in 1900. His works include From my Life (1858), On Music (1858), Napoleon III as a President (1862), Free Willand Fate (1862), My Life (1864), The Birth of Tragedy (1872), Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (1876), Human, All-Too-Human (1878), Beyond Good and Evil (1886), The Antichrist (1888) and Ecce Homo (1888). (shrink)
Philosophy and Truth offers the first English translation of six unpublished theoretical studies (sometimes referred to as Nietzsche's "Philosopher's Book") written just after the publication of The Birth of Tragedy and simultaneously with Untimely Meditations. In addition to the texts themselves, which probe epistemological problems on philosophy's relation to art and culture, this book contains a lengthy introduction that provides the biographical and philological information necessary for understanding these often fragmentary texts. The introduction also includes a helpful discussion of Nietzsche's (...) early views concerning culture, knowledge, philosophy, and the Greeks. (shrink)
supplies English-language readers with a crucial missing link in Nietzsche's development by reproducing the text of a lecture series delivered by the young philosopher at the University of Basel between 1872 and 1876. In these lectures, Nietzsche surveys the Greek philosophers from Thales to Socrates, establishing a new chronology for the progression of their natural scientific insights. He also roughly sketches concepts such as the will to power, eternal recurrence, and self-overcoming and links them to specific pre-Platonics.
Twilight of the Idols. Nietzsche's own unabashed appraisal of the last work intended to serve as a short introduction to the whole of his philosophy, and the most synoptic of all his books, bristles with a register of vocabulary derived from physiology, pathology, symptomatalogy and medicine. This new translation is supplemented by an introduction and extensive notes, which provide close analysis of a highly condensed work.
This volume is the first of two to provide a new edition of Human, All Too Human, the earliest of Nietzsche's works in which his philosophical concerns and methodologies can be glimpsed. Published in 1878, it marked both a stylistic and an intellectual shift away from Nietzsche's own youthful affiliation with Romantic excesses of German thought and culture. It presents the precursors of the ideas that would later become Nietzsche's theories on genealogy and of the U;bermensch. This new translation presents (...) Nietzsche's text in the straightforward, direct prose of the original. It is the first English edition to include the significant variants and revisions of the original published text, and the first to provide cross-references to the forthcoming volume of Nietzsche's notebook material from the same period. It includes explanatory notes and a translator's afterword detailing the history of the work. (shrink)
The Nietzsche Reader brings together in one volume substantial selections from the entire body of Nietzsche’s writings, together with illuminating commentary on Nietzsche’s life and importance, and introductions to his major works and philosophical ideas. • Includes selections from all the major texts, including The Birth of Tragedy, The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, The Anti-Christ, and Ecce Homo • Offers new translations of key pieces from Nietzsche’s unpublished “Lenzer Heide” notebook • Provides a wealth of (...) pedagogical features, such as editorial sections on Nietzsche’s life and importance, an opening introduction to his philosophical ideas, introductions to each major section, and a comprehensive guide to further reading. (shrink)
Presenting the entire German text of Nietzsche's lectures on rhetoric and language and his notes for them, as well as facing page English translations, this book fills an important gap in the philosopher's corpus. Until now unavailable or existing only in fragmentary form, the lectures represent a major portion of Nietzsche's achievement. Included are an extensive editors' introduction on the background of Nietzsche's understanding of rhetoric, and critical notes identifying his sources and independent contributions.
This edition of Dawn, the second installment in Nietzsche's free spirit trilogy, is a translation of the celebrated Colli?Montinari edition, which is acclaimed as one of the most important works of scholarship in the humanities in the last half century.
The most popular of Friedrich Nietzsche's works, Thus Spoke Zarathustra ranks among the most remarkable feats of German literature. A symphony of language, it abounds in every kind of wordplay and an intricate network of leitmotifs. This dual-language edition features one third of Nietzsche's work, keeping the most famous concepts intact and encompassing a variety of moods and modes as well as the author's full linguistic scope. Editor Stanley Appelbaum presents accurate English translations on the pages facing the original German, (...) an informative introduction to the author's life and oeuvre, plus notes throughout the text and brief summaries of the omitted chapters. (shrink)
This is the third volume to appear in an edition that will be the first complete, critical, and annotated English translation of all of Nietzsche's work. The edition is a new English translation, by various hands, of the celebrated Colli-Montinari edition. The present volume provides for the first time English translations of all of Nietzsche's unpublished notebooks from summer 1872 to the end of 1874. The major works published in this period were the first three Unfashionable Observations: 'David Strauss the (...) Confessor and the Writer,' 'On the Utility and Liability of History for Life,' and 'Schopenhauer as educator.' Translations of the preliminary notes for these pieces are coordinated with the translations of the published texts printed in Volume 2: Unfashionable Observations. These notebooks represent important transitional documents in Nietzsche's intellectual development, marking, among other things, the shift away from philological studies toward unabashed cultural criticism. (shrink)
This volume presents an English translation of Nietzsche's Unzeitgemasse Betrachtungen or, Unfashionable Observations. The common impulse that links up these four essays is Nietzsche's attitude towards all mainstream and popular movements that constituted contemporary European, and especially German culture. The work offers the foundations for Nietzsche's whole philosophy, prefiguring both his characteristic philosophical style and many of the major ideas he develops in his later writings.
"Prefaces to Unwritten Works is a collection of five essays, prefaces to books that Nietzsche never went on to write. Nietzsche himself put these prefaces together in the form of a small leather-bound, handwritten book, and gave that book to Cosima Wagner as a Christmas present in 1872. The dedicatory letter indicates that Nietzsche sent this little book to Cosima "in heartfelt reverence and as an answer to verbal and epistolary questions." As such, this work is a window into Nietzsche's (...) relations with the Wagners at the height of their association, but it is also a continuation of Nietzsche's radical confrontation with Greek antiquity that had begun with the then-recently published Birth of Tragedy. The Wagners read Nietzsche's book of prefaces on the evening of New Year's Day 1873, and Cosima records in her diary five days later that at night, "again" she reflected about the essence of art as a consequence of Nietzsche's work. A month later, Cosima sent Nietzsche a letter encouraging him to write at least two of the books promised by his prefaces." "Nietzsche did not go to write the books heralded by these prefaces, but the prefaces themselves provide substantial challenges of their own and intriguing clues as to the form and content of the books Nietzsche may have intended. Some of these prefaces are better known to students of Nietzsche than others and have attracted significant attention from scholars. The first essay is entitled On the Pathos of Truth, and it consider the relative value of truth and art for human life. The second essay, Thoughts on the Future of Our Educational Institutions, is the only preface in this collection regarding which Nietzsche did actually go on to write a book, albeit a book he did not publish (entitled On the Future of Our Educational Institutions, available from St. Augustine's Press). This essay is a revised version of the preface Nietzsche wrote for that book, and the changes Nietzsche made are indicative of the plans he had for an improved version. The topic of the essay is almost entirely the art of careful reading. The third essay is entitled The Greek State, and it treats of the relation of slavery to culture and of the genius to the state. This essay is also an interpretation of Plato's Republic, in which Nietzsche claims to reveal everything he has "divined of this secret writing." The fourth essay, The Relation of Schopenhauerian Philosophy to a German Culture, neither assumes that there is in fact, at present, a German Culture, nor hardly mentions Schopen-hauer at all, except to suggest that he is one about whom a culture could be built. The final essay is entitled Homer's Contest and is an exploration of the place of jealousy, strife, and agonistic competition in Greek culture."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)
A 19th-century philosopher who challenged the foundations of Christianity and traditional morality, Nietzsche has inspired leading figures in all walks of cultural life. This 1881 compendium of aphorisms and prose poems marks the advent of his mature philosophy. It represents an essential guide to understanding his later, better-known works.
Chulpforta, 1862 -- Napoleon III as president -- Saint-just -- Two-poem cycle two kings -- Louis the sixteenth -- Louis the fifteenth -- Agonistic politics, 1871-1874 -- The Greek state, 1871 -- On the future of our educational institutions, third lecture, February 27th, 1872 -- Homer's contest -- Untimely meditations -- David Strauss : the confessor and the writer, 1873 -- Schopenhauer as educator, 1874 -- The free spirit, 1878-1880 -- Human, all too human : a book for free spirits, (...) 1878 -- Miscellaneous maxims and opinions, 1879 -- The wanderer and his shadow, 1880 -- The campaign against morality, 1881-1885 -- Dawn of day thoughts on the prejudices of morality, 1881 -- The joyful wisdom, 1882 -- Thus spoke Zarathustra : a book for everyone and no one, 1883-1885 -- On the new idol -- On the rabble -- On the Tarantulas -- On old and new law tablets -- Conversation with the kings -- Nachlass fragments, 1883-1885 -- Aristocratic radical, 1886-1887 -- Beyond good and evil : prelude to a philosophy of the future, 1886 -- The joyful wisdom, book v, 1887 -- On the genealogy of morals : a polemical tract, 1887 -- First essay, good and evil, good, and bad -- Second essay, guilt, bad conscience, and related matters -- Third essay, what do ascetic ideals mean? -- Nachlass fragments, 1885-1887 -- The antichrist, 1888 -- Twilight of the idols : or how one philosophises with a hammer, 1888 -- Morality as anti-nature -- The improvers of mankind -- What the Germans lack -- Skirmishes of an untimely man -- The antichrist : a curse on Christianity, 1888 -- Ecce homo : how one becomes what one is, 1888 -- Why I am so wise -- Why I write such good books -- The case of Wagner : a musician's problem -- Why I am a destiny -- Nachlass fragments, 1887-1888. (shrink)
This convenient new compendium contains the five most philosophically significant of Nietzsche’s post- Thus Spoke Zarathustra writings. Nietzsche wrote of these works that he intended them as “fish hooks” for catching readers who shared his sense that a cataclysmic shift in human psychology had suddenly occurred with the advent of nihilism - the uncanny and pervasive feeling that life is devoid of all meaning, purpose, and value. Taken together these books offer the reader a definitive account of Nietzsche’s mature philosophy (...) as he intended it to be presented and a sweeping attack upon everything the modern Western world holds to be good about itself. (shrink)
The Greek State.--The Greek woman.--On music and words.--Homer's contest.--The relation of Schopenhauer's philosophy to a German culture.--Philosophy during the tragic age of the Greeks.--On truth and falsity in their ultramoral sense.
"Offers dazzling observations of human psychology, social interaction, esthetics and religion."-- New York Times Book Review Accessible, much-studied work by one of philosophy's most important figures Nietzsche's remarkable collection of almost 1,400 aphorisms exhibits many of the themes of his later work, making this volume essential to an understanding of his philosophy. Written with the author's characteristic iconoclastic wit, it constitutes a lively and passionate inquiry into conventional wisdom.
