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Beyond Good and Evil

Friedrich Nietzsche

  • 178 pages · about 3 hours
  • First published 1886
  • 415 editions
  • Free to read
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1 About this book

Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, published in 1886, is one of Friedrich Nietzsche's central works. It takes up the ideas of Thus Spoke Zarathustra in a more direct and polemical form. In a preface, 296 numbered sections and a closing poem, arranged in nine parts, he accuses the philosophers of the past of dressing up their own prejudices as truth, and rejects the habit of dividing everything into strict opposites such as good and evil. The parts deal with philosophers and free spirits, religion, the history of morals, scholars, virtues, and peoples and nations, and one part consists entirely of short aphorisms.

  • Ethics
  • Philosophy
  • German Philosophy
  • History & Surveys
  • Modern Philosophy
  • Good and evil
  • Modern

2 What to expect

One of Nietzsche's major books, a polemic in 296 numbered sections against the moral and philosophical certainties of his time. He argues that traditional morality and the philosophers' search for truth conceal prejudice and instinct, and sketches the free spirits he hopes will come. It is written as provocative aphorisms and short essays, not as a system, it is hard going without some background, and its remarks on women are offensive.

Good for readers who want: philosophy that provokes, a critique of morality, and sharp aphorisms to savor.

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4 About Friedrich Nietzsche

1844–1900

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher and writer who started his career as a classical philologist and turned to philosophy early in his academic career. In 1869, at age 24, he was appointed Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Basel. Plagued by health problems for most of his life, he resigned from the university in 1879.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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