A Nietzsche Compendium

by Friedrich Nietzsche, David Taffel (Introduction)

This convenient new compendium contains the five most philosophically significant of Nietzsche’s post-Thus Spoke Zarathustra writings. Nietzsche wrote of these works that he intended them as “fish hooks” for catching readers who shared his sense that a cataclysmic shift in human psychology had suddenly occurred with the advent of nihilism – the uncanny and pervasive feeling that life is devoid of all meaning, purpose, and value. Taken together these books offer the reader a definitive account of Nietzsche’s mature philosophy as he intended it to be presented and a sweeping attack upon everything the modern Western world holds to be good about itself.

Genres: Philosophy

560 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture, who became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24, but resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties, with paralysis and probably vascular dementia. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900, after experiencing pneumonia and multiple strokes.
Nietzsche's work spans philosophical polemics, poetry, cultural criticism, and fiction while displaying a fondness for aphorism and irony. Prominent elements of his philosophy include his radical critique of truth in favour of perspectivism; a genealogical critique of religion and Christian morality and a related theory of master–slave morality; the aesthetic affirmation of life in response to both the "death of God" and the profound crisis of nihilism; the notion of Apollonian and Dionysian forces; and a characterisation of the human subject as the expression of competing wills, collectively understood as the will to power. He also developed influential concepts such as the Übermensch and his doctrine of eternal return. In his later work, he became increasingly preoccupied with the creative powers of the individual to overcome cultural and moral mores in pursuit of new values and aesthetic health. His body of work touched a wide range of topics, including art, philology, history, music, religion, tragedy, culture, and science, and drew inspiration from Greek tragedy as well as figures such as Zoroaster, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Wagner, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
After his death, Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth became the curator and editor of his manuscripts. She edited his unpublished writings to fit her German ultranationalist ideology, often contradicting or obfuscating Nietzsche's stated opinions, which were explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism. Through her published editions, Nietzsche's work became associated with fascism and Nazism. 20th-century scholars such as Walter Kaufmann, R.J. Hollingdale, and Georges Bataille defended Nietzsche against this interpretation, and corrected editions of his writings were soon made available. Nietzsche's thought enjoyed renewed popularity in the 1960s and his ideas have since had a profound impact on 20th- and early 21st-century thinkers across philosophy—especially in schools of continental philosophy such as existentialism, postmodernism, and post-structuralism—as well as art, literature, music, poetry, politics, and popular culture.

Reviews

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm through the first book. But I cannot seem to come into the home stretch. I'm really trying and he's a brilliant philosopher. But it's like wrestling with a baby bear.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I began reading this book sometime before I met my husband, in fact I was reading it in the coffee shop when we met; 8 years of marriage, two children and many times of picking it up and putting it down and I’m proud to say I’ve finished this collection.

The Will to Power will always be my favorite work by Nietzsche, but I especially enjoyed Beyond Good and Evil and the Antichrist. I would most certainly recommend it for anyone who follows philosophy.

Have you understood me? Dionysus versus Christ.

[michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only read Ecce Homo in this volume.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Damn, Nietzsche is one depressing dude. I don’t really agree with many of his beliefs, and I sometimes wonder, if he really believed in the philosophy nihilism then why waste time writing all of those books? If everything is meaningless and nothing is eternal, why is it so important that I not be deceived by the lies of other philosophies? In a nihilistic universe, isn’t the very truth that nihilism promises to bring (and by extension nihilism itself) useless? In which case, what’s wrong with me spending my useless life eating shrooms and watching Teletubbies instead of reading “Twilight of the Idols” and screaming into the void? But, to be fair Nietzsche did spend the last ten years of his life in an almost catatonic stupor, so maybe he did walk the walk. I Don’t know if I can get through this, but I guess if I’m going to continue disparaging his ideas I should at least read them first-hand.

[Jerrod · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great compendium or the five works meant to follow and elucidate 'Thus Spake Zarathustra'