Major Works

• 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

• 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

• Twilight of the Idols

  - Götzen-Dämmerung, oder, Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert, 1889. Recommended translation: Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Penguin, 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

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

• Nietzsche: IV. Nihilism

  - Heidegger, Martin. Nietzsche: IV. Nihilism. Edited, with notes and an analysis by David Farrell Krell. Translated by Frank A. Capuzzi. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1982.

• Beyond Nihilism: Nietzsche without Masks

  - Schutte, Ofelia. Beyond Nihilism: Nietzsche without Masks. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984.
  From the Publisher: “Nietzsche is regarded by some as a great liberator, a thinker far more radical than Marx. For others, he is an ideologue of power, a spokesman for domination, a protofascist. Ofelia Schutte holds that these conflicting assessments… More

• Nietzsche’s Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal Recurrence

  - Lawrence J. Hatab, Nietzsche's Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal Recurrence, Routledge, 2005.
  About the book: In this book Lawrence Hatab provides an accessible and provocative exploration of one of the best-known and still most puzzling aspects of Nietzsche’s thought: eternal recurrence, the claim that life endlessly repeats itself identically… More