The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it: it is here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely.Christianity is Platonism for the 'people' Ĭhapter I: On the Prejudices of Philosophers Aphorism 4.Christenthum ist Platonismus für's „Volk“.It seems that in order to inscribe themselves upon the heart of humanity with everlasting claims, all great things have first to wander about the earth as enormous and awe-inspiring caricatures.Es scheint, dass alle grossen Dinge, um der Menschheit sich mit ewigen Forderungen in das Herz einzuschreiben, erst als ungeheure und furchteinflössende Fratzen über die Erde hinwandeln müssen.6 Chapter V: The Natural History of Morals.2 Chapter I: On the Prejudices of Philosophers.The work moves into the realm 'beyond good and evil' in the sense of leaving behind the traditional morality which Nietzsche subjects to a destructive critique in favour of what he regards as an affirmative approach that fearlessly confronts the perspectival nature of knowledge and the perilous condition of the modern individual.

Specifically, he accuses them of founding grand metaphysical systems upon the faith that the good man is the opposite of the evil man, rather than just a different expression of the same basic impulses that find more direct expression in the evil man. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche accuses past philosophers of lacking critical sense and blindly accepting dogmatic premises in their consideration of morality.

At the beginning of the book (§ 2), Nietzsche attacks the very idea of using strictly opposite terms such as 'Good versus Evil'. Naumann of Leipzig at the author's own expense and first translated into English by Helen Zimmern, who was two years younger than Nietzsche and knew the author.Īccording to translator Walter Kaufman, the title refers to the need for moral philosophy to go beyond simplistic black and white moralizing, as contained in statements such as 'X is good' or 'X is evil'. It was first published in 1886 under the publishing house C. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (German: Jenseits von Gut und Böse: Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft) is a book by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche that covers ideas in his previous work Thus Spoke Zarathustra but with a more polemical approach.

Friedrich nietzsche good and evil