"This text examines the intellectual partnership of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Paul Ree (1849-1901), combining biography with philosophy to give an account of a friendship that made major contributions to modern thought"--Provided bypublisher.

This book contains the first English translations of The Origin of the Moral Sensations and Psychological Observations, the two most important works by the German philosopher Paul Rée. These essays present Rée’s moral philosophy, which influenced the ideas of his close friend Friedrich Nietzsche considerably. Nietzsche scholars have often incorrectly attributed to him arguments and ideas that are Rée’s and have failed to detect responses to Rée’s works in Nietzsche’s writings. Rée’s thinking combined two strands: a pessimistic conception of human nature, presented in the French moralists’ aphoristic style that would become a mainstay of Nietzsche’s own writings, and a theory of morality derived from Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Rée’s moral Darwinism was a central factor prompting Nietzsche to write On the Genealogy of Morals and the groundwork for much of today’s “evolutionary ethics.” In an illuminating critical introduction, Robin Small examines Rée’s life and work, locating his application of evolutionary concepts to morality within a broader history of Darwinism while exploring Rée’s theoretical and personal relationship with Nietzsche. In placing Nietzsche in his intellectual and social context, Small profoundly challenges the myth of Nietzsche as a solitary thinker.

This English translation of Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken offers a rare, intimate view of the philosopher by Lou Salomé, a free-thinking, Russian-born intellectual to whom Nietzsche proposed marriage at only their second meeting. Published in 1894 as its subject languished in madness, Salomé's book rode the crest of a surge of interest in Nietzsche's iconoclastic philosophy. She discusses his writings and such biographical events as his break with Wagner, attempting to ferret out the man in the midst of his works. Salomé's provocative conclusion -- that Nietzsche's madness was the inevitable result of his philosophical views -- generated considerable controversy. Nietzsche's sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, dismissed the book as a work of fantasy. Yet the philosopher's longtime acquaintance Erwin Rohde wrote, "Nothing better or more deeply experienced or perceived has ever been written about Nietzsche." Siegfried Mandel's extensive introduction examines the circumstances that brought Lou Salomé and Nietzsche together and the ideological conflicts that drove them apart.

Provides comprehensive and up-to-date coverage of Nietzsche's philosophy, his key works and themes, his major influences and his legacy.

During years of close friendship, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Paul Rée (1849-1901) shared ideas and developed a new and original approach to philosophy and ethics. The course of their partnership, from its origins in shared hopes to its ending in a painful breakdown of personal relations, is the subject of this book. The full story has not been told before. Some of its biographical aspects - especially the three-sided relationship involving the young Lou Salomé which had severe emotional consequences for Nietzsche - have been known. Yet many personal details are presented here for the first time. The philosophical account is equally absorbing, showing how this collaboration was a crucial stage on Nietzsche's way toward his most original and radical contributions to philosophy. 'Réealism' was the label Nietzsche gave to Rée's naturalistic doctrine, which drew on the evolutionary theory of natural selection to explain the moral concepts of good, evil, conscience and justice. Just as importantly, Rée wrote in a cool, highly disciplined style, very different from most German writers of the time. Both aspects of his work made a strong impact on Nietzsche, who developed this project in his own way in a series of works starting with Human, All-Too-Human. Yet he eventually came to criticise and reject 'Réealism' as inadequate to the task of a revaluation of values, and replaced the 'historical approach' with his own genealogy of morality. In a strikingly poetic passage in The Gay Science, Nietzsche describes a 'star friendship': the brief meeting of two stars whose paths cross and then diverge forever, perhaps as part of some pattern beyond their knowledge. This book gives the 'star friendship' of Nietzsche and Rée the treatment it has always needed. In doing so, it brings to light fresh aspects of one of the most important of modern thinkers.

Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary thinkers in Western philosophy. Here he sets out his subversive views in a series of aphorisms on subjects ranging from art to arrogance, boredom to passion, science to vanity, rejecting conventional notions of morality to celebrate the individual’s ‘will to power’. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves – and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives – and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

No other modern philosopher has proved as influential as Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and none is as poorly understood. In the first new biography in decades, Rüdiger Safranski, one of the foremost living Nietzsche scholars, re-creates the anguished life of Nietzsche while simultaneously assessing the philosophical implications of his morality, religion, and art. Struggling to break away from the oppressive burdens of the past, Nietzsche invented a unique philosophy based on compulsive self-consciousness and constant self-revision. As groundbreaking as it will be long-lasting, this biography offers a brilliant, multifaceted portrait of a towering figure.