Beyond Good and Evil

The 1886 book he paid to print himself, restating in hard argument what Zarathustra had preached in image — and one almost nobody bought.

by Friedrich Nietzsche344 passages held

German, the original language

Original title: Jenseits von Gut und Böse
First published: 1886(aged 42)
Original language: German

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Overview

Its subtitle promises a "Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future," and Nietzsche paid for that future out of his own pocket: the Leipzig house of C. G. Naumann printed it in 1886 at the author's expense, three hundred copies, of which about a hundred and fourteen had sold a year later. The book turns the visions of Thus Spake Zarathustra into direct attack. Nietzsche opens on philosophers themselves, arguing that their great systems are not disinterested inquiries but confessions — the involuntary memoir of a prejudice, dressed up as logic. He denies the free will that moral blame depends on, since to be the cause of oneself is impossible; he denies that we can read our own motives; against the equality of souls he sets a world of rank and difference. Under it all runs the will to power, offered as the drive beneath the drives. And he sketches the contrast the next year's Genealogy would develop at length: a "master" morality that calls itself good out of strength, and a "slave" morality that first brands the strong as evil. Like the rest of the late books it sold in tens rather than thousands, and found its audience only once its author could no longer know it.

Key concepts

What is the will to power?

The will to power is Nietzsche's proposed drive beneath all drives: not merely a will to survive or to pleasure, but a fundamental striving to grow, discharge strength, master resistance and impose form. In this book he floats it as the single principle that even our thinking and moralising secretly express. Life itself, he suggests, is will to power, and every value is some form of it.

What are master morality and slave morality?

They are the two value-systems Nietzsche contrasts. Master morality springs from strength: the powerful call themselves and their own qualities good, and whatever is weak bad, with no resentment involved. Slave morality springs from weakness: those who cannot act strike back in imagination, branding the strong evil and their own meekness good. Our inherited morality, he argues, is largely the slaves' creation.

What does Nietzsche mean by perspectivism?

Perspectivism is his claim that there are no facts seen from nowhere, only interpretations made from some particular standpoint, interest and set of drives. There is no view from outside every perspective against which to check them. This does not mean every opinion is equally good — some perspectives are richer, more honest, more life-serving — but it denies the philosopher's dream of pure, disinterested objectivity.

Why does he call philosophy a confession?

Because Nietzsche argues that a great system is not disinterested inquiry but the involuntary memoir of its author — a personal prejudice, drive or moral aim dressed up afterward as impersonal logic. Every philosophy tells you who its philosopher was and what he needed to be true. The first question about any system, then, is not is it proven but who is speaking, and why.

What does the title beyond good and evil mean?

It marks the standpoint the book tries to reach: not beyond good and bad as such, but beyond the specific moral opposition of good and evil that slave morality invented. To go beyond it is to stop taking that scheme as the natural, only measure of value, and to judge instead by rank, strength and what serves life. The title is a programme, not a licence for cruelty.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

The Prejudice of the Philosophers

Great systems are not disinterested inquiries but confessions, the involuntary memoir of a prejudice dressed as logic. If we cannot read our own motives and cannot be the cause of ourselves, what becomes of the philosopher's claim to truth?

Opening on philosophers themselves, Nietzsche argues that every grand metaphysics betrays the private drives of its author, so the will to truth is really a will governed by instinct and rank. He denies the free will on which moral blame rests, since to be the cause of oneself is impossible, and denies that introspection reaches our real motives. Beneath the drives he sets the will to power as the single explanatory principle. Perspectivism follows: there are no immaculate facts, only interpretations serving some form of life. The argument is offered as a prelude to a philosophy of the future.

psychology
subjectivity
truth
skepticism
epistemology
perspectivism
self-deception
instinct
intellectual honesty

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Master and Slave Morality

Against the equality of souls Nietzsche sets a world of rank. Two moralities are sketched: a master morality that calls itself good out of strength, and a slave morality that first brands the strong as evil, the contrast the Genealogy would develop at length.

Turning Zarathustra's images into direct argument, the book proposes that good has meant two opposite things. The noble type names itself good from a feeling of fullness and power, calling what is low bad almost in passing; the powerless invert the scale, branding the strong evil and their own meekness good. Nietzsche reads modern morality as the victory of the second over the first, and hears in the equality of souls a lingering slave instinct. Paid for out of his own pocket and barely sold, the book laid the groundwork the next year's polemic would drive home.

morality
ethics
values
resentment
human nature
conformity
character
religion

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Within this work

passages held: 344
distinct concepts: 524
by passages held, corpus-wide: #220

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “morality” and “religion”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 21 pairings. 90 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
morality	religion	5
gender	love	4
knowledge	morality	4
knowledge	religion	4
love	moral psychology	4
love	morality	4
love	religion	4
moral psychology	morality	4
morality	truth	3
gender	knowledge	2
knowledge	philosophy	2
knowledge	truth	2
philosophy	truth	2
religion	truth	2
gender	religion	1
gender	truth	1
knowledge	moral psychology	1
moral psychology	philosophy	1
moral psychology	religion	1
morality	philosophy	1
philosophy	religion	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1869 Homer and Classical Philology (Homer und die klassische Philologie)
His inaugural lecture at Basel, given at twenty-four — the philologist's public debut, and already the argument that would raise art above scholarship.
DE
1872 The Birth of Tragedy or Hellenism and Pessimism (Die Geburt der Tragödie)
His first book, and the one that cost him his standing among classicists; its discursive prophecy he would spend the next decade outgrowing.
DEEN
1878 Human, All Too Human (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches: Ein Buch für freie Geister)
The turn from Wagnerian metaphysics to the cool aphorist — the book in which the "free spirit" first speaks in his own voice.
DE
1881 The Dawn of Day (Morgenröte)
The book Nietzsche later marked as the start of his campaign against morality — the least read of the mature works, and the seed of the Genealogy.
DE
1882 The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza)
Aphorism 125 gives us the madman and "God is dead"; aphorism 341, the eternal return — the most personal of the mature books.
DEEN
1883 Thus Spake Zarathustra (Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen)
His one work of fiction and his most famous, written across 1883–85; the fourth part he withheld from the public entirely.
DEEN
1886 Beyond Good and Evil (Jenseits von Gut und Böse) you are here DE
1887 The Genealogy of Morals (Zur Genealogie der Moral)
Three treatises, written quickly in 1887 as a "supplement" to Beyond Good and Evil — his most sustained argument and his most studied book.
DEEN
1888 The Case of Wagner (Der Fall Wagner)
His settling of accounts with the composer he had idolised, written in the same 1888 burst as Twilight of the Idols.
DE
1889 Twilight of the Idols (Götzendämmerung)
A short, savage précis of his whole philosophy, written in a week in 1888 as his last lucid year ran out.
DE
1895 Nietzsche contra Wagner (Nietzsche Kontra Wagner)
A montage of passages taken from his own earlier books, put together at the very end to show he had judged Wagner rightly all along.
DE
1895 The Antichrist (Der Antichrist)
Intended as the first book of the "revaluation of all values" he did not live to finish — his fiercest word on Christianity, held back until 1895.
DE
1896 On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinne)
An essay he left in manuscript in 1873; its picture of truth as forgotten metaphor did its real work a century later.
DE
1896 We Philologists (Wir Philologen)
The scholar's turn against his own discipline: notes for an "untimely meditation" on philology that he abandoned around 1875.
DE
1901 The Will to Power (Der Wille zur Macht)
The most notorious book under his name, and one he never assembled: his sister and Peter Gast made it from his notebooks after his collapse.
DE
1908 Ecce Homo (Ecce Homo: Wie Man Wird Was Man Ist)
His last book, a self-portrait written weeks before the collapse and kept from print by his sister until 1908.
DE
1921 Aufsätze und Vorreden aus dem Nachlaß
Not a book he wrote but a volume his editors gathered from his early papers — prefaces to books he never actually wrote among them.
DE

— or open another of their works