Beyond Good and Evil / On the Genealogy of Morality: Volume 8 (The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche)

Description

Beyond Good and Evil is Nietzsche's first sustained philosophical treatment of issues important to him. Unlike the expository prose of the essayistic period (1872-76), the stylized forays and jabs of the aphoristic period (1878-82), and the lyrical-philosophical rhetoric of the Zarathustra-period (1882-85), Beyond Good and Evil inscribes itself boldly into the history of philosophy, challenging ancient and modern notions of philosophy's achievements and insisting on a new task for "new philosophers." This is a watershed book for Nietzsche and for philosophy in the modern era. On the Genealogy of Morality applies Nietzsche's celebrated genealogical method, honed in the earlier aphoristic writings, to the problem of morality's influence on the human species. In three treatises that strikingly anticipate insights appearing much later in Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), Nietzsche provides an anthropological psychograph of our species, revealing the origins of the concepts of good and evil, the roles played by guilt and bad conscience, and the persistence of ascetic ideals. Manifesting a hopeful yet unsentimental assessment of the human condition, these books resonated throughout the 20th century and continue to exert broad appeal. Review: a reliable, helpful, well bound edition - this latest addition to the stanford nietzsche series offers the two works that are probably the best introduction to nietzsche's thought and style ("Suppose Truth is a woman — what then?"). the translation is excellent and thoroughly reliable, if not quite as insightful as the kaufmann version; the endnotes are helpful, if not quite as trenchant as the kaufmann footnotes; the source text is definitive, based on the "study" edition or Kritische Studienausgabe by behler and magnus of the scholarly edition or Kritische Gesamtausgabe of colli and montinari. the quality of the binding and paper is irreproachable, although i regret that this edition lacks the marginal numbering and placemark ribbon of the first volumes in the stanford series. i don't know why the stanford project has proceeded so slowly and fitfully, but in general nietzsche editions have historically taken a long time to prepare (if not thoroughly botched in translation). it seems in more ways than in mere documentation and interpretation, the man poses great obstacles to posterity. this makes even more admirable the virtuosic editorial achievement and translation genius of walter kaufmann's version, still available (with many other of nietzsche's works) in the modern library "basic writings of friedrich nietzsche". five decades after it was first published, that remains the essential volume of nietzsche that everyone interested in this philosopher should own and study.