Commentary

[in chronological order]

Leo Strauss Seminar on Nietzsche

- Strauss, Leo. "Transcript of Seminar on Nietzsche." University of Chicago, 1967. Leo Strauss Archives. https://leostrausscenter.uchicago.edu
Transcripts of a 1967 seminar course given by Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago on Nietzsche’s works, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals. Excerpt: It is customary and justified to some extent to speak of… More

The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche

- Gemes, Ken and John Richardson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
The diversity of Nietzsche’s books, and the sheer range of his philosophical interests, have posed daunting challenges to his interpreters. This Handbook addresses this multiplicity by devoting each of its 32 essays to a focused topic, picked out by the… More

The Flame of Eternity: An Interpretation of Nietzsche’s Thought

-
Michalski, Krzysztof. The Flame of Eternity: An Interpretation of Nietzsche’s Thought. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012.
From the Publisher: “The Flame of Eternity provides a reexamination and new interpretation of Nietzsche’s philosophy and the central role that the concepts of eternity and time, as he understood them, played in it. According to Krzysztof… More

Introductions to Nietzsche

- Pippin, Robert. Introductions to Nietzsche. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.  
From the Publisher: “The perfect package for Nietzsche scholars and for anyone interested in Nietzsche studies. This book is an up-to-date and authoritative overview of the thought of this fascinating figure. For everything Nietzsche, this unusual… More

The Soul of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil

- Maudemarie Clark and David Dudrick, The Soul of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, Cambridge University Press, 2012.
From the publisher: This book presents a provocative new interpretation of Beyond Good and Evil, arguably Nietzsche’s most important work. The problem is that it appears to express merely a loosely connected set of often questionable opinions. Can… More

“Thinking Nietzsche Through and Leo Strauss’ Recovery of Classical Political Philosophy”

- Baldwin, Christopher.  "Thinking Nietzsche Through and Leo Strauss' Recovery of Classical Political Philosophy."  Klesis-Revue 19 (2011).
Excerpt: “Leo Strauss is best and rightfully known for his recovery and defense of classical political philosophy. As a young man, however, Strauss was fascinated and persuaded by the thought of Nietzsche, a trenchant critic of the thought Strauss would… More

Nietzsche’s Enlightenment: The Free-Spirit Trilogy of the Middle Period

- Paul Franco, Nietzsche's Enlightenment: The Free-Spirit Trilogy of the Middle Period, University of Chicago Press, 2011.
About the book: While much attention has been lavished on Friedrich Nietzsche’s earlier and later works, those of his so-called middle period have been generally neglected, perhaps because of their aphoristic style or perhaps because they are perceived to… More

Nietzsche’s Political Skepticism

- Shaw, Tamsin. Nietzsche’s Political Skepticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.
From the Publisher: “Political theorists have long been frustrated by Nietzsche’s work. Although he develops profound critiques of morality, culture, and religion, it is very difficult to spell out the precise political implications of his… More

Nietzsche’s Noble Aims: Affirming Life, Contesting Modernity

- Kirkland, Paul E. Nietzsche’s Noble Aims: Affirming Life, Contesting Modernity. Lexington Books, 2009.
From the Publisher: “This innovative volume presents an account of Nietzsche’s claims about noble, life-affirming ways of life, analyzes the source of such claims, and explores the political vision that springs from them. Kirkland elucidates the… More

Eros in Plato, Rousseau, and Nietzsche the Politics of Infinity

- Cooper, Laurence D. Eros in Plato, Rousseau, and Nietzsche the Politics of Infinity. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008.
From the Publisher: “Human beings are restless souls, ever driven by an insistent inner force not only to have more but to be more—to be infinitely more. Various philosophers have emphasized this type of ceaseless striving in their accounts of… More
View More Commentary »

Major Works

Twilight of the Idols

- Götzen-Dämmerung, oder, Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert, 1889. Recommended translation: Nietzsche, Friedrich. Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin Books, 1977.
Excerpt: In every age the wisest have passed the identical judgment on life: it is worthless. . . . Everywhere and always their mouths have uttered the same sound – a sound full of doubt, full of melancholy, full of weariness with life, full of opposition… More

The Will to Power

- Der Wille zur Macht, ed. Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, Heinrich Köselitz, Ernst Horneffer, and August Horneffer, 1901, 1906. Recommended translation: The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, ed., with commentary, Walter Kaufmann, Vintage, 1968.
Excerpt: Book One, European Nihilism 1. Nihilism stands at the door: whence comes this uncanniest of all guests? Point of departure: it is an error to consider “social distress” or “physiological degeneration” or, worse, corruption,… More

The Antichrist

- Der Antichrist, 1895. Recommended translation: The Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Penguin, 1977.
Excerpt: –Let us look each other in the face. We are Hyperboreans–we know well enough how remote our place is. “Neither by land nor by water will you find the road to the Hyperboreans”: even Pindar,in his day, knew that much about… More

Ecce Homo

- Ecce homo: Wie man wird, was man ist, 1908. Recommended translations: On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann, Vintage Books, 1969. Ecce Homo: How One Becomes what One Is, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Penguin, 1982.
Excerpt: The happiness of my existence, its unique character perhaps, lies in its fatefulness: expressing it in the form of a riddle, as my own father I am already dead, as my own mother I still live and, grow old. This double origin, taken as it were from… More

Beyond Good and Evil

- Jenseits von Gut und Böse: Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft, 1886. Recommended translation: Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House, 1966.  
Excerpt: The will to truth which will still tempt us to many a venture, that famous truthfulness of which all philosophers so far have spoken with respect—what questions has this will to truth not laid before us! What strange, wicked, questionable… More

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

- Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen, 1883. Recommended translation: Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and No One. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin Books, 1961.
Excerpt: When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home, and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it. But at last his heart changed,—and rising one morning… More

The Gay Science

- Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882. Recommended translations: Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science, with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House, 1974. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science (The Joyful Wisdom). Translated by Thomas Common. New York: Macmillan Co., 1924.
Excerpt: 1. Invitation Take a chance and try my fare: It will grow on you, I swear; Soon it will taste good to you. If by then you should want more, All the things I’ve done before Will inspire things quite new. 2. My Happiness Since I grew tired of the… More

Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

- Morgenröte: Gedanken über die moralischen Vorurteile, 1881. Recommended translation: Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, ed. Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Excerpt: 1. In this book you will discover a ‘subterranean man’ at work, one who tunnels and mines and undermines. You will see him—presupposing you have eyes capable of seeing this work in the depths—going forward slowly, cautiously,… More

Human, All Too Human

- Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, 1878. Recommended translations:
  • Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, trans. Marion Faber, with Stephen Lehmann, with introduction and notes by Marion Faber, University of Nebraska Press, 1984, 1986.
  • Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, 2nd ed., trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Excerpt: Often enough, and always with great consternation, people have told me that there is something distinctive in all my writings, from The Birth of Tragedy to the most recently publishedPrologue to a Philosophy of the Future. All of them, I have been… More

Untimely Meditations

- Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, 1876. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Untimely Meditations. Edited by Daniel Breazeale. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, 1997.
Excerpt: “I. David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer Public opinion in Germany seems almost to forbid discussion of the evil and perilous consequences of a war, and especially of one that has ended victoriously: there is thus all the more ready an… More
View More Major Works »

Multimedia

Other Works

Unpublished Letters

- Recommended translation: Unpublished Letters, trans. and ed. Kurt F. Leidecker, Philosophical Library, 1959.
Excerpt: To Elisabeth Nietzsche (Pforta, end of November 1861) Dear Liese: — Since I owe you a letter for quite some time I shall write you an especially fine one now, provided my clumsy pen will not prevent me. Probably there is nothing with which I can… More

On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life

- "Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben," 1874. Reprinted in Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, 1876. Recommended Translation: On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life, trans. Peter Preuss, Hackett, 1980.
Excerpt: “Moreover I hate everything which merely instructs me without increasing or directly quickening my activity.” These are Goethe’s words with which, as with a boldly expressed ceterum censeo, we may begin our consideration of the… More