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Genealogy · Aphorisms
Beyond Good and Evil
by Nietzsche · The Hammer · Modernity, 1844-1900
A sustained attack on philosophical innocence and inherited morality.
- Brutal
- 1886
- ~6 hr read
- 25 chapter guides
- Public domain
Start reading · Read the Preface guide free
Before the text
Editor's Prelude
The Dangerous Perhaps
A grand idea may begin in a private need. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche asks why philosophers have trusted their desires for truth, purity and morality as though those desires were innocent. Behind a doctrine, he looks for the person who needs it: someone seeking command, reassurance, distinction or a way to endure.
The book attacks the hidden biography inside ideas. Its numbered aphorisms are individual pieces, ranging from a sentence to an extended argument. Questions turn into satire, portraits and sudden challenges. Nietzsche directs his suspicion at moral systems, religious devotion and the public virtues of European culture. He also lets his own convictions and preferences enter the argument.
Independence has a cost in this book. A belief may protect life, while the desire to know may disturb the person who pursues it. Nietzsche's free spirit must contend with pride, fear, attachment and the temptation to become certain again. Even the desire for truth has to take the stand. What kind of life speaks through the ideas it calls true?
The opening pages
Chapter I: Prejudices of Philosophers
1. The Will to Truth, which is to tempt us to many a hazardous enterprise, the famous Truthfulness of which all philosophers have hitherto spoken with respect, what questions has this Will to Truth not laid before us! What strange, perplexing, questionable questions! It is already a long story; yet it seems as if it were hardly commenced. Is it any wonder if we at last grow distrustful, lose patience, and turn impatiently away? That this Sphinx teaches us at last to ask questions ourselves? WHO is it really that puts questions to us here? WHAT really is this "Will to Truth" in us? In fact we made a long halt at the question as to the origin of this Will--until at last we came to an absolute standstill before a yet more fundamental question. We inquired about the VALUE of this Will. Granted that we want the truth: WHY NOT RATHER untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? The problem of the value of truth presented itself before us--or was it we who presented ourselves before the problem? Which of us is the Oedipus here? Which the Sphinx? It would seem to be a rendezvous of questions and notes of interrogation. And could it be believed that it at last seems to us as if the problem had never been propounded before, as if we were the first to discern it, get a sight of it, and RISK RAISING it? For there is risk in raising it, perhaps there is no greater risk.
2. "HOW COULD anything originate out of its opposite? For example, truth out of error? or the Will to Truth out of the will to deception? or the generous deed out of selfishness? or the pure sun-bright vision of the wise man out of covetousness? Such genesis is impossible; whoever dreams of it is a fool, nay, worse than a fool; things of the highest value must have a different origin, an origin of THEIR own--in this transitory, seductive, illusory, paltry world, in this turmoil of delusion and cupidity, they cannot have their source. But rather in the lap of Being, in the intransitory, in the concealed God, in the 'Thing-in-itself'--THERE must be their source, and nowhere else!"--This mode of reasoning discloses the typical prejudice by which metaphysicians of all times can be recognized, this mode of valuation is at the back of all their logical procedure; through this "belief" of theirs, they exert themselves for their "knowledge," for something that is in the end solemnly christened "the Truth." The fundamental belief of metaphysicians is THE BELIEF IN ANTITHESES OF VALUES. It never occurred even to the wariest of them to doubt here on the very threshold (where doubt, however, was most necessary); though they had made a solemn vow, "DE OMNIBUS DUBITANDUM." For it may be doubted, firstly, whether antitheses exist at all; and secondly, whether the popular valuations and antitheses of value upon which metaphysicians have set their seal, are not perhaps merely superficial estimates, merely provisional perspectives, besides being probably made from some corner, perhaps from below--"frog perspectives," as it were, to borrow an expression current among painters. In spite of all the value which may belong to the true, the positive, and the unselfish, it might be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for life generally should be assigned to pretence, to the will to delusion, to selfishness, and cupidity. …
Read it in a Quest
A confrontation with certainty, duty, and the values modern life inherited.
Chapter guides · 25
Preface
The Preface Names the Target
Nietzsche challenges philosophy that claims to possess a final, certain truth.
The target is dogmatism
Dogmatism means treating a doctrine as settled and unquestionable. Nietzsche suggests that imposing systems may rest on grammar, superstition or narrow human experience. His opening comparison of truth with a woman mocks the philosophers' confidence that they know how to approach it.
The tension left by the struggle
He singles out Plato's pure spirit and good in itself, then treats Christianity as Platonism made popular. The struggle against this tradition has, in his account, drawn Europe's spirit tight like a bow. Attempts to relax it have not exhausted its possibilities. The Preface ends with free spirits who still possess that tension, and perhaps an arrow and a goal.
Chapter I: Prejudices of Philosophers
Truth Goes on Trial
Nietzsche asks why truth should be valued above error, uncertainty or ignorance.
A value that needs questioning
The will to truth is the desire to know what is true. Nietzsche asks about its value as well as its origin. He challenges the philosophers' belief that good things must have origins entirely separate from their apparent opposites.
The person inside the philosophy
He argues that instincts guide conscious thought and that some false judgments may support life. He then portrays philosophers as advocates who find arguments for convictions already desired. The section ends by distinguishing them from scholars. A scholar's field need not reveal their whole character; a philosopher's morality reveals the order of their deepest impulses.
Chapter I: Philosophers Under Suspicion
Philosophers Lose Their Innocence
Nietzsche questions explanations that quietly put the philosopher's own values into the world.
Chapter I: Thinking, Will, and Power
The Self Becomes Less Simple
Thinking and willing become complex processes, rather than immediate proof of a simple self.
Chapter II: The Free Spirit
The Free Spirit Steps Away
Independence requires suspicion of comforting beliefs, including beliefs about one's own intentions.
Chapter II: Masks and Independence
Independence Needs a Mask
Nietzsche links independence with masks, self-testing and resistance to the desire for universal approval.
Chapter III: The Religious Mood
Religion Becomes Psychology
Nietzsche studies religious experience through its demands on the person who believes.
Chapter III: Religion and Discipline
Religion Also Trains People
Religion can train and sustain people, but Nietzsche attacks its power to determine the final goal.
Chapter IV: Apophthegms and Interludes
The Aphorisms Begin to Strike
The short sayings expose conflicts beneath apparently simple motives and moral judgments.
Chapter IV: Apophthegms and Interludes II
The Short Form Keeps Pressing
Nietzsche's brief remarks keep finding concealed interests in virtue, talent and human relationships.
Chapter V: The Natural History of Morals
Morality Becomes Questionable
Nietzsche calls for comparison of moralities before an attempt to justify one of them.
Chapter V: Morality, Command, and Obedience
Morality Gets a History
Nietzsche connects moral values with possession, obedience and fear, then calls for new creators of values.
Chapter VI: We Scholars
Scholars Are Not Philosophers
Nietzsche distinguishes the valuable work of scholarship from the philosopher's task of setting values.
Chapter VI: Skepticism and Future Philosophers
Skepticism Is Not Enough
Nietzsche distinguishes doubt that weakens decision from doubt that strengthens intellectual courage.
Chapter VI: Commanders of Value
Commanders of Value
For Nietzsche, the philosopher's highest task is to create values and assume responsibility for their future.
Chapter VII: Our Virtues
Modern Virtues Come Under Pressure
Nietzsche tests modern virtues by asking what desires, limits and forms of life they serve.
Chapter VII: Honesty, Cruelty, and Knowledge
Honesty, Cruelty, and Knowledge
Nietzsche links the search for knowledge with a cruelty directed against one's own comforting beliefs.
Chapter VII: Woman and Rank
Nietzsche on Women
Nietzsche calls these views his own truths, then argues against women's emancipation and equality.
Chapter VIII: Peoples and Countries
Germany and the Good European
Nietzsche's discussion of German culture questions the virtues that national pride takes for granted.
Chapter VIII: Music, Style, and Jewish Europe
Music, Style, and Jewish Europe
Nietzsche reads Europe's possibilities through music, prose and the place of Jewish people within it.
Chapter VIII: England, France, and One Europe
England, France, and One Europe
Nietzsche seeks a European culture that exceeds national boundaries, then turns against Wagner's religious ending.
Chapter IX: What Is Noble?
Aristocracy and Master Morality
Nietzsche makes rank central to culture and distinguishes values formed by rulers from those formed by dependents.
Chapter IX: Vanity, Rank, and Language
Vanity, Rank, and Language
Nietzsche connects rank with self-esteem, inherited habits and the experiences shared through language.
Chapter IX: Solitude, Culture, and Height
Height Brings Distance
The distance Nietzsche associates with nobility also exposes a person to misunderstanding and failure.
Chapter IX: The Noble Soul
The Noble Soul Stands Alone
Nietzsche's final prose examines self-reverence and masks; the ode turns solitude towards new friendship.
Questions readers ask
- How long does it take to read Beyond Good and Evil?
- About 6 hr in total.
- How difficult is Beyond Good and Evil?
- Brutal. A long book of aphorisms; about 6 hours of reading.
- Which translation is this?
- The Helen Zimmern (prose); L. A. Magnus (closing ode) translation from the German, first published in 1886. The text follows Project Gutenberg #4363 digital text, described by Gutenberg as a reprint of Helen Zimmern's translation in The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (1909-1913).
- Can I read Beyond Good and Evil for free?
- Beyond Good and Evil is part of Nexus Premium, so reading it needs an account and a Premium subscription, and completing an earlier Quest's Mastery. The opening above and two chapter guides on this page are free to read.
- How many chapter guides are there?
- 25 chapter guides, written by the Nexus editors. Two open in full here; the rest show their opening line.
About Nietzsche
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.
“What values survive after their foundations collapse?”
Nietzsche makes modernity explain where its values come from and whether they can survive without God.
Source text: public domain. Chapter guides: original Nexus writing. Beyond Good and Evil is part of The Nexus Archive, guided Quests through the great works.