Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

• The Genealogy of Morals
• Utopia
• The Republic
• The Prince
• Thus Spake Zarathustra

Is there a book on Nietzsche that is stationary? How would a publisher get it into a book store in the first place? And how would someone go about actually purchasing a book like that? Would you have to drive to the printers and stand there thumbing through it until you were finished?

Wouldn't that be prohibitively expensive for the publisher, unless there were a lot of speed readers interested in reading the book? And even then, would they really be buying the book or merely renting it, if they couldn't even take it home?

And how would the printer feel about complete strangers hanging around reading a book till all hours of the day and night?

Who in gods name would be dumb enough to buy a book they couldn't take home with them?

Outside of Oklahoma or Arkansas, homes are about the only thing you can buy that aren't portable. The books I've read were all quite portable. I can't remember how many times I've taken a book off the shelf of a book store, paid for it, took it home, put it on my own bookshelf where I would later remove it and start reading it.

I'm going to have to write Penguin books and ask them just what they were thinking when they came up with that title. What a bunch of idiots.

I'll keep this review terse for the sake of the (unlikely >1) reader(s). I find many of the reader reviews I have read here on Amazon to be either funny or disturbing depending on my mood, since, old Fred himself would be the first to admit to the following:

1. "misogyny" or as it was so ummmmm eloquantly put "his attitude problems about women" (the truth of gender equality is DOUBTLESSLY UNQUESTIONABLE!!!!! How could he possibly not KNOW that???)

2. "failure to provide concrete examples" (or possibly PROVABLE in which case please join the despised "scientists")

3. Whatever other moral quandries instantly occured to the reviewer.

It's also more than a little disturbing that literally NONE of the "top ten" reader reviews give old fred <4 (out of five) stars.

But then again people who post reviews about a philosophy text are very likely to be as open minded as those at a G.W. Bush fundraiser or graduate nuclear physics lecture or for that matter ME.

I can offer no better advice than to think and feel for yourself....

First, if you're going to buy BG&E, go ahead & get the Modern Library "Basic Writings" in paperback---not a volume of snippets, but the complete text of N.'s two best books, BG&E and On the Genealogy of Morals, & some other works, for scarcely more than BG&E alone. If you don't like one book, try the other. N. says the same thing from different angles in his last 4 or 5 books. Anything after Zarathustra, except for Ecce Homo, is a good place to start.

Second, despite reading a translation, don't forget that N. is a clever, funny, & devilishly smart writer. Freud said no one before N. ever had as much self-knowledge. Read him with a sense of ironic humor. Too often N. is treated as some heavy thundering German, when if there's one thing that drove him up the wall, it was heavy thundering Germans.

Third, forgive his attitude problems about women. N.'s dad died when he was a kid; his mom & aunts raised him, got on his last nerve, & gave him a bad attitude towards women. Which, regrettably, was not exactly uncommon in the 19th c. BG&E includes his acknowledgement that his misogyny is a bedrock level of stupidity that he can't escape.

Fourth, if you're a Christian, there's a lot of N. that won't be acceptable to you. But learn what you can. A lot of so-called "Christianity" strongly resembles the "slave morality" that he describes.

This is an amazing book that I haven't even tried to describe, the book that made philosophy come alive for me with N.'s comment that, when wondering where the hell some metaphysician's notions came from, one should ask what morality the notions are aiming at. The book is full of great insights from a brilliant man. Read this, then the Genealogy, then Twilight of the Idols.

Nietzsche pulls you in by offering his philosophy in chunks, i.e aphorisms. Reading the book is challenging and rewarding to a magnificant degree.

Recommendations: Every book Nietzsche ever wrote.

• Subjects > Nonfiction > Philosophy
• Subjects > Literature & Fiction
• Subjects > Literature & Fiction > General

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