Basic Writings of Nietzsche

Notoriously prone to misinterpretation, Nietzsche has never been so well served by any editor as by Walter Kaufmann. As a translator, Kaufmann is helpful and honest, forthcoming about specific difficulties presented by the text during translation. Yet his greatest virtue is as a Nietzsche scholar. Without him, I suspect Nietzsche would still be suffering under the shadow of Nazi Germany, an undeserved association. This edition is careful to emphasize the biographical and historical contexts of the author, helping to dispel the misconception of Nietzsche as proto-Nazi. At the same time, Kaufmann unambiguously addresses his misogyny and complicated antisemitism.
The selections are a superb foundation for a new reader, or a hearty addition show more to an established Nietzsche library. I recommend this and any text edited by Kaufmann. show less

A great edition of Nietzsche - curious how much the Tea Party COULD use some of these comments, but that would raise the level of discourse,and they would need to read the entire text (unlikely) to extract those few citations. Oh, Gingrich might!

This was a fantastic and enlightening book. Of course I had heard of Nietzsche, who hasn't in this day and age, but I have not had the pleasure of reading his works. Now I had heard of the Nazis, the nationalist whatever, the overarching philosophy of Nietzsche being the Will to Power, the Blond Beast and all of that, but I really wanted to see that sort of thing in context, which is what brought me to take this out of my local library.

Kaufmann's translation does quite the service to Nietzsche, allowing for his little puns and other play on words to come through, even though it has to be explained. This particular book contains five full works of Nietzsche and they are as follows:

The Birth of Tragedy,
Beyond Good and Evil,
On the show more Genealogy of Morals,
The Case of Wagner,
Ecce Homo.

Along with these full works are some aphorisms, selections from Nietzsche's correspondence and variants of drafts for Ecce Homo. Overall, even this book isn't enough to get the whole portion of Nietzsche's philosophy and I will probably have to read even more of him to 'get' it. Even so, what I did read, I enjoyed and I look forward to more. show less

It would be impossible to give an actual review to this book. The profundity of all that it contains simply defies any attempt at a concise interpretation. Therefore, I will simply make a minor comment on the edition itself.

This project of this book is invaluable. The scope, depth, and insight provided by the editors and Kaufmann himself are of inestimable importance. It is easy to get lost, even the most robust of readers, in such a compendium, and I thank the editors of this volume for providing that.

Thus the criticism. I feel that a two volume set of ALL of Nietzsche's work should have been attempted. With the possible exception of Zarathustra, I feel that it is more than justified to have in toto the five volumes that this book show more excerpts from in its section entitled "Seventy-five Aphorisms from Five Volumes." Were one to include these in one volume, and then conclude the second volume with "Twilight of the Idols" and "The Antichrist," I feel they would have provided an even greater contribution to Nietzsche scholarship. It may seem cumbersome to have so much in such little space, but when it comes to translations and editions, consistency of translation and commentary is very beneficial. Even more so, those five volumes excerpted here are not easy to come by, and are often horribly translated.

Nevertheless, a full 5 stars. Whether you hate him or love him, you must read him (which - as Kaufmann points out - most people, even those with heated opinions of him, have not). show less

A great Niezsche sampler. His aphoristic style does lend itself better than most for collections such as this, but the editors have still done a very good job of choosing those aphorisms which are representative of Nietzsche's style but still accessible to those new to his thought.

A good introduction to Nietzsche with plenty of notes.

I've only read "The Birth of Tragedy" in this collection, but it was good.