Beyond Good and Evil (Penguin Classics) (1886 original; edició 2003)

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Utterly meaningless star rating alert! BGE is really a great book, the best place to start with Nietzsche, I think, because it states his most important ideas in digestible chunks (unlike Zarathustra, which is so over-wrought and self-regarding that I have trouble even flicking through it), and has no aspirations towards unity (and so is unlike Genealogy of Morality, which achieves that unity at the price of being transparently silly). Friedrich works best in paragraphs, and that's what he gives us here. He's about infinity times more enjoyable to read than any other philosopher, ever; I've never felt that more than this reading of BGE.

Now, that said, his reasoning is transparently flawed. He fails to treat themes outside of his own the way he treats his pet themes. To wit: why is he so keen to discuss the 'history' of Christianity, but so unwilling to discuss the history of misogyny? He never acknowledges the obvious absurdities of his positions--if all people create their reality by interpretation, why assume that there is any 'natural' given (which he does with, e.g., instinct)? If all people create their reality by interpretation, why should we value Nietzsche's interpretation rather than the (then) reigning liberal Christianism?

These inconsistencies make it plain that he thinks his thought is different from previous philosophies; "every great philosophy to date has been the personal confession of its author." It's equally obvious that his work, more than any other (possible exception: Rousseau) is driven by his own idiosyncrasies.

This urge to be a unique snowflake drives BGE. Nietzsche starts by separating himself from other 'free thinkers.' He refuses to martyr himself to the 'truth' of atheism. He's beyond both utilitarianism, and Kantianism; he has overcome all morals; he has shifted the burden of proof to those who say that doing good by others is a good thing. He's beyond the enlightenment, which assumed a *good* world, and beyond Christians, who assume a bad one; he assumes a mutable, already interpreted world.

But he's very slippery on this--sometimes he wants to get underneath all that interpretation to the text itself; sometimes he values the interpretation rather than the text; sometimes he implies that there is no text. The real 'free spirits' will be experimenters, ultra-individualistic, and ultra-elitist. Whereas the free-thinkers (to borrow from Berlin) aim for negative freedom, Nietzsche and the future philosophers aim for positive freedom.

Sadly for Nietzsche, who was deeply oppressed by pretty much everything, religion was keeping down the free spirits. On the other hand, it did train the great to be great and fool the weak into submission. I'm curious to know what Nietzsche would have thought of the Ayn Rands and neo-Darwinians who use materialism, atheism and economics to achieve the same ends.

Thus far, act one. Now for act two.

In section 5, we get a shorter, less silly version of the Genealogy of Morality, with some of the same problems of reflexivity (we should do a genealogical reading of philosophies of morality... but not Nietzsche's. All young sciences make outrageous, unprovable claims due to a lack of skepticism... except Nietzsche's). Christianity is foolish... but Nietzsche's crazed messianism is legitimate.

True philosophers, we learn, are just like Nietzsche, whereas scholars are (presumably) the people who didn't like Birth of Tragedy. Philosophers create values, rather than justifying pre-existing values; they are opposed to their own times. The new philosophical virtues will be pluralism, spite, dissection, hierarchy, self-interest, individualism for the elite, absence of pity, laughter, good taste, dutiful immoralism, honest harshness, cruelty, misogyny, and not being English.

As a friend of mine put it about later philosophers with similar ideas, there will always be an audience for this, because there will always be self-impressed teenagers.

The final section is probably the best, and reveals Nietzsche at his worst: a small, lonely, intelligent man, so filled with rage at his own failures that he has to invent a mythology that will justify his own sense of superiority. He has a different morality to others, he is a master; we, the peons, have a slave morality. One can only wish that the masters would really retire to write bilious pamphlets instead of taking over the commanding heights of the world economy, where they create values that Nietzsche would have loathed, and which, perhaps, would have led him to think the better of his more adolescent fantasies of self-sufficient genius.

But despite the inconsistencies and absurdities and misogyny, BGE is filled with legitimately fascinating and important insights. The irony of Nietzsche's career is that he's at his best when undermining others; that is, when he's being a critic, rather than a creator of new values etc... His 'creation' is nothing other than an inversion of whatever other people say (they say be good to others; he says be good to oneself) with some post-positivist blather about nature and evolution. His criticisms, though, are devastating for much of the philosophical tradition. If only he'd stuck to that, and recognized the main meta-philosophical lesson of Hegel: the owl of Minerva flies at dusk. ( )

Maybe I'm just not smart enough for this book. I gave up after the first chapter because I wasn't 100% clear on just what the heck his point was. I wasn't even 20% clear. It seemed to be a very convoluted and wordy argument that everything anyone anywhere believes is wrong. Perhaps in later chapters he starts arguing for stuff instead of against stuff, but, there are just too many books out there I want to read to justify continuing to slog through this one. ( )

Arguably Nietzsche's best and most accessible work of philosophy - certainly among his most influential and popular. His views on Will to Power, class, race, the prejudices of philosophers, science, the Free Spirit or Superman - they're all here. Written in his usual provocative yet engaging style, it is required reading for anyone interested in his work and ideas. Hollingdale's translation walks a good line between readability and faithfulness.

Gareth Southwell is a philosopher, writer and illustrator.

Zimmern, Helen (Translator)