Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

Friedrich Nietzsche

Cambridge University Press, Nov 7, 1996 - Philosophy - 400 pages

This remarkable collection of almost 1,400 aphorisms was originally published in three instalments. The first (now Volume I) appeared in 1878, just before Nietzsche abandoned academic life, with a first supplement entitled The Assorted Opinions and Maxims following in 1879, and a second entitled The Wanderer and his Shadow a year later. In 1886 Nietzsche republished them together in a two-volume edition, with new prefaces to each volume. Both volumes are presented here in R. J. Hollingdale's distinguished translation (originally published in the series Cambridge Texts in German Philosophy) with a new introduction by Richard Schacht. In this wide-ranging work Nietzsche first employed his celebrated aphoristic style, so perfectly suited to his iconoclastic, penetrating and multi-faceted thought. Many themes of his later work make their initial appearance here, expressed with unforgettable liveliness and subtlety. Human, All Too Human well deserves its subtitle 'A Book for Free Spirits', and its original dedication to Voltaire, whose project of radical enlightenment here found a new champion.

Contents

• PREFACE: 5
• OF FIRST AND LAST THINGS: 12
• ON THE HISTORY OF THE MORAL SENSATIONS: 31
• THE RELIGIOUS LIFE: 60
• FROM THE SOULS OF ARTISTS AND WRITERS: 80
• TOKENS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE: 107
• MAN IN SOCIETY: 136
• WOMAN AND CHILD: 150
• A GLANCE AT THE STATE: 161
• MAN ALONE WITH HIMSELF: 179
• AN EPILOGUE: 205
• VOLUME 2: 207
• PREFACE: 209
• ASSORTED OPINIONS AND MAXIMS: 215
• THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW: 301
• INDEX: 396

About the author

The son of a Lutheran pastor, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born in 1844 in Roecken, Prussia, and studied classical philology at the Universities of Bonn and Leipzig. While at Leipzig he read the works of Schopenhauer, which greatly impressed him. He also became a disciple of the composer Richard Wagner. At the very early age of 25, Nietzsche was appointed professor at the University of Basel in Switzerland. In 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, Nietzsche served in the medical corps of the Prussian army. While treating soldiers he contracted diphtheria and dysentery; he was never physically healthy afterward. Nietzsche's first book, The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872), was a radical reinterpretation of Greek art and culture from a Schopenhaurian and Wagnerian standpoint. By 1874 Nietzsche had to retire from his university post for reasons of health. He was diagnosed at this time with a serious nervous disorder. He lived the next 15 years on his small university pension, dividing his time between Italy and Switzerland and writing constantly. He is best known for the works he produced after 1880, especially The Gay Science (1882), Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-85), Beyond Good and Evil (1886), On the Genealogy of Morals (1887), The Antichrist (1888), and Twilight of the Idols (1888). In January 1889, Nietzsche suffered a sudden mental collapse; he lived the last 10 years of his life in a condition of insanity. After his death, his sister published many of his papers under the title The Will to Power. Nietzsche was a radical questioner who often wrote polemically with deliberate obscurity, intending to perplex, shock, and offend his readers. He attacked the entire metaphysical tradition in Western philosophy, especially Christianity and Christian morality, which he thought had reached its final and most decadent form in modern scientific humanism, with its ideals of liberalism and democracy. It has become increasingly clear that his writings are among the deepest and most prescient sources we have for acquiring a philosophical understanding of the roots of 20th-century culture.

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Bibliographic information

• Title: Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits; Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy
• Author: Friedrich Nietzsche
• Editors: R. J. Hollingdale, Richard Schacht
• Translated by: R. J. Hollingdale, Reginald John Hollingdale
• Contributor: Richard Schacht
• Edition: illustrated, reprint, revised
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1996
• ISBN: 0521567041, 9780521567046
• Length: 400 pages
• Subjects: Philosophy / General; Philosophy / History & Surveys / Modern