The Nexus Archive
Genealogy
Nietzsche
The Hammer · Modernity, 1844-1900
Nietzsche is not a self-help guru. He is a demolition expert for exhausted values.
- Death of God
- Will to power
- Revaluation of values
- Master and slave morality
- Eternal recurrence
Start with Beyond Good and Evil
Life
Friedrich Nietzsche became a professor of classical philology at twenty-four, then left academic life because of severe illness. He wrote as an independent and increasingly isolated critic of morality, religion, and modern culture before suffering a mental collapse in 1889.
The question
“What values survive after their foundations collapse?”
Argued against
Herd morality, ressentiment, inherited metaphysics, and comfortable lies.
Why Nietzsche matters
Nietzsche makes modernity explain where its values come from and whether they can survive without God.
Where to start
Beyond Good and Evil A sharper and more mature entry than starting with random aphorisms.
Works
- Beyond Good and Evil Aphorisms · Brutal A sustained attack on philosophical innocence and inherited morality.
- On the Genealogy of Morality Treatise · Brutal
- Thus Spoke Zarathustra Aphorisms · Brutal
- The Gay Science Aphorisms · Advanced
- Twilight of the Idols Aphorisms · Advanced
Quests with Nietzsche
- Minds in Doubt A confrontation with certainty, duty, and the values modern life inherited. Modern Philosophy Quest