Beyond Good & Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (original 1886; edition 1989)

The passage which really summed up this book for me was "Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood." Yep, right there. It's what annoys me about a lot of philosophy - I just want people to be able to write clearly and honestly about what they actually mean. Nietzsche's language is so dense and impenetrable (and clearly deliberately so) that it is frustrating to read. There's definitely a whiff of the emperor's new clothes about this book.

And don't get me started on his views about women: "nothing is more foreign, more repugnant, or more hostile to woman than truth - her great art is falsehood, her chief concern is appearance and beauty." Oh dear, too late, I can't stop now: "When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is generally something wrong with her sexual nature. Barrenness itself conduces to a certain virility of taste...".

"Comparing man and woman generally, one may say that woman would not have the genius for adornment, if she had not the instinct for the secondary role."

I thought Erasmus's views were bad, but he lived four hundred years before Nietzsche. I had hoped that by the late nineteenth century 'deep thinkers' might have become more enlightened. Apparently not. ( )

So far he is attempting to dismantle morality and religion. ( )

So I think this books is pretty okay. I first thought it was pretty lousy, but then when he mentioned the part about the funky chicken dance - it all turned around and I began to really love it. He kind of messed up towards the end when he said that all the chicken really does is flap its wings around. Doesn't exactly spell excellence to me. - Santosha ( )

The peak of Nietzsche's skills as a writer, and the best non-poetic elucidation of his revolutionary, challenging ideas on the roles of truth and morality in human civilization. ( )

Interesting thoughts. I agree with some and disagree with others. The biggest problem I have is that the writing style is VERY choppy. Since I read the English translation, I can't say for certain whether it is Nietzsche who wrote this way, or the way in which it was translated. In either case, the choppy writing is not conducive to absorption. A handful of sentences on one topic, followed by three sentences on another topic, followed by another few sentences on a third topic, etc.

Such writing results in lack of retention. There is no central theme to any of the chapters or sections. For this reason, I was even considering going as low as two and a half stars. ( )