Beyond Good and Evil Friedrich Nietzsche (the little red hen read aloud .txt) 📖

Beyond Good and Evil

By Friedrich Nietzsche.

Translated by Helen Zimmern.

Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Preface Beyond Good and Evil I: Prejudices of Philosophers 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 II: The Free Spirit 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 III: The Religious Mood 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 IV: Apophthegms and Interludes 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 V: The Natural History of Morals 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 VI: We Scholars 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 VII: Our Virtues 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 237A 238 239 VIII: Peoples and Countries 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 IX: What Is Noble? 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 From the Heights Endnotes Colophon Uncopyright Imprint

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Preface

Supposing that Truth is a woman⁠—what then? Is there not ground for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they have been dogmatists, have failed to understand women⁠—that the terrible seriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usually paid their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods for winning a woman? Certainly she has never allowed herself to be won; and at present every kind of dogma stands with sad and discouraged mien⁠—if, indeed, it stands at all! For there are scoffers who maintain that it has fallen, that all dogma lies on the ground⁠—nay more, that it is at its last gasp. But to speak seriously, there are good grounds for hoping that all dogmatizing in philosophy, whatever solemn, whatever conclusive and decided airs it has assumed, may have been only a noble puerilism and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand when it will be once and again understood what has actually sufficed for the basis of such imposing and absolute philosophical edifices as the dogmatists have hitherto reared: perhaps some popular superstition of immemorial time (such as the soul-superstition, which, in the form of subject- and ego-superstition, has not yet ceased doing mischief): perhaps some play upon words, a deception on the part of grammar, or an audacious generalization of very restricted, very personal, very human⁠—all-too-human facts. The philosophy of the dogmatists, it is to be hoped, was only a promise for thousands of years afterwards, as was astrology in still earlier times, in the service of which probably more labour, gold, acuteness, and patience have been spent than on any actual science hitherto: we owe to it, and to its “super-terrestrial” pretensions in Asia and Egypt, the grand style of architecture. 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: dogmatic philosophy has been a caricature of this kind⁠—for instance, the Vedanta doctrine in Asia, and Platonism in Europe. Let us not be ungrateful to it, although it must certainly be confessed that the worst, the most tiresome, and the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a dogmatist error⁠—namely, Plato’s invention of Pure Spirit and the Good in Itself. But now when it has been surmounted, when Europe, rid of this nightmare, can again draw breath freely and at least enjoy a healthier⁠—sleep, we, whose duty is wakefulness itself, are the heirs of all the strength which the struggle against this error has fostered. It amounted to the very inversion of truth, and the denial of the perspective⁠—the fundamental condition⁠—of life, to speak of Spirit and the Good as Plato spoke of them; indeed one might ask, as a physician: “How did