Major Works

• The Birth of Tragedy

  - Die Geburt der Tragödie, Oder: Griechenthum und Pessimismus, 3rd ed., 1886. Recommended translations:
  • The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner, trans. Walter Kaufmann, Random House, 1967.
  • The Birth of Tragedy & The Genealogy of Morals, trans. Francis Golffing, Doubleday, 1956.
  Excerpt: Whatever may be at the bottom of this questionable book, it must have been an exceptionally significant and fascinating question, and deeply personal at that: the time in which it was written, in spite of which it was written, bears witness to… More

• The Case of Wagner

  - Der Fall Wagner: Ein Musikanten-Problem, 1888. Recommended translation: The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner, trans. Walter Kaufmann, Random House, 1967.
  Excerpt: I am writing this to relieve my mind. It is not malice alone which makes me praise Bizet at the expense of Wagner in this essay. Amid a good deal of jesting I wish to make one point clear which does not admit of levity. To turn my back on Wagner was… More

• Untimely Meditations

  - Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, 1876. Recommended translation: Untimely Meditations, ed. Daniel Breazeale, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, 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 ear for… 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

Commentary

• Nietzsche as Philosopher

  - Arthur C. Danto, Nietzsche as Philosopher, MacMillan, 1965; expanded ed. Columbia University Press, 2005.
  About the book: Few philosophers are as widely read or as widely misunderstood as Friedrich Nietzsche. When Danto’s classic study was first published in 1965, many regarded Nietzsche as a brilliant but somewhat erratic thinker. Danto, however, presented… More

• Wagner and Nietzsche

  - Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Wagner and Nietzsche, trans. Joachim Neogroschel, Seabury Press, 1976.

• “Art, Truth, and Aesthetics in Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Power”

  - Arras, John D.  "Art, Truth, and Aesthetics in Nietzsche's Philosophy of Power."  Nietzsche Studien 9  (1980): 239-59.

• “Nietzsche as Aestheticist”

  - Megill, Allan.  "Nietzsche as Aestheticist." Philosophy and Literature 5 (1981): 204-225.
  Excerpt: “IF IN modern art the question of the ontological status of art has become central to art itself, so that in the guise of Duchamp’s urinal and Warhol’s Brillo boxes art has become philosophical, then surely in certain quarters… More

• “Art and Embodied Truth”

  - Baxter, Brian H.  "Art and Embodied Truth."  Mind 92, no. 366 (April  1983): 189-203.
  Excerpt: “i. The view that art is concerned with truth in some sense, and that this fact about it is essential to an explanation of its importance, has seemed to many to lie at the heart of a proper understanding of art as it has developed in western… More