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Beyond Good and Evil

1886 · by Friedrich Nietzsche

Prelude to a philosophy of the future – against the prejudices of philosophers.

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Introduction

Nietzsche had the book printed at his own expense in 1886; its 296 numbered sections are grouped into nine parts and close with a poem. It restates many thoughts of Zarathustra in prose. The first part attacks the “prejudices of philosophers”: their faith in opposed values, in the immediate certainty of “I think” and in free will. Later parts deal with the “free spirit”, religion, the “natural history of morals”, scholarship, the peoples of Europe and the question of what is noble. Nietzsche develops perspectivism and the will to power as an interpretation of the world, and introduces the distinction between master and slave morality that the Genealogy would elaborate.

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