Human, All Too Human (1878) marks the point where Nietzsche abandons German romanticism for the French Enlightenment. The result is one of the cornerstones of his life's work. Beyond Good and Evil (1886) is a scathing and powerful critique of philosophy, religion and science.

This is Friedrich Nietzsche's seminal work; "Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits" - first published in 1878. It constitutes the first work in his signature aphoristic style, discussing many different concepts in brief paragraphs and sentences. The 638 aphorisms are divided into nine sections by subject, with a short poem as an epilogue. This fantastic book is highly recommended for students of philosophy, and is not to be missed by fans of Nietzsche's work. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 - 1900) was a German philosopher, poet, composer, and scholar. He wrote numerous critical essays on morality, culture, philosophy, science, and religion - radically questioning the value and objectivity of truth. Many antiquarian texts such as this, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are increasingly hard to come by and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this book now in an affordable, modern, high quality edition. It comes complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.

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Originally published as separate volumes as Mixed Opinions and Maxims (1879) and The Wanderer and His Shadow (1880), the two works included here continue the aphoristic style begun in Volume I of Nietzsche's "Book for Free Spirits" and offer a window into the intellectual sources behind his evolution as a philosopher.

This book presents a provocative new interpretation of what is arguably Nietzsche's most important and most difficult work, Beyond Good and Evil.

Chemistry of the Notions and the Feelings.-Philosophical problems, in almost all their aspects, present themselves in the same interrogative formula now that they did two thousand years ago: how can a thing develop out of its antithesis? for example, the reasonable from the nonreasonable, the animate from the inanimate, the logical from the illogical, altruism from egoism, disinterestedness from greed, truth from error? The metaphysical philosophy formerly steered itself clear of this difficulty to such extent as to repudiate the evolution of one thing from another and to assign a miraculous origin to what it deemed highest and best, due to the very nature and being of the "thing-in-itself." The historical philosophy, on the other hand, which can no longer be viewed apart from physical science, the youngest of all philosophical methods, discovered experimentally (and its results will probably always be the same) that there is no antithesis whatever, except in the usual exaggerations of popular or metaphysical comprehension, and that an error of the reason is at the bottom of such contradiction. According to its explanation, there is, strictly speaking, neither unselfish conduct, nor a wholly disinterested point of view. Both are simply sublimations in which the basic element seems almost evaporated and betrays its presence only to the keenest observation. All that we need and that could possibly be given us in the present state of development of the sciences, is a chemistry of the moral, religious, aesthetic conceptions and feeling, as well as of those emotions which we experience in the affairs, great and small, of society and civilization, and which we are sensible of even in solitude. But what if this chemistry established the fact that, even in its domain, the most magnificent results were attained with the basest and most despised ingredients? Would many feel disposed to continue such investigations? Mankind loves to put by the questions of its origin and beginning: must one not be almost inhuman in order to follow the opposite course?

Introduction by Peter Gay Translated and edited by Walter Kaufmann Commentary by Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, and Gilles Deleuze 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. Includes a Modern Library Reading Group Guide