Beyond Good and Evil

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

BY FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

(HELEN ZIMMERN TRANSLATION)



INFORMATION ABOUT THIS E-TEXT EDITION



The following is a reprint of the Helen Zimmern translation from
German into English of "Beyond Good and Evil," as published in
The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (1909-1913). Some
adaptations from the original text were made to format it into
an e-text. Italics in the original book are capitalized in this
e-text, except for most foreign language phrases that were
italicized. Original footnotes are put in brackets "[]" at the
points where they are cited in the text. Some spellings were
altered. "To-day" and "To-morrow" are spelled "today" and
"tomorrow." Some words containing the letters "ise" in the original
text, such as "idealise," had these letters changed to "ize," such
as "idealize." "Sceptic" was changed to "skeptic."



TABLE OF CONTENTS



PREFACE
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

    CHAPTER I:    PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS
    CHAPTER II:   THE FREE SPIRIT
    CHAPTER III:  THE RELIGIOUS MOOD
    CHAPTER IV:   APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES
    CHAPTER V:    THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS
    CHAPTER VI:   WE SCHOLARS
    CHAPTER VII:  OUR VIRTUES
    CHAPTER VIII: PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES
    CHAPTER IX:   WHAT IS NOBLE?

FROM THE HEIGHTS (POEM TRANSLATED BY L.A. MAGNUS)






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 such a malady attack that