In addition to Thus Spake Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil is one of Friedrich Nietzsche's basic works. It was the first book of his that I read, and I've been fascinated by the man's philosophy ever since. It is much easier to understand Beyond Good and Evil than the metaphorical Zarathustra, and I think it serves as an excellent introduction to Nietzche's philosophy. Thus, I think it is of Nietzsche's work perhaps the one which most deserves to be noded.
I plan to node the whole work, one chapter at a time. In this writeup I have included the preface, which gives you a taste of Nietzsche's powerful literary style. This translation by Helen Zimmern was first published in the Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche.
Beyond Good and Evil
by Friedrich Nietzsche
translated by Helen Zimmern
Table of Contents
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?
PREFACE
SUPPOSING that Truth is a woman – what then? Is there not ground
for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they have been
dogmatists, have failed to understand women – that the terrible
seriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usually
paid their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly
methods for winning a woman? Certainly she has never allowed
herself to be won; and at present every kind of dogma stands with
sad and discouraged mien – if, indeed, it stands at all! For there
are scoffers who maintain that it has fallen, that all dogma lies
on the ground – nay more, that it is at its last gasp. But to
speak seriously, there are good grounds for hoping that all
dogmatizing in philosophy, whatever solemn, whatever conclusive
and decided airs it has assumed, may have been only a noble
puerilism and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand when it
will be once and again understood what has actually sufficed for
the basis of such imposing and absolute philosophical edifices as
the dogmatists have hitherto reared: perhaps some popular
superstition of immemorial time (such as the soul-superstition,
which, in the form of subject- and ego-superstition, has not yet
ceased doing mischief): perhaps some play upon words, a deception
on the part of grammar, or an audacious generalization of very
restricted, very personal, very human – all-too-human facts. The
philosophy of the dogmatists, it is to be hoped, was only a
promise for thousands of years afterwards, as was astrology in
still earlier times, in the service of which probably more
labour, gold, acuteness, and patience have been spent than on any
actual science hitherto: we owe to it, and to its "super-
terrestrial" pretensions in Asia and Egypt, the grand style of
architecture. It seems that in order to inscribe themselves upon
the heart of humanity with everlasting claims, all great things
have first to wander about the earth as enormous and awe-
inspiring caricatures: dogmatic philosophy has been a caricature
of this kind--for instance, the Vedanta doctrine in Asia, and
Platonism in Europe. Let us not be ungrateful to it, although it
must certainly be confessed that the worst, the most tiresome,
and the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a dogmatist
error – namely, Plato's invention of Pure Spirit and the Good in
Itself. But now when it has been surmounted, when Europe, rid of
this nightmare, can again draw breath freely and at least enjoy a
healthier – sleep, we, whose duty is wakefulness itself, are the
heirs of all the strength which the struggle against this error
has fostered. It amounted to the very inversion of truth, and the
denial of the perspective – the fundamental condition – of life, to
speak of Spirit and the Good as Plato spoke of them; indeed one
might ask, as a physician: "How did such a malady attack that
finest product of antiquity, Plato? Had the wicked Socrates
really corrupted him? Was Socrates after all a corrupter of
youths, and deserved his hemlock?" But the struggle against
Plato, or – to speak plainer, and for the "people" – the struggle
against the ecclesiastical oppression of millenniums of
Christianity (for Chistianity is Platonism for the "people"),
produced in Europe a magnificent tension of soul, such as had not
existed anywhere previously; with such a tensely strained bow one
can now aim at the furthest goals. As a matter of fact, the
European feels this tension as a state of distress, and twice
attempts have been made in grand style to unbend the bow: once by
means of Jesuitism, and the second time by means of democratic
enlightenment – which, with the aid of liberty of the press and
newspaper-reading, might, in fact, bring it about that the spirit
would not so easily find itself in "distress"! (The Germans
invented gunpowder-all credit to them! but they again made things
square – they invented printing.) But we, who are neither Jesuits,
nor democrats, nor even sufficiently Germans, we good Europeans,
and free, very free spirits – we have it still, all the distress
of spirit and all the tension of its bow! And perhaps also the
arrow, the duty, and, who knows? the goal to aim at. . . .
Sils Maria, Upper Engadine
June
1885
CST Approved