Description
This organized collection of arguably Friedrich Nietzsche’s most famous works contains the following: Beyond Good and Evil, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Human, All Too Human, and The Antichrist. The translators for these works are listed on the false cover of the manuscript and were chosen to afford maximum readability while retaining all the glory that is Nietzsche’s concise wit and perception of reality. The following is a short summary of each of the works within the collection. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future is a book that expands the ideas of Nietzsche’s previous work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, with a more critical and polemical approach. It was first published in 1886. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche accuses past philosophers of lacking critical sense and blindly accepting dogmatic premises in their consideration of morality. Specifically, he accuses them of founding grand metaphysical systems upon the faith that the good man is the opposite of the evil man, rather than just a different expression of the same basic impulses that find more direct expression in the evil man. The work moves into the realm “beyond good and evil” in the sense of leaving behind the traditional morality which Nietzsche subjects to a destructive critique in favor of what he regards as an affirmative approach that fearlessly confronts the perspectival nature of knowledge and the perilous condition of the modern individual. Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a philosophical novel, composed in four parts between 1883 and 1885 and published between 1883 and 1891. Much of the work deals with ideas such as the “eternal recurrence of the same”, the parable on the “death of God”, and the “prophecy” of the Übermensch, which were first introduced in The Gay Science. Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits is a book originally published in 1878. The book is Nietzsche’s first in the aphoristic style that would come to dominate his writings, discussing a variety of concepts in short paragraphs or sayings. Reflecting an admiration of Voltaire as a free thinker, but also a break in his friendship with composer Richard Wagner two years earlier, Nietzsche dedicated the original 1878 edition of Human, All Too Human “to the memory of Voltaire on the celebration of the anniversary of his death, May 30, 1778.” The Antichrist was originally published in 1895. Christianity, as a religion of peace, is despised by Nietzsche. According to Nietzsche’s account, pity has a depressive effect, loss of vitality and strength, and is harmful to life. It also preserves that which should naturally be destroyed. For a noble morality, pity is a weakness, but for Christianity, it is a virtue. In Schopenhauer’s philosophy, which Nietzsche sees as the most nihilistic and opposed to life, pity is the highest virtue of all. But, for Nietzsche, pity “… multiplies misery and conserves all that is miserable, and is thus a prime instrument of the advancement of decadence: pity persuades men to nothingness! Of course, one does not say ‘nothingness.’ One says ‘the Beyond’ or ‘God’ or ‘ true life’ or ‘Nirvana,’ ‘salvation,’ ‘redemption,’ ‘blessedness.’ … Schopenhauer was hostile to life: therefore pity became a virtue for him.” The moderns Leo Tolstoy and Richard Wagner adopted Schopenhauer’s viewpoint. Aristotle, who lived in 384-322 BC, on the other hand, recognized the unhealthiness of pity and prescribed tragedy as a purgative. “In our whole unhealthy modernity there is nothing more unhealthy than Christian pity.”
