Beyond Good and Evil (Penguin Classics)
by Friedrich Nietzsche
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Book Summary Information
Author: Friedrich NietzscheIntroduction: R. J. Hollingdale
Translator: R. J. Hollingdale
Introduction: Michael Tanner
Edition: Paperback
Audio: German (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2003-04-29
ISBN: 014044923X
Number of pages: 240
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Book Reviews of Beyond Good and Evil (Penguin Classics)
Book Review: Vastly Overrated
Summary: 2 Stars
I figured this would be a good introduction to the writings of Nietzsche. While I believe it was, I was sorely disappointed in what I found.
In the first part of the book Nietzsche finds fault with every school of philosophy aside from his own. In this section, he raises several valid concerns about the direction and limitation of philosophy to date. In particular, he points out that philosphy has been tied to the tyrrany of words and word opposites (a favorite trap Plato falls into), and that it often is simply an exercise in edifying one's own pre-existing prejudices. He then acts as a guide to these traps by falling into them. Repeatedly.
For example, he generally mocks other philosophers by posing quotes and then asking what it says about the philosopher rather than the subject matter, but if we take this same process and apply it to Nietzsche's work, we get a sad picture of an antisemitic, misogynistic, power-hungry, racial purist who believes in modernism.
At the same time, having read just before this W. Guthrie's translation of Plato's Protagoran and Meno I found that Nietzsche seemed in my mind to be reinventing (perhaps intentionally) the arguments of the Greek Sophists but seemed vastly inferior in wisdom to Protagoras (interestingly the only philosopher he quotes and does not dismiss off-hand). I found Plato's arguments vastly more convincing than Nietzsche's despite the fact that I managed to identify many logical problems with the same arguments (most notably confusing words and concepts, which Plato seems to do quite frequently).
I suppose Nietzsche's great accomplishment was to essentially to badly re-invent the Greek Sophist traditions which lay to some extent at the origin of European philosophy.
At the same time, this *is* an influential work in the modern world and probably should be read for historical purposes.
Summary of Beyond Good and Evil (Penguin Classics)
New chronology and further readingTranslated by R. J. Hollingdale
Introduction by Michael Tanner.
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