Beyond Good and Evil

By Friedrich Nietzsche

So we've all heard of this crazy bastard Nietzsche , with all the cool quotes like “when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you”, and those of us who have done first year philosophy papers know the wacky stories about him, the syphilis, his bad luck with the ladies and so on. He's certainly a colourful character, and when I decided it was past time I checked out some grate litratcha, he was the first thing I grabbed off the shelf in the classics section.

I haven't written about anything quite so intellectually weighty as this here before and I doubt anything I could say about it is at all insightful or original, so I'm just going to plow ahead and say what I thought of each section.

1. The introduction. This is written by some guy with a PhD in philosophy, and it was easily the hardest part of the book to read. It's just an analysis of the book, focusing on the most ambiguous bits. These kind of things always seem to be intended for the people who are already familiar with what they're about to read (even the introductions to the Sandman collections suffered from this) and if I was the editor, I'd put this stuff at the end rather than the beginning.

2. The preface. (Written by Nietzsche ) Uh... pass?

3. Part 1 – On the Prejudices of Philosophers. Probably my favorite part of the book, Nietzsche complaining about, criticising and mocking other philosophers, from his contemporaries back to Plato. I found many (but not all) of his points to be pretty much on target, despite being doused in a liberal amount of bile (he sure does hate Kant...) At any rate, it's quite fun to read. If Nietzsche was alive today, I think he'd make a good rapper.

4. Part 2 – The Free Spirit. Here he starts to get into the beyond good and evil stuff, describing that rare group of people, the Free Spirit's, who are capable of transcending conventional morality. Naturally, he assumes the reader is one of them...

5. Part 3 – The Religious Nature. Another fun chapter, wherein Nietzsche gives religion a sound beating. Not quite as fun as part 1, since he takes the threat to society of religion far more seriously than that of philosophers.

6. Part 4 – Maxims and Interludes. A collection of short sayings and slogans, and the place where you can find the cool quote about the abyss. Unfortunately that's pretty much the highlight of the chapter, some of the other ones are OK, but there's a large number of them dealing with Nietzsche's very antiquated views of woman, which you probably don't want to get caught repeating anywhere nowadays...

7. Part 5 – On the Natural History of Morals. Getting stuck into the rejection of morality again here. This is where I started to have problems with what Nietzsche is saying. Some of it rings true, I particularly liked the part where he points out that many people claim to derive their morality from some higher authority (God, Libertarianism, Auntie Helen, Slipknot), but with such a plethora of choices available, all we're really doing is picking the one that suits our pre-existing beliefs best and then invoking it to give ourselves credibility. In the end we're all making up our own morality anyway. Now that I think about it, that's probably not what his point actually was. Anyway, as I was saying, Nietzsche says that some of us are just inherently superior (intellectually) to the rest of the 'slaves', and that these people will not feel bound by what everyone else thinks is good or evil, and they will decide what is right and wrong for themselves. Nietzsche would almost certainly been appalled by the Nazis, but the fact remains that we already have enough maniacs in the world today running around thinking they're the sole arbiter of good and evil without needing to encourage them.

8. Part 6 – We Scholars. Nietzsche now takes on scientists (and the philosophers again). He doesn't like science because it's too democratic, (it encourages us all to think that we are all made equal) and while scientists are very clever, they are weak willed and are really only useful as tools in the hands of a 'master'. As an engineer, I don't really know where to start pointing out the problems I have with all that.

9. Part 7 – Our Virtues. Nietzsche finally gets around to describing what a Master's morality will actually be like. He definitely doesn't think pity will be a part of it. I guess being frail and sickly all his life left him with a severe dislike of being pitied. He also starts on the emancipation of women here again, which doesn't go down well with him. I'm tempted to describe him as misogynist, but he doesn't seem to actually hate women, just be very upset by the idea of one being considered his equal. One thing that bothered me in this chapter was his point that we shouldn't regard suffering as evil, as it's the only way we grow and learn. I've always figured that I'm trying to live with as little suffering in my life as possible, (and hopefully not inflicting any on anyone else either!), so I don't like this idea much. But I'm at a loss to refute it! Gosh darned alternate view points!

10. Part 8 – Peoples and Fatherlands. Time to engage in a bit of old fashioned racism and national stereotyping. Everyone gets mocked pretty solidly (especially the British), the Jews not quite so much as the anti-Semites. Did everyone really have such a narrow view of nationalities back then? I thought nationalism was only about a century old when this was written.

11. Part 9 – What is Noble? Nietzsche sums it all up. I'll take another pass on this one...

12. From High Mountains: Epode. And we finish with a nice poem. I liked it, but I'm buggered if I know what it's about.

So there we have it. To be honest I found tough to read and understand, and I know that a lot of it went right over my head, but it did make me think, and that's good. He's certainly a witty and fun writer (I kept thinking 'How boozed was he when he wrote this?') and there'll definitely be a bit more philosophical writing in my reading list. But maybe not for a while...