This is the third book I've read of Nietzsche's. The first was a collection from various writings, and the second was "The Anti-Christ." Beyond Good and Evil was Nietzsche's attempt to summarize his entire philosophy into one book. I don't know if I'd ever call anything Nietzsche wrote a summary, but this book does lay out his principles in black-and-white, and it did help me put some of the pieces together.
Below are a few of my takeaways. It's not a summary, because I don't even know if that's possible. So I just wanted to share a few things I've picked up on.
On the will to power:
If modern (nineteenth century) man is no longer going to believe in God, or at least if they're going to tone down His influence a bit, the next logical step for them was the concept of free will. In a post-enlightenment world, people were trying to understand if there really is a God pulling our strings like puppets. If they weren't going to believe that, the next logical step was free will. Nietzsche rejects free will and instead believes in the will to power. Essentially the will to power is his phrase that means people should aim to take power over themselves and create a "superman" or "overman" out of themselves. Nietzsche sees this as an alternative to the concept of free will.
On religion -
Another thing that I noticed about Nietzsche after reading a fair bit of his work is that, as critical as he is of Christianity, he seems to have a bit of an affinity for Buddhism, or at least the principles of Buddhism. Buddhism's primary concept is "life is suffering," right? Nietzsche writes extensively about suffering as well, arguing in part that the cause of all great human advancement is suffering. In the Anti-Christ, he often points out that Buddhism is better than Christianity. To be fair, there was a pretty short list of things that weren't better than Christianity, according to Nietzsche.
I love the short epigrams and how Nietzsche is capable of concentrating so much meaning into such few words-
"Blessed be the forgetful: for they forget their stupidities, too."
"Whoever reaches his ideal transcends 'eo ipso.'"
"'Where the tree of knowledge stands, there is always Paradise': thus speak the oldest and the youngest serpents."
*eo ipso = thereby
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I just received this book, opened the package and this book is damaged. It looks like it's had coffee spilled on almost half of the pages, I'm guessing it's old water damage. Horrible condition!
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The greatest
By JD on August 12, 2021
Just received this item, excellent conditions, very legible print. After reading Zarathustra I was perplexed by Nietzsche, his writing skills are nothing short of sublime, the most important thinker of the 20th century for me. By the way, read all the Walter Kaufmann’s translations of Nietzsche’s books, he captured and stayed as close as you can be to the original German writings.
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