Beyond Good and Evil
Also known as Jenseits von Gut und Böse: Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future
Friedrich Nietzsche's 1886 attack on past philosophers' moral prejudices.
At a glance
Key ideas
Against opposites, Philosophy as memoir, Truth and appearance …
See all 5Connections
Also on this page: Key facts · Links · Sources · Related pages
- Nietzsche takes up the ideas of Thus Spoke Zarathustra with a more polemical approach.
- He accuses past philosophers of blindly accepting dogmatic moral premises, above all that the good man is the opposite of the evil one.
- He explains self-consciousness, knowledge, truth and free will as inventions of the moral consciousness, and offers the will to power in their place.
- The book is written mostly in aphorisms, in 296 numbered sections.
Why it matters
- It is one of the two books, with On the Genealogy of Morality, where his account of master and slave morality is central.
Key facts
- Author
- Friedrich Nietzsche1
- Published
- 1886, C. G. Naumann, Leipzig, at the author's own expense1
- First English translation
- Helen Zimmern, 19061
- Later translations
- Walter Kaufmann (1966), R. J. Hollingdale (1973), Marion Faber (1998), Judith Norman (2002), Adrian Del Caro (2014)1
- Structure
- A preface dated 1885, 296 numbered sections in nine parts, and an epode, "From High Mountains"1
Key ideas
-
Against opposites1
He attacks the idea of strictly opposite terms such as "Good versus Evil" (§ 2).
-
Philosophy as memoir1
Every past philosophy is an "involuntary and unconscious memoir" of its author's moral prejudices (§ 6).
-
Truth and appearance1
"It is no more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than appearance" (§ 34).
-
Order of rank1
Moralities "must first of all be forced to bow before order of rank" (§ 221).
-
The abyss1
"He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster."
Connections
Written by
Links
Sources
Last checked against its sources today
Is something on this page wrong or out of date? Tell us
The line under a date fills as time passes: empty when new, then one equal share each for a day, a week, a month and a year. For episodes and other items it is full at 2 years; for "last checked", at a year. A striped line means the date is known only to the month or year.