I can vividly imagine Nietzsche seated in his room. His fingers are twisting his moustache, and he is furiously scribbling down his ideas. Sweat is pouring off him, and the room reeks of cigarettes. He firmly believes that he is the most intelligent man who has ever walked the earth.

Can you tell that I have a deep-seated dislike for him?

Although there are times when I find myself agreeing with and being intrigued by some of his ideas, the rest of them strike me as completely ridiculous. If one feels the need to call other philosophers dumb in order to prove their point and also reduce women to a mere birth-giving machine that lacks reason, then I have no further interest in what they have to say.

Moreover, this work was deliberately written in such a dense manner that it would be incomprehensible to the majority of readers. As a result, it would make him seem like a mind that "not a lot of simple thinkers would be able to understand." This truly infuriates me.

To simplify the second half of this book, it essentially says, "I am right, and if you disagree with me, you are wrong, dumb, and I pity you. Also, women are inferior and stupid."

Oh, to possess the ego of a white man in the 19th century.

The busy home of my grandmother and having a mind full of distractions while reading it, caused me to only understand well the three or four pages of sentences that I noted down and ignore the rest. It is hoped that one day I will return to it again.

In the hustle and bustle of my grandmother's home, with a mind preoccupied by a world of activities, my reading experience was less than ideal. I found myself able to fully comprehend only the few pages of sentences that I had taken the time to jot down. The rest seemed to pass me by in a blur.

But I hold onto the hope that one day, when I have a quieter and more focused moment, I will go back to that reading material. Maybe then, I will be able to truly absorb and understand the full essence of what it has to offer.

Until that day comes, those noted pages will serve as a reminder of the knowledge and insights that I have yet to fully explore.

Nietzsche is following the path of enlightenment in this work. He wields the sword of logic against Spinoza and attacks Voltaire's religiosity. He throws Plato's argument into the pit of contradiction and shows compassion with a sorrowful Goethe. Nietzsche condemns the desire of women for desire in the perspective of good and evil and names the defenders of this theory as fools. The perspective of good and evil is an indication of Nietzsche's critical views towards explaining the philosophy of the future and defining a new philosopher. In the last chapter of the book, Nietzsche explains the concept of "Ubermensch" and hands over the work to the free spirits. In an extremely profound interpretation, he compares the free spirits to the distant stars with pride and says that until the light of these stars reaches humans, the human species denies their existence. Then, with a wise question, he reminds the point that how many centuries do the free spirits need for recognition and acceptance by the people? Nietzsche's critical view in this work is Stoic. His frank expression indicates the human species and considers the weakness of the wisdom of philosophers as a misleading for human thinkers. Nietzsche is alone in this book. The cry coming from his loneliness plays a crucial role that is in pursuit of losing and finding his own scent. The perspective of good and evil is Nietzsche's thousand-page golden paper.

Nietzsche's exploration in "Beyond Good and Evil" is a profound and thought-provoking journey. He challenges the established ideas of his time, dissecting the works of great philosophers like Spinoza, Voltaire, and Plato. His condemnation of certain aspects of society, such as the desires of women and the defenders of certain theories, shows his boldness in expressing his views. The concept of the "Ubermensch" is a central theme, representing a new ideal for humanity. By comparing the free spirits to distant stars, Nietzsche emphasizes their rarity and the difficulty in their recognition. His Stoic approach and frank expression make his work a significant contribution to philosophy, leaving a lasting impact on future generations of thinkers.

Overall, "Beyond Good and Evil" is a complex and multi-faceted work that invites readers to question their own beliefs and values, and to explore the possibilities of a new philosophical paradigm. Nietzsche's unique perspective and powerful writing style make this book a must-read for anyone interested in philosophy, ethics, and the nature of human existence.

I have been hesitant to write this review as I have had an abundance of fun re-reading this book. Despite its small size, I consider it one of the most influential books on philosophy in the late 19th century. It is a rare opportunity to laugh at a philosopher's depictions of his art. Nietzsche's vast knowledge and his almost flippant hard driving style combine to provide a monumental explication of most of his philosophy.

"Beyond Good and Evil" is subtitled "Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future". Although I am embarrassed to admit it, I (finally) understand how this is significant and perhaps accurate. It is easy to dismiss much of what Nietzsche says as hyperbole. However, on this reading, some years later, I stopped and spent time on each of his concepts. For the record, I think his remarks about women have been taken too literally, and the reaction to them seems more hysterical than what I consider a deeper meaning. Still, as others have said, perhaps he is taking some of that misogyny from Aristotle and Schopenhauer. Of the three, Schopenhauer is the one who foams at the mouth, but I digress.

While he uses a broad sword in his criticism, one must pay careful attention. It is difficult to find holes in his arguments, at least accepting his presuppositions. It is key that he represents his views as art as much as he writes them as philosophy. He begins by excoriating past philosophers for their dependence on dogmatic principles and the use of certain principles he rejects outright. One of his first victims is the stoic principle of living according to nature, which he essentially reduces to rubble. It is a masterful job, arguing that it is the stoic who assigns value to what he calls nature around him and then follows it circuitously. After dealing with the stoics, he eviscerates almost every other philosophical field of thought, not without a certain degree of aplomb and, I think, humor.

However, when he talks about the Epicureans, it makes me wonder exactly what he might have taken as Epicurean thought. Certainly, he read Sextus Empiricus and Lucretius (and Cicero's criticisms, of course), and some of the various fragments. But the major scrolls of Philodemus, a noted Roman Epicurean, were probably not published when Nietzsche was writing. I couldn't help but constantly think back to the Pre-Socratics, and I tend to think that Nietzsche perhaps drew a great deal from some of them, such as Democritus.

The greatest difficulty with this book is how to abide with it. When he disembowels Kant for his categories and antinomies, he hits the heart of what we are required to take as the book's essence. Nietzsche says, "The question is how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing, and we are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which the synthetic judgments apriori belong) are the most indispensable to us, that without a recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of reality with the purely imagined world of the absolute and immutable, without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers, man could not live---that the renunciation of false opinions would be a renunciation of life, a negation of life. TO RECOGNIZE UNTRUTH AS A CONDITION OF LIFE; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil."

Ultimately, we must ask ourselves whether Nietzsche was being prophetic, not in the sense of an abomination of his philosophy through people like Hitler (who often posed with his bust for pictures), but through the growth in the denial of what we might term traditional values. What we have been witnessing, at least as it seems to me, for the last 100 years or more is not so much the negation of values, but the increasing negation of value, in and of itself. While it is true that if what he says is true... and his arguments are well-formed and literate, it remains whether one can truly persist and prosper simply through one's will to, not existence, but power. While cogent and tempting, one suspects that the atomic structure (in a figurative sense) of human psychology that tends to hold things in order, especially in a field like ethical value negation, would probably cease to have any functional sense. Ultimately, then, even the negation of all values seems to be, sadly, circuitous. This is the very embodiment of the mythical Chinese dragon that consumes itself with necessity by chewing its tail.

What I appreciate about Nietzsche is precisely what I admire about the historical Socrates, that irritating cynic who wields a backhoe against a corrupt status quo.

The distinction lies in their approaches. While Socrates slyly maneuvers with self-effacing irony, Nietzsche indulges in romantic self-exaltation. Of course, neither is entirely honest. Socrates wasn't as ignorant as he claimed, and Nietzsche himself was no ubermensch.

Despite this stylistic variance, they both accomplish similarly negative goals. The notable difference is that Plato constructed something positive, for better or worse, on the foundation that Socrates demolished, whereas Nietzsche allows his plot of negativity to run wild. What sprouts in Nietzsche's barren plot is arbitrary - or as he would prefer, "free, very free" - and whether the plot is overrun by Russian thistle or a well-tended garden is indeterminate... unless that freedom is compromised (which, of course, it is, and the snake joyfully devours its tail).

Ultimately, it's a passionate, romantic, and flawed defense of kraterocracy.

But indeed, he is a remarkable writer. I just wish he had responded to the advertisement for a novelist or poet rather than a philosopher.

Beyond Good and Evil is arranged like dialogues, perhaps similar to Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations". Many ideas in it are implicitly understood rather than directly stated. For example, a very good sentence is as follows:

"The great epochs of our life are the occasions when we gain the courage to rebaptize our evil qualities as our best qualitites."

In fact, reading Nietzsche is very difficult to understand. Occasionally, the author will add a few sentences written in Latin. Each paragraph has a semantic structure, and if the reader forgets the previous part, he will not understand the following part. However, the sentences are very beautifully written, with a literary tone and not too rigid. The writing style is artistic rather than as accurate and cautious as Frederick von Hayek in "The Road to Serfdom". Some very good sentences are as follows:

- He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.

- When the tree of knowledge stands is always Praradise: thus speak the oldest and youngest serpents.

- Madness is something rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, people, ages it is the rule.

- ultimately one loves one's desires and not that which is desired.

- Like the rider on a charging steed we let fall the reins before the infinite, we modern men, like semi-barbarians - and attain our state of bliss only when we are most - in danger.

- Wellbeing as you understand it - that is no goal, that seems to us an end! A state which soon renders man ludicrous and contemptible - which makes it desirable that he should perish.

- her great art is the lie, her supreme concern is appearance and beauty. Let us confess it, we men: it is precisely this art and this instinct in woman which we love and honour.

- Men of a still natural nature, barbarians in every fearful sense of the word, men of prey still in possession of an unbroken strength of will and lust for power, threw themselves upon weaker, more civilized, more peaceful, perhaps trading or cattle-raising races, or upon old mellow cultures, the last vital forces in which were even then flickering out in a glittering firework display of spirit and corruption. The noble caste was in the beginning always the barbarians caste: their superiority lay, not in their physical strength, but primarily in their psychical - they were more complete human beings (which, on every level, also means as much as 'more complete beast').

- The noble human being honours in himself the man of power, also the man who has power over himself, who understands how to speak and how to keep silent, who enjoys practising severity and harshness upon himself and feels reverence for all that is severe and harsh.

- 'education' and 'culture' have to be in essence the art of deceiving - of deceiving with regard to origins, to the inherited plebeian in soul and body.

- To understand one another it is not sufficient to employ the same words; we have also to emply the same words to designate the same species of inner experiences, we must ultimately have our experience in common.

- woman would like to believe that love can do everything - it is her characteristic faith. Alas, he who knows the heart divines how poor, stupid, helpless, arrogant, blundering, more prone to destroy than save is even the best and deepest love.

- man who can do something, carry out a decision, remain true to an idea, hold on to a woman, punish and put down insolence; a man who has his anger and his sword and to whom the weak, suffering, oppressed, and the animals too are glad to submit and belong by nature, in short a man who is by nature a master - when such a man has pity, well! that pity has value! But of what account is the pity of those who suffer! Or, worse, of those who preach pity!

Undoubtedly, this book is one of the most important works of Nietzsche and a remarkable piece in the history of philosophy. It is extraordinary not only in terms of its form, style, and the rhythm of the text, but also in its literary and philosophical aspects. The wide range of topics presented in this book and intertwined by Nietzsche in a concise and astonishing prose is beyond what can be reported. In recent years, I have read different parts of this book many times, and with each reading, I have derived more and more pleasure and discovered newer, subtler, and more beautiful things in it. Truly, Nietzsche is amazing.

After perhaps 6 years, I read this book again. Many times I laughed from the bottom of my heart at the无与伦比的depictions of Nietzsche and the wisdom and originality that he spent in his ancient fables: Look at this!

How could the previous synthetic judgment be possible?... [Kant answered] with a force!.. People did not know this new force from [discovering] it!

In this way, the honey moon of German philosophy fled, and the young metalworkers of the Tübingen scientific field [Hegel, Hölderlin, and Schelling] chased after finding the "force" to the utmost. And in that era, what they did not find - in that era when the German spirit was still innocent, abundant, and still young... and Romanticism, this natural fairy, did not sting for it

And it sang!

But after passing Nietzsche's satire and criticism, which should be said with fairness about its translation, in my opinion, this work of Nietzsche explains and describes the German spirit that dominated the nineteenth century. Nietzsche portrays the inner creation, life, and essence of the Germans to the depth and in the souls of the Germans. And more importantly, it reveals the position of German observers in German culture, people like Hegel, Schopenhauer, Goethe, Fichte, Schelling, Frederick the Great. Also, in the chapter on nations and peoples, it portrays the French and English spirits in a soft way. Nietzsche is generally a critic of the German and English spirits and a celebrator of the French and Russian spiritualities. But it is clear that his criticism of the German spirituality is like that of a father scolding his son, while his criticism of the superficial thinking and empty-headedness of the English is completely straightforward and non-punitive.

Another point that was very interesting to me, as a student of Hegelian philosophy, was Nietzsche's approach towards Hegel. In Nietzsche's view, Schopenhauer, with his stupid Western head, in opposition to Hegel, severed the generational connection of the Germans with the original German culture that Hegel represents. Nietzsche says about Hegel and Schopenhauer

These two unequal brothers in philosophy were enemies of each other and were in conflict at the two opposite poles of the German spirit, and they raised such a commotion over it that it could only end in the hands of brothers against each other.

Another very important and interesting point is Nietzsche's view on the Jews. It is clear that Nietzsche does not reconcile with some aspects of the spirit born of Judaism. Also, it is clear that Nietzsche considers the Jews the initiators of the uprising against the Valkyries. But in this book, it is evident that Nietzsche has a very great distance from the early twentieth-century Nazi Socialists. Look at this sentence

The Jews are, among the peoples that now live in Europe, the strongest, hardest, and noblest nation.

Or this

The Jews could now have a high hand in Europe if they wanted to.

There are many other very important topics in this book, the most important of which is the concept of the supra-moral good and evil that is dealt with in different ways throughout the book.

In short, for acquaintance with Nietzsche, no other book of his can compare to this one.

This, unfortunately, was the first Nietzsche I read.

It was during the winter break of my sophomore year in college, and it had no connection to any of my classes. I read a copy from the Park Ridge Library, often going there to get out of the house. Later, I even got my own copy.

However, it is not the ideal book to begin with. As time went by, I became more serious about Nietzsche and started to read his works systematically.

Still, even though I was unprepared and undoubtedly missed a great deal, I really enjoyed this book. The only philosophy course I had ever taken, during my freshman year, was extremely boring and had completely turned me off to the subject. But this book was thought-provoking, fresh, radical, and even well-written.

Subsequently, my acquaintance with Jung, who was greatly influenced by Nietzsche, effectively brought me back to the world of philosophy.

As with Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I found Beyond Good and Evil to be a ponderous work. Herr Nietzche offered hefty criticism of traditional philosophy, challenging the status quo and asking for new ways of thinking to break free from society's restrictive and at times oppressive boundaries.

The call he made was answered in ways beyond his imagination after his death. In the three score years following the publication of this book, much of Europe was in shambles. National borders were redrawn, political regimes extinguished, and ways of thought upended. This was the result of a second Thirty Years’ War, where so many perished that a proper accounting became impossible.

Because Herr Nietzsche is critical by default, I am sympathetic to much of his commentary. For example, his statement: “O Voltaire! O humaneness! O nonsense! There is something about ‘truth,’ about the search for truth; and when a human being is too human about it—‘il ne cherche le vrai que pour fair le bien’—I bet he finds nothing.” However, away from the cringeworthy remarks for women, much of this volume is sluggish prose that, at times, is downright obfuscating. This allows others to write at length about what the author really meant to say, a point I have noticed several times recently.

As a consequence, in my opinion, Herr Nietzsche punches far below his weight class. Beyond Good and Evil and Thus Spoke Zarathustra are minor works in themselves, elevated in importance through the actions of others. How this came to be should make for an interesting read. If Herr Nietzsche wished to introduce concepts beyond good and evil, I would have thought he might have given us the benefit of doing just that. Instead, he filed his complaints without offering tangible solutions, which leaves us in a state of limbo.

This kind of music expresses best what I think of the Germans: they belong to the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow—THEY HAVE AS YET NO TODAY. (Apropos Wagner's overture to the Mastersinger of Nuremberg)

Nietzsche with his hammer destroys past dogmas. What can one possibly get out of the rubble?

Lots of dust? or, ashes?

UPDATE

He has returned...

But left again.

UPDATE

He's returned,...to the New Yorker

The statement about the Germans and their relationship to time is quite thought-provoking. It implies that they seem to be stuck in a limbo between the past and the future, lacking a true sense of the present. Nietzsche's act of destroying past dogmas is a bold and radical one. By doing so, he challenges the status quo and forces people to reevaluate their beliefs and values. The question of what can be salvaged from the rubble is an important one. It could be that there is nothing left but dust and ashes, or perhaps there are still some valuable insights and ideas that can be gleaned. The updates about Nietzsche's comings and goings add an element of mystery and intrigue to the story. Where has he been? Why did he leave and then return? These questions leave the reader wondering about the true nature of Nietzsche and his ideas. Overall, this article presents a fascinating look at Nietzsche and his impact on philosophy and culture.

What a truly strange book this is.

I find myself in a quandary when it comes to labelling it as “philosophy.” It is indeed thoughtful, interesting, and philosophical in nature. But is it really philosophy in the traditional sense?

Nietzsche is an incredibly powerful and brilliant writer. His prose is swift, his sentences rove, and his tone is pugnacious. However, I often wished that he would slow down from his brisk allegro to a more moderate tempo, allowing him to express his ideas more systematically. But perhaps this is not the point. After all, Nietzsche was aiming for destruction rather than construction, and this book is filled with his attempts to tear down the existing order.

After reading “Notes from the Underground,” I can truly appreciate what Nietzsche was getting at with his concept of “beyond good and evil.” Previous moral thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Mill all started off by assuming that good and evil are opposites. But what if they aren't? Nietzsche goes on to attack the notion of truth versus appearance, boldly proclaiming that “It is nothing more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than appearance.” It is precisely this moral prejudice that Nietzsche is trying to avoid.

What a prophet Nietzsche was! In this book, he rails against anti-semitism and boldly proclaims that “The time for petty politics is past: the very next century will bring with it mastery of the whole earth.” Add to this his discussion of the death of Christian morality and the rise of scientific materialism and democracy, and it becomes clear that he saw all of these developments coming.

The modern reader, or what Nietzsche calls the “last men,” may find a bitter taste in their mouth when reading his discussion of the natural inequality of man and the higher-man's privilege to exploit the lower men. However, it is a point worth considering. While Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Marx all began their philosophies by taking the natural equality of men as a given, Nietzsche considers this to be just a Pollyannish idea that we have conjured up to make ourselves feel better. Inequality exists, and the point of a society, according to Nietzsche, is to support its highest caste. Well, someone had to consider this alternative view.

But remember Nietzsche's words: “Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.” He is a tricky man, and his prose dances, making it difficult to document his ideas in still photographs. We must approach his work with an open mind and a willingness to engage with his challenging ideas.