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title: "Basic Writings of Nietzsche (Modern Library Classics)"
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# Basic Writings of Nietzsche (Modern Library Classics)

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This captivating collection brings together five of Friedrich Nietzche’s most important philosophical works, exploring themes such as nihilism, metaphysics, and the nature of morality—featuring an introduction by Peter Gay and commentary from Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, and Gilles Deleuze More than one hundred years after his death, Friedrich Nietzsche remains the most influential philosopher of the modern era. Basic Writings of Nietzsche gathers the complete texts of five of Nietzsche’s most important works, from his first book to his last: The Birth of Tragedy, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, The Case of Wagner, and Ecce Homo . Edited and translated by the great Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann, this volume also features seventy-five aphorisms, selections from Nietzsche’s correspondence, and variants from drafts for Ecce Homo . It is a definitive guide to the full range of Nietzsche’s thought. This edition includes a Modern Library Reading Group Guide

Review: A fascinating human being of exceptional complexity and integrity (P. Gay) - Nietzsche was the greatest polemist ever. He played the role of Saint-Michael, the dragon slayer, in his Homeric battle with the existing dragons (the Christian moralists). He tried to revalue all generally accepted `good and evil' values and really felt that mankind was pregnant with a new super-species, the `Übermensch'. His influence on philosophy, literature, psychology and politics is immense. Of course, some aspects of his vision on mankind are unacceptable. The all important influence on his Nietzsche's life and philosophy came from Schopenhauer: `I very earnestly denied my `will to life' at the time when I first read Schopenhauer.' The life of a Nietzschean immoralist Life is to express one's will to and lust for power. The cardinal instinct of man is not self-preservation, but the discharge of strength. Everything evil, terrible, tyrannical in man, everything that is kin to beasts of prey and serpents serves the enhancement of the species `man'. This enhancement has always been the work of an aristocratic society. The noble man creates his own morality, his good and bad, with egoism and exploitation as his real nature. He despises the slaves, the unfree, the doglike people who allow themselves to be maltreated. Christian morals, democracy When the aristocratic value judgments declined, the plebeians imposed their own morality of unegoism, pity, self-sacrifice, self-abnegation and ascetic ideals on mankind. The egoistic `good' of the masters became the `evil' of the Christian faith. This faith constitutes not less than a sacrifice of all freedom, enslavement and self-mutilation. By preserving all that is sick, it breads `a mediocre herd animal'. Democracy, `the nonsense of the greatest numbers', with its `equality of rights', is the heir of Christianity. It is a gruesome fact that an anti-life morality received the highest honors and was fixed as a law and a categorical imperative. Art Art is a saving sorceress. She alone knows how to turn the nauseous thoughts about the horrors of life into the sublime and life's absurdity into the comic. Musically speaking, Nietzsche himself was a composer. `The Case against Wagner' compares the Dionysian opera `Carmen' by Bizet, with the Christian opera `Parsifal' by Wagner, the redeemer. Evaluation Besides his unacceptable profound misogyny (`woman's great art is the lie, her highest concern is mere appearance'), Friedrich Nietzsche's brutal evangel is not less than a call for war, not peace. But in an age of nuclear, bio- and chemo-weapons, of veiled State terrorism and of demographic explosions, his call for an uninhibited exploitation of man's basic instincts to fight for the spoils should be categorically rejected. His romantic anti-rational and anti-scientific stances became pipedreams. On the other hand, his attacks on the power of the moralists, his sincere call to live in `Dionysian' freedom and not for `eternal bliss', as well as his vision that art is the only truly metaphysical activity of man, will continue to appeal strongly to many and remain the bright parts of his virulent diatribes. His work is a must read for all philosophers and lovers of truly essential polemics.
Review: Nietzsche For English Readers - These are arguably the best modern translations of Nietzsche's major works available. There are some other very good versions by Hollingdale, but Kaufmann is at least his equal, if not superior. (I base this on how the translations read, because I don't read German; German speakers may have a different opinion, but I doubt it.) You can either read about Nietzsche (Kaufmann has also written one of the best critical studies of his oeuvre), or read him and come to your own conclusions; or better yet, you can do both--but read Nietzsche first. He's an eminently readable writer and since he never wrote a systematic treatise but spead his insights over all his books in the form of aphorisms, short treatises, and some lengthy (but not too lengthy) essays, he's not difficult to understand. "God is dead" is not his central thesis, in spite of that becoming the received idea connected with him. If there is an overriding vision it would probably be more like this: what you understand of reality is a matter of perspective, and apodictic truths are as much an illusion as God. Definitely the Nietzsche collection to own, along with Kaufmann's Portable Nietzsche.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #94,648 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #41 in Philosophy Aesthetics #62 in Modern Western Philosophy #6,670 in History (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.6 out of 5 stars 738 Reviews |

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A fascinating human being of exceptional complexity and integrity (P. Gay)
*by L***T on May 22, 2010*

Nietzsche was the greatest polemist ever. He played the role of Saint-Michael, the dragon slayer, in his Homeric battle with the existing dragons (the Christian moralists). He tried to revalue all generally accepted `good and evil' values and really felt that mankind was pregnant with a new super-species, the `Übermensch'. His influence on philosophy, literature, psychology and politics is immense. Of course, some aspects of his vision on mankind are unacceptable. The all important influence on his Nietzsche's life and philosophy came from Schopenhauer: `I very earnestly denied my `will to life' at the time when I first read Schopenhauer.' The life of a Nietzschean immoralist Life is to express one's will to and lust for power. The cardinal instinct of man is not self-preservation, but the discharge of strength. Everything evil, terrible, tyrannical in man, everything that is kin to beasts of prey and serpents serves the enhancement of the species `man'. This enhancement has always been the work of an aristocratic society. The noble man creates his own morality, his good and bad, with egoism and exploitation as his real nature. He despises the slaves, the unfree, the doglike people who allow themselves to be maltreated. Christian morals, democracy When the aristocratic value judgments declined, the plebeians imposed their own morality of unegoism, pity, self-sacrifice, self-abnegation and ascetic ideals on mankind. The egoistic `good' of the masters became the `evil' of the Christian faith. This faith constitutes not less than a sacrifice of all freedom, enslavement and self-mutilation. By preserving all that is sick, it breads `a mediocre herd animal'. Democracy, `the nonsense of the greatest numbers', with its `equality of rights', is the heir of Christianity. It is a gruesome fact that an anti-life morality received the highest honors and was fixed as a law and a categorical imperative. Art Art is a saving sorceress. She alone knows how to turn the nauseous thoughts about the horrors of life into the sublime and life's absurdity into the comic. Musically speaking, Nietzsche himself was a composer. `The Case against Wagner' compares the Dionysian opera `Carmen' by Bizet, with the Christian opera `Parsifal' by Wagner, the redeemer. Evaluation Besides his unacceptable profound misogyny (`woman's great art is the lie, her highest concern is mere appearance'), Friedrich Nietzsche's brutal evangel is not less than a call for war, not peace. But in an age of nuclear, bio- and chemo-weapons, of veiled State terrorism and of demographic explosions, his call for an uninhibited exploitation of man's basic instincts to fight for the spoils should be categorically rejected. His romantic anti-rational and anti-scientific stances became pipedreams. On the other hand, his attacks on the power of the moralists, his sincere call to live in `Dionysian' freedom and not for `eternal bliss', as well as his vision that art is the only truly metaphysical activity of man, will continue to appeal strongly to many and remain the bright parts of his virulent diatribes. His work is a must read for all philosophers and lovers of truly essential polemics.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Nietzsche For English Readers
*by R***N on October 27, 2014*

These are arguably the best modern translations of Nietzsche's major works available. There are some other very good versions by Hollingdale, but Kaufmann is at least his equal, if not superior. (I base this on how the translations read, because I don't read German; German speakers may have a different opinion, but I doubt it.) You can either read about Nietzsche (Kaufmann has also written one of the best critical studies of his oeuvre), or read him and come to your own conclusions; or better yet, you can do both--but read Nietzsche first. He's an eminently readable writer and since he never wrote a systematic treatise but spead his insights over all his books in the form of aphorisms, short treatises, and some lengthy (but not too lengthy) essays, he's not difficult to understand. "God is dead" is not his central thesis, in spite of that becoming the received idea connected with him. If there is an overriding vision it would probably be more like this: what you understand of reality is a matter of perspective, and apodictic truths are as much an illusion as God. Definitely the Nietzsche collection to own, along with Kaufmann's Portable Nietzsche.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Kaufmann Translations with all Footnotes
*by A***K on July 3, 2008*

The Birth of Tragedy-75 Aphorism-Beyond Good and Evil-The Genealogy of Morals (3 Essays)-The Case of Wagner-Interpretations/commentaries A great collection, though a strange chronological leap from BOT to BGE. Right for the price and a great review of the later published books of FN. All of Kaufmann's footnotes are maintained. You'll at least want to have had read The Gay Science before coming to this, or even TSZ; Beyond Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals are NOT the place to get your feet wet and FN is not joking in Ecce Homo when he says that a close reading and familiarity with his earlier writings is necessary to delve and dredge up all that he has thought through--and to then move on to further possibilities presented by the various threads lain therein. But if you are really eager to get to these later works, do at least have some familiarity with Hegel and read the Untimely Meditations and then make the leap to this volume. Caveat: I cannot recommend the Zarathustra translation by Kaufmann, as available through the Viking Portable Library or Penguin; it is truly facile. Hollingdale's translations of the TSZ, Twilight and the AntiChrist are much preferable, thought they lack K's commentary.

## Frequently Bought Together

- Basic Writings of Nietzsche (Modern Library Classics)
- The Portable Nietzsche (Portable Library)
- The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

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