Beyond Good and Evil

It’s the moral philosophy version of your favorite album where ever single song was a classic and you could put it on repeat and listen over and over. I recommend reading very short passages at a time, then taking some time to contemplate your thoughts, possibly writing down notes. That’s how I believe you will get the most out of this book.

Randomly capitalized on every other sentence on every other word

My review is limited to the physical layout of this edition of the book. Just look at the attached photo. There hardly any margins or paragraphs.

One of those public domain prints with awful formatting, no name on the spine, weird size and shape etc. Don’t buy this version

This translation of Nietzsche’s ‘Jenseits von Gut und Bse: Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft’ was first published in 1886 (the same year as the original German version), and is now in the public domain. This free Kindle edition has 117 pages/2601 locations. This edition is a reprint of the Helen Zimmern translation from German into English of “Beyond Good and Evil,” as published in The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (1909-1913).

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) had studied theology (which he didn’t finish) and philology (the study of language in written historical scources); he became a professor of philology at the university of Basel in 1869, but had to resign in 1879 due to ill health. Nietzsche collapsed in 1889, causing him to become mentally ill, and needed to be cared for until his death in 1900. It has been thought that his collapse was caused by syphilis, but this diagnosis is no longer believed to be correct. The cause of his illness is not known.

In this work Nietzsche critises old philosophers and some of their views on ‘free will’, knowledge, truth, etc. He felt that the philosophers in the past had not been critical enough about morality, accepting the Chistian views on this theme without questioning those views. Nietzsche tells in this book what qualities philosophers should have, he believed philosophers should move on, into the area ‘beyond good and evil’.

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in modern philosophy, this book will make you think about some of your ideas about good and bad. You don’t have to agree with him to gain new insight from this book. Nietzsche was a great writer, his works are written in a lively way. For Nietzsche rhetoric was more important than logic. As a sample of his way of writing I copy a few lines from this volume at the bottom of this review. This book was translated in the 19th century, so the language is a bit dated.

The work consists of 296 numbered sections and the poem “From High Mountains”. The sections are organized into nine parts, the contents of this book:

PREFACE
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

CHAPTER I: PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS
CHAPTER II: THE FREE SPIRIT
CHAPTER III: THE RELIGIOUS MOOD
CHAPTER IV: APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES
CHAPTER V: THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS
CHAPTER VI: WE SCHOLARS
CHAPTER VII: OUR VIRTUES
CHAPTER VIII: PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES
CHAPTER IX: WHAT IS NOBLE?

FROM THE HEIGHTS (POEM TRANSLATED BY L.A. MAGNUS)

From chapter 7, section 214 (page 70/location 1505):

214. OUR Virtues?–It is probable that we, too, have still our virtues,
although naturally they are not those sincere and massive virtues on
account of which we hold our grandfathers in esteem and also at a little
distance from us. We Europeans of the day after tomorrow, we firstlings
of the twentieth century–with all our dangerous curiosity, our
multifariousness and art of disguising, our mellow and seemingly
sweetened cruelty in sense and spirit–we shall presumably, IF we must
have virtues, have those only which have come to agreement with our most
secret and heartfelt inclinations, with our most ardent requirements:
well, then, let us look for them in our labyrinths!–where, as we know,
so many things lose themselves, so many things get quite lost! And is
there anything finer than to SEARCH for one’s own virtues? […]

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