Beyond Good and Evil
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 Title page of the first edition. | |
| Author | Friedrich Nietzsche |
|---|---|
| Original title | Jenseits von Gut und Böse. Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft |
| Country | Germany |
| Language | German |
| Subject | Morality, metaphysics |
| Published | 1886 |
| Media type | |
| Preceded by | Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1885) |
| Followed by | On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) |
| Text | Beyond Good and Evil at Wikisource |
Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (
According to translator Walter Kaufman, the title refers to the need for moral philosophy to go beyond simplistic black and white moralizing, as contained in statements such as "X is good" or "X is evil".[1] At the beginning of the book (§ 2), Nietzsche attacks the very idea of using strictly opposite terms such as "Good versus Evil".[1]
In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche accuses past philosophers of lacking critical sense and blindly accepting dogmatic premises in their consideration of morality. Specifically, he accuses them of founding grand metaphysical systems upon the faith that the good man is the opposite of the evil man, rather than just a different expression of the same basic impulses that find more direct expression in the evil man. The work moves into the realm "beyond
Background and themes
Of the four "late-period" writings of Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil most closely resembles the
In several places of the book, Nietzsche drops hints, and even explicit statements as to what the philosophies of the future must deal with.
Structure of the work
The work consists of a short preface dated to 1885, 296 numbered sections, and an "epode" (or "aftersong") entitled "From High Mountains". Not counting the preface or epode, the main sections are organized into nine parts:
- Part One: On the Prejudices of Philosophers
- Part Two: The Free Spirit
- Part Three: The Religious Mood
- Part Four: Apophthegms and Interludes
- Part Five: The Natural History of Morals
- Part Six: We Scholars
- Part Seven: Our Virtues
- Part Eight: Peoples and Countries
- Part Nine: What is Noble?
On philosophers, free spirits, and scholars
In the opening two parts of the book, Nietzsche discusses, in turn, the philosophers of the past, whom he accuses of a blind
He casts doubt on the project of past philosophy by asking why we should want the "truth" rather than recognizing untruth "as a condition of life." He offers an entirely psychological explanation of every past philosophy: each has been an "involuntary and unconscious memoir" on the part of its author (§ 6) and exists to justify his moral prejudices, which he solemnly baptizes as "truths".
In one passage (§ 34), Nietzsche writes that "from every point of view the erroneousness of the world in which we believe we live is the surest and firmest thing we can get our eyes on." Philosophers are wrong to rail violently against the risk of being deceived. "It is no more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than appearance." Life is nothing without appearances; it appears to Nietzsche that it follows from this that the abolition of appearances would imply the abolition of "truth" as well. Nietzsche asks the question, "what compels us to assume there exists any essential antithesis between 'true' and 'false'?"
Nietzsche singles out the
"Free spirits", by contrast to the philosophers of the past, are "investigators to the point of cruelty, with rash fingers for the ungraspable, with teeth and stomach for the most indigestible" (§ 44). Nietzsche warns against those who would suffer for the sake of truth and exhorts his readers to shun these indignant sufferers for truth and lend their ears instead to "cynics"—those who "speak 'badly' of man—but do not speak ill of him" (§ 26).
There are kinds of fearless scholars who are truly independent of prejudice (§ 6), but these "philosophical labourers and men of science in general" should not be confused with philosophers, who are "commanders and law-givers" (§ 211).
Nietzsche also subjects physics to critique. "Nature's conformity to law" is merely one interpretation of the phenomena which natural science observes; Nietzsche suggests that the same phenomena could equally be interpreted as demonstrating "the tyrannically ruthless and inexorable enforcement of power-demands" (§ 22). Nietzsche appears to espouse a strong brand of scientific anti-realism when he asserts that "It is we alone who have fabricated causes, succession, reciprocity, relativity, compulsion, number, law, freedom, motive, purpose" (§ 21).
On morality and religion
In the "pre-moral" period of mankind, actions were judged by their consequences. Over the past 10,000 years, however, a morality has developed where actions are judged by their origins (their motivations) not their consequences. This morality of intentions is, according to Nietzsche, a "prejudice" and "something provisional [...] that must be overcome" (§ 32).
Nietzsche criticizes "unegoistic morality" and demands that "Moralities must first of all be forced to bow before order of rank" (§ 221). Every "high culture" begins by recognizing "the pathos of distance"[3] (§ 257).
Nietzsche contrasts southern (
Religion has always been connected to "three dangerous dietary prescriptions: solitude,
Nietzsche argues that more than what they value as "good" distinguishes noble and base. Even where agreement exists over what is good, what men consider a sufficient sign of possessing what is good differs (§ 194). Nietzsche describes love as the desire to possess a woman. The most unrefined form of the desire is also the most readily identifiable as a desire to possess another: control over the woman's body. A subtler desire to possess her also wants her soul, and thus wants her to be willing to sacrifice herself for her lover. Nietzsche describes this as a more complete possession. A still more refined desire to possess her prompts a concern that she might be willing to sacrifice what she desires for a mistaken image of her lover. This leads some lovers to want their women to know them deep down so that their sacrifice really is a sacrifice for them. A similar rank-ordering applies to statesmen, the less refined not caring whether they attain power by fraud, the more refined not taking pleasure in the people's love unless they love the statesman for who he really is. In both cases, the more spiritualized form of the desire to possess also demands one possess what is good more completely.
In § 259, Nietzsche states that to not injure, exploit or be violent to others as a general principle of society is "a Will to the denial of life, a principle of dissolution and decay." He goes on to argue that life is "essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak."
On nations, peoples and cultures
Nietzsche discusses the complexities of the German soul (§ 244), praises the
as representing a "debasement and devaluation of the concept 'philosopher' for more than a century" (§ 252). Nietzsche also touches on problems of translation and the leaden quality of the German language (§ 28).In a prophetic statement, Nietzsche proclaims that "The time for petty politics is past: the very next century will bring with it the struggle for mastery over the whole earth" (§ 208).
Aphorisms and poetry
Between § 62 and § 186 Nietzsche inserts a collection of mostly single-sentence aphorisms, modelled on
The work concludes with a short ode to friendship in verse form (continuing Nietzsche's use of poetry in The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra).
Editions
- Jenseits von Gut und Böse. Zur Genealogie der Moral, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2002 (study edition of the standard German Nietzsche edition)
- Beyond Good and Evil, translated by ISBN 0-679-60000-0
- Beyond Good and Evil, translated by R. J. Hollingdale, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973; revised reprint 1990 with introduction by Michael Tanner
- Beyond Good and Evil, translated by ISBN 0-486-29868-X
- Beyond Good and Evil, translated by Marion Faber, Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, 1998
- Beyond Good and Evil, translated by Judith Norman and edited by Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002
Commentary
- ISBN 978-3-11-029307-4(the comprehensive standard commentary on Beyond Good and Evil – only available in German).
Notes
- ^ ISBN 0-679-60000-0.
- ISBN 0-486-29868-X.
- ^ Wallace, Meg (21 February 2012). "Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morals". Archived from the original on 21 February 2012. Retrieved 24 August 2022.
Further reading
- "On the Significance of Genealogy in Nietzsche's Critique of Morality", by Carsten Korfmacher
External links
- Beyond Good and Evil at Standard Ebooks
- Beyond Good and Evil at English-languageedition
- Beyond Good and Evil at German-languageedition
Beyond Good and Evil public domain audiobook at LibriVox- A searchable, self-referential edition with concordance
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