With a philosopher nothing at all is impersonal.

As an armchair Platonist, I once held a personal aversion to Nietzsche. His life's mission seemed to be centered around overthrowing Platonism. However, after delving into "Beyond Good and Evil", my stance shifted from aversion to a sense of pity, in the Nietzschean sense.

To better illustrate my perspective on Nietzsche and his connection to Plato, let me introduce a Chinese fictional/mythical figure, Sun Wukong (孙悟空), also known as the Monkey King. The Monkey King defied the authority of the gods, stormed the Heavenly Palace, and declared himself their equal. After multiple failed attempts to subdue him, the gods sought the help of the Buddha. The Buddha wagered with the Monkey King, who could travel 108,000 li with a single somersault, that he couldn't jump out of the Buddha's palm. Eager to prove his might, the Monkey King journeyed as far as he could and reached what he believed were the Five Pillars of Heaven. But upon his return to face the Buddha, he was chagrined to discover that those pillars were actually the Buddha's fingers. He lost the bet and was imprisoned by the Buddha under a mountain for 500 years.

An astute reader would easily surmise my intended meaning: Nietzsche was the Monkey King, and Plato was the Buddha.

Five-Point Critique

Firstly, Plato conceived the idea of an eternal cyclic nature of the universe long before Nietzsche rediscovered it and gave it a different name, "eternal recurrence". Evidently, like the Monkey King, Nietzsche was not impervious to self-deception and grandiose delusions when he claimed his philosophy was novel and free from metaphysical presuppositions.

Secondly, the concept of "order of rank" is not novel either. Plato established a class division in his Republic. Nietzsche appears to share Plato's disdain for democracy, which is founded on the assumption of equality among men. Both would assert that some men are suited to rule while others are meant to be ruled.

Thirdly, Christianity has long taught the idea that suffering is essential for the character development of human beings. Nietzsche once again borrowed this idea without crediting its source.

Fourthly, Nietzsche's philosophy is not firmly rooted in biological facts but rather represents another subjective interpretation with assumptions and leaps. Using his own simile, the text may have vanished beneath the interpretation, but it still exists, and each interpretation should be evaluated based on its relationship to the original. A philosopher cannot place himself above the standard of good and evil any more than a translator can凌驾于原文之上.

Fifthly, the ancient Greek philosophers believed that the ultimate goal of philosophy was the attainment of the Good and the True. Nietzsche dismissed this notion as utilitarian and ignoble. But what noble value did he create through the will to power that would elevate him above the philosophers he ridiculed? None.

In "Beyond Good and Evil," Nietzsche doesn't hold back. His critique of the democratic principle of equality drives him to adopt radical stances that might affront individual humanist sensibilities.

This criticism, as I see it, is a logical extension of the Christian tenets of pity and charity. Indeed, to shield themselves from the loathing of life and avoid succumbing to incurable pessimism, people conceal the truth behind these so-called functional principles.

Consequently, we understand why humans are false and fickle. Equality is merely an illusion, a game of hide-and-seek in a world that progresses through what Nietzsche terms the will to power. There are those he labels "aristocratic" who seek to thrive by oppressing others, the vast majority, desiring their submission to great leaders via all-powerful masters. What a charming picture!

However, the most thought-provoking aphorisms are those concerning relativism: since any theory is just an interpretation, even scientific laws, there is no eternal and unchangeable truth. Moreover, our senses are deceitful. They cannot provide us with the keys to an absolute reality. And Nietzsche doesn't hesitate to caution us about the truths he imparts: these are his current truths. They will cease to be once written on paper.

Good... albeit pretentious...

People who read him often seem as pretentious as he was, or so it appears to me based on some of the reviews I've perused.
i) Any author with an ounce of intelligence is aware that the public makes the work "theirs". It's a matter of intentio autoris versus intentio lectoris. Therefore, dumb interpretations aren't necessarily "invalid".
ii) "Only the smart (like me) understand this" and "If you don't agree with me, then you're an a$$hol3". (Thanks, Misha, for this observation.) It's almost like being sold snake oil.

He's pretentious as hell... BUT I can't really disagree with him. Moreover, in a great deal of irony, turning my back on him sort of reinforces his point.
Just like many other authors who criticize morality/ethics/moral philosophy, he provides ABSOLUTELY NO FOUNDATIONS WHATSOEVER for his view. N-O-T-H-I-N-G.
Without a decent moral ontology or epistemology, he has nothing on his side but aprioristic and empty assumptions. "Believe me because my complaints make sense." Yet what he creates is no better than what he criticizes. (That is, in terms of the foundations... or the lack thereof.)
So, he's imaginative and prolific (I'll give him that)... but essentially, he's writing fiction.
It's evident that he did understand (at least some of) the metaethical and metaphysical problems/issues. However, given his non-existent foundations, he was either too lazy to acknowledge them OR (I'm betting on this one) he simply didn't know how to solve them without having to agree with or concede points to those philosophers he was so critical of.

In honor of my birthday today,

I am sending you all a copy of my Bible, BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.

If the survival of the human race depended on one book (and it does), this would be it.

If we continue on this road of absolute morality based on a millennial fairy tale from Jerusalem, we are doomed.

Nietzsche provides a manifesto for the end of Christian slave mores and the re-birth of the aristocrat of the soul.

He challenges the traditional values and moralities that have dominated society for so long.

His ideas encourage us to question and break free from the constraints of the past.

By doing so, we can create a new and more fulfilling future for ourselves and for humanity as a whole.

Let us embrace Nietzsche's teachings and strive to become the aristocrats of the soul that he envisioned.

**"Beyond Good and Evil: A Preview of a Future Philosophy" by Friedrich Nietzsche**

In "Beyond Good and Evil," Nietzsche critiques past philosophers for their lack of critical thinking and blind acceptance of dogmatic premises regarding morality. He specifically argues that they build grand metaphysical systems based on the belief that the good man is the opposite of the evil man, rather than a different manifestation of the same fundamental impulses that are more directly expressed in the evil man.

The work ventures into the realm "beyond good and evil" by leaving behind traditional morality, which Nietzsche subjects to a destructive critique. Instead, he advocates for an affirmative approach that fearlessly confronts the perspectival nature of knowledge and the precarious condition of the modern individual.

The book was published in 1886 during the later years of Nietzsche's life. Its original title is "Beyond Good and Evil: A Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future." Nietzsche had endured a difficult period in his later years, and this book is the result of one of those winters, which he considered very important. In one of his letters to a friend, he writes, "I have reaped a great deal from this winter and left a mark that has many difficulties, and sometimes I even fear its publication and a tremor seizes my limbs; the name of this book is 'Beyond Good and Evil: A Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future.'" The Persian translation of the book was first done by Mr. Darius Ashouri from the German text.

The dates of dissemination are 16/03/1399 and 21/01/1401 in the Persian calendar.

Beyond Good and Evil has truly provided an informative and thought-provoking experience. While I didn't appreciate it to the same extent as The Antichrist, this book still holds several rather valuable points, and I'm glad to have finally read it.

To fully appreciate Nietzsche, one must not be easily offended. I'm aware that some people are put off by certain statements he makes in his writings, and as a result, they make the rather odd presumption that Nietzsche was a moron. As a feminist, it's evident that Nietzsche was a misogynist, and there are parts in this book where he makes this known. However, there are also parts where he discusses equality of the sexes. I notice that Nietzsche admits that his misogyny is, in fact, a terrible weakness of his.

The style of this book is written in typical Nietzsche fashion. So, if you're expecting something that flows smoothly, you won't find it here. It's written in note form, although the subject matter is in some sort of order from which one can gain something.

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you."

I enjoy how Nietzsche can write a line of thoughts that can then prompt a series of interesting questions and answers from his readers. I'll definitely be reading more from him in the future.

Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil is one of his most important works after Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and it is also one of the most difficult and challenging to read. Many passages require multiple readings to be understood well.

The book is a critique of modernity, as Nietzsche himself said about it. It does not exclude any modern political, moral, or religious act but discusses them all, with a greater focus on presenting the concept of amoralism than any other point in his philosophy.

Nietzsche remains one of the closest philosophers to me and has had the greatest influence on me after Kant. He challenges our traditional values and beliefs, making us think deeply about the nature of morality, truth, and the meaning of life. His ideas are both controversial and inspiring, and they continue to have a significant impact on contemporary philosophy and culture.

I can think of few instances where an author's reputation is more different from the reality of who he was, what he believed, and what he wrote. Perhaps only Machiavelli has been as profoundly misunderstood by history. Today, Nietzsche is often thought of as a depressive nihilist, a man who believed in nothing, and an apologist for the atrocities of fascism. But no description could be further from the truth.

Nietzsche had more reason than many to feel resentful and miserable. He grew up a sickly child, prone to severe headaches that often left him blind with pain. During his brief career in the cavalry, he tore several muscles in his side. And while serving as a medical orderly in the Franco-Prussian war, he contracted a number of diseases. These incidents affected his health for the rest of his life, leaving him bedridden and in pain for hours or days at a time.

Despite these hardships, Nietzsche did not give in to misery and bitterness. On the days when he felt well enough to write, he would emerge from his room with renewed passion and vigor. He would take long walks in the countryside, enjoying the beauty of nature before returning home to labor on his philosophy. Contrary to his reputation, Nietzsche rejected nihilism outright. He believed that if the world does not provide your life with a clear meaning, it is up to you to go out and find one (or create one), not to wallow and whinge.

Likewise, Nietzsche spent much of his life railing against the foolishness of nationalism and bigotry. His falling out with Wagner was over the composer's increasingly nationalistic style of music. So, how did he gain such an unfortunate reputation?

The first reason is that after his death, his sister took over his estate. She was a German nationalist and anti-semite, and she had a number of his papers rewritten to support these positions. She then published them posthumously in his name. Of course, this couldn't have fooled anyone actually familiar with Nietzsche's works and ideas, as the rewrites were in direct contradiction to his previous writings. But it still fooled many.

The second problem with the interpretation of his work is that his observations on the nature of the world are mistaken for suggestions for how the world should be. It's like reading a book about crime scene investigation and assuming that it is an instruction book for murderers, when in fact it is the opposite: an instruction on how to combat them and stop them.

Nietzsche and Machiavelli had a similar approach. They both recognized that the world can be a brutal place, where people gain power not by being wise and respected, but by dominating and taking advantage of others. But for Nietzsche, the solution was not to give in to this reality, but to free ourselves from it. We must recognize that 'good' and 'evil' are just words, used by the powerful to justify their actions. We must question the world around us and within us, and discover for ourselves what is important and what is true.

This was what Nietzsche meant by 'The Superman'. The man of the future, if he is to be free, cannot allow anyone else to define his life for him. He must question authority, both in the world without and the world within. His famous 'Will to Power' is the personal decision to take control of your life and create your own meaning. To be free means being a philosopher.

This is something that I have tried to achieve for myself. But unwinding prejudice and ignorance is a lifelong battle. I am grateful to have Nietzsche as an ally in my search. His joyful and witty deconstruction of the artificial world has been an invaluable comfort to me. There is no authority who can tell you who you are. In the end, it is up to you to create yourself.

I started reading the book with great enthusiasm. However, it turned out to be extremely difficult to understand.

To truly comprehend the book and the writer's point of view, it demands a significant amount of time and concentration.

One has to invest effort and focus intently on the words and ideas presented.

It's not an easy task, but if one is willing to put in the time and energy, there is a possibility of uncovering the hidden gems within the book.

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I would like to embrace the older writeup below as an example of what a weak reading of Nietzsche looks like.

One of Nietzsche's major lines of arguments is that philosophy is a set of simplifications, in part motivated by the will to ignorance. That is, one makes oneself skeptical only to pursue an ideal of a philosophical system which will satisfy all questions and in which the inquiry ceases. However, Nietzsche firmly believes that this is a simplification. Indeed, the onward progress is to critique and disrupt the older simplifications for a set of new ones. The problem is that philosophy is so good at tearing apart values but has difficulty in creating new values.

Unlike some characterizations of him, he is a cheerleader of the enlightenment. Tear everything apart, he says. But then his critique is that the enlightenment is not prepared for its own god, truth, to be put under philosophical scrutiny and skepticism. So from this standpoint, while there are familiar arguments you might find in Rousseau, this is entirely novel. You can see why not only does he not systematize but it makes absolutely no sense for him to. This isn't Humean skepticism, this isn't a collection of quips. This is an attempt to supplant former philosophies but not in the manner in which they have so far presented themselves.

Nietzsche doesn't exempt himself from the simplification charge. But he distinguishes from Platonic style philosophy which seeks to defer outside the world, British materialist philosophy which simply takes the world at face value, and his kind of philosophy, one which stays rooted in the world but explains our assumptions akin to Kepler explaining why it appears as if the sun rotates around the earth while demonstrating the opposite. And furthermore he sees pitfalls but major promise in the German philosophy of development. At worst it arrests values from ever developing and taking shape, but at its best (and in moments of cultural disintegration and change) the great value creators can emerge, the Alcibiadeses, the Caesars, the Da Vincis.

He is timely in that sense, and in how German thought has fertilized French (himself, Heidegger, Frankfurts) and unexpectedly Anglo (Frege, Wittgenstein) thought. My critique of his view of women still stands but with the qualification that many times he uses terms like woman or feminine or feminism not to talk about anything relating to women, but rather to make points about truth with some admittedly boomer metaphors. Other times he means women as women.

Some take issue with his style, but in here he outright tells you Germans have the problem of being really fucking boring writers, that the best stylist prior has been the sober faced Luther of all people. You start to appreciate how good a writer Nietzsche is after a while, but it is something to get used to if it doesn't grab you right away. And his tendency to circle around and return to the subjects of his critique does make this harder to read than straightforward treatises and it takes a few books to really get his angle. The ones I'd recommend are the essay On Truth and Lies, The Gay Science, and the Genealogy of Morals, and then you might be more receptive to this one. It's an admittable point of contention that you need to spread yourself out with him rather than relying on one text. But otherwise he hits on some salient and original things, especially in this one. It takes living with the prejudices of philosophy for a while to really appreciate what he's trying to say about them here, so I might recommend this for revisiting if it happened to bounce off you on your first read too. Kaufmann is a good place to go because of his own fight against misinterpretation. This work does deserve to be taken seriously, though "joyfully" in his sense.

Admittedly, Nietzsche grabs you immediately. His writing has a sensational style that is both lucid and over the top, his words spark on almost every page. For you folks who like your quotables they're everywhere here. But as you get deeper in, there's something startling in that it doesn't seem like he's saying much at all. That is, if you've followed the history of philosophy up to this point, there's nothing incredibly original here, it's just the way he says it. One of the large takeaways is the idea that philosophy (and society by extension) has all sorts of conceptions that it doesn't realize it takes for granted. While this is completely agreeable and something any thinker should readily contemplate, how is this new? Well what's new about it is simply timeliness. Nietzsche was placed right where the industrial revolution was dramatically changing the makeup of the world and its culture, and Nietzsche was then saying the right things at the right time, and in such a spectacular fashion as to make people notice.

This however doesn't put Nietzsche as a thinker, but rather as a sayer. He's just saying things. He has aspirations of a philosopher but he doesn't build an actual system of philosophy as any other philosopher would. He borrows Hume's sledgehammer and cherrypicks bits of Hegel and Schopenhauer to sprinkle on the ensuing rubble. There's no subtlety of thought, even in the continuity of his worldview. He does much to establish that the morals, values, and traditions of old are all limits beset on an individual to ensnare them into never fulfilling their potential, and then proceeds to rant about how women were made for subservience due to innate "superficiality". He doesn't consider that was possibly the result of the system of arbitrary values he so loathes which prevent women from getting an education, and that they too could achieve the ascendancy he advocates for by going through his ideas of breaking societal tethers. Note I'm not saying he's bad cause he's sexist and so on, it's that he's seemingly incompetent when it comes to applying his worldview to his own worldview. And that goes back to the fact that he doesn't explore or build systems and arguments: he just says things.

This is why I think Zarathustra was so successful. It wasn't trying to be an explicit philosophical text, it was something more than that. It took full advantage of his sense of grandeur and mystery, his irony and humor, his ultimate ideals. Beyond Good and Evil though is just a bunch of messy unstructured essays delivered from on top a soapbox. I'm being harsh here, but that's just because I expected more than that. It works fine out of the context of philosophy. A lot of non-philosophers have writings like this and they're excellent because it's their discernment, interpretation, and ability to express themselves that matters, not the rigors that philosophy pull in. Nietzsche has all of those strengths and for that I'd give it a light recommendation with a disclaimer not to take him too seriously.

Pesantissimo, prolisso, pedante, petulante e soprattutto lontano anni luce dal mio pensiero!

This description seems to be quite strong and vivid. It implies that something or someone is extremely heavy, wordy, overly academic, and cheeky, and most importantly, is light-years away from one's own way of thinking.

Perhaps this could be used to describe a particular style of writing, a person's behavior, or an idea that is completely at odds with one's own beliefs and perspectives. It shows a clear contrast and a sense of distance.

It makes one wonder what exactly could have elicited such a description and how it might have affected the person who wrote it. It also highlights the importance of having different viewpoints and being able to understand and respect the diversity of thoughts and ideas that exist in the world.

Well! It is a well-known fact that Friedrich Nietzsche was a very profound philosopher of his time. What I don't understand is, how a person with such a depth of knowledge could be so wrong about women.

“Woman wants to be independent: and to that end she is beginning to enlighten men about 'woman as such' - this is one of the worst developments in the general uglification of Europe.”

This is just one of many ridicules that Nietzsche bestowed upon women. I tried to overshadow his gender discrimination with his in-depth knowledge of truth, virtues, morals, and ethics. But I couldn't help but think of the philosophers with the same perception that Virginia Woolf described in her essay “A Room of one’s own”.

“The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”

It's a pity to see a great thinker like Nietzsche undermine and lack the understanding of those of the opposite gender who are equally intelligent. Still, he refuses to believe or even notice that.

Anyhow, trying not to become Nietzsche myself, I have to admit that he did enlighten me with many of his theories that actually make sense. For example, “But he who has really made sacrifices knows that he wanted and received something in return perhaps something of himself in exchange for something of himself - that he gave away here in order to have more there, perhaps in general to be more or to feel himself'more'.”

Whether one agrees with it or not, it is true. And here's another one: “Few are made for independence - it is a privilege of the strong. And he who attempts it, having the completest right to it but without being compelled to, thereby proves that he is probably not only strong but also daring to the point of recklessness.”

Independence is a rare jewel. In Nietzsche’s language, if someone is a master, someone is also a slave. To break that balance and be free and independent is rare or nearly impossible. Now that I've brought up the concept of master and slave, let me be clear that I'm a huge fan of Nietzsche’s concept of master and slave morality. Check this out: “Here is the source of the famous antithesis 'good' and ‘evil'- power and danger were felt to exist in evil, a certain dreadfulness, subtlety and strength which could not admit of contempt. Thus, according to slave morality the 'evil' inspire fear; according to master morality it is precisely the 'good' who inspire fear and want to inspire it, while the 'bad' man is judged contemptible.”

According to Nietzsche, qualities like pity, kindness, a helping hand, a warm heart, patience, industriousness, humility, and friendliness are the most useful qualities for poor people, as in slaves. Slave morality is essentially the morality of utility.

And here, I do completely agree with him. In my opinion, power is nothing but fear in other people's eyes. But, hey! That's just my opinion.

At the end of the day, I realized one thing about philosophers. Each one of them is working on a hypothesis of variations of truth, and working on something for so long creates rigidity and stubbornness. One starts to claim perfection and think of oneself as a perfectionist. Which, I think, never ends well for anyone, just like being excessively intelligent didn't end well for Friedrich Nietzsche.