beyond good & evil by friedrich nietzsche

The work consists of a short preface dated to 1885, 296 numbered sections, and an 'epode' (or 'aftersong') entitled 'From High Mountains'. In several places of the book, Nietzsche drops hints, and even explicit statements as to what the philosophies of the future must deal with. Religion and the master and slave moralities feature prominently as Nietzsche re-evaluates deeply held humanistic beliefs, portraying even domination, appropriation and injury to the weak as not universally objectionable. In their place, he offers the ' will to power' as an explanation of all behavior this ties into his 'perspective of life', which he regards as 'beyond good and evil', denying a universal morality for all human beings.

He then contests some of the key presuppositions of the old philosophic tradition like 'self-consciousness', 'knowledge', 'truth', and ' free will', explaining them as inventions of the moral consciousness. In it he exposes the deficiencies of those usually called 'philosophers' and identifies the qualities of the 'new philosophers': imagination, self-assertion, danger, originality, and the 'creation of values'.

Of the four 'late-period' writings of Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil most closely resembles the aphoristic style of his middle period. 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 favour of what he regards as an affirmative approach that fearlessly confronts the perspectival nature of knowledge and the perilous condition of the modern individual. 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. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche accuses past philosophers of lacking critical sense and blindly accepting dogmatic premises in their consideration of morality. At the beginning of the book (§ 2), Nietzsche attacks the very idea of using strictly opposite terms such as 'Good versus Evil'.

Īccording to translator Walter Kaufman, the title refers to the need for moral philosophy to go beyond simplistic black and white moralizing, as contained in statements such as 'X is good' or 'X is evil'. Naumann of Leipzig at the author's own expense and first translated into English by Helen Zimmern, who was two years younger than Nietzsche and knew the author. It was first published in 1886 under the publishing house C.

Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunftīeyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future ( German: Jenseits von Gut und Böse: Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft) is a book by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche that covers ideas in his previous work Thus Spoke Zarathustra but with a more polemical approach.

Beyond good & evil by friedrich nietzsche