Books by Friedrich Nietzsche

“This is an amazing book. Nietzsche was very young when he became a professor of Classics, and this is the first book he wrote…The Birth of Tragedy is a young Nietzsche still earnestly trying to be a sensible academic. Nietzsche argued that within culture, there are two opposing forces—the Dionysian force and the Apollonian force. On the one hand Dionysus, the ancient Greek god of chaos, passion, and what we’d call the darker aspects of human nature, as well as its most ambiguous and unpredictable aspects. On the other hand Apollo, who in ancient Greek mythology was the God of medicine and sunlight and prophecy, was quite rational. Both sides coexist in a person and in a society.” Read more...

The best books on Tech Utopias and Dystopias

Mahlet Zimeta, Philosopher

“I chose Gay Science because that’s where he really becomes a master of the form: it’s incredibly vivid and incandescent in parts where you get a dazzled by his sheer visionary, aesthetic philosophy of life.” Read more...

The best books on Aphorisms

Andrew Hui, Literary Scholar

“You mentioned that Beyond Good and Evil is a good one to dip into for people who are new to Nietzsche books, because it provides a good overview to his thoughts? Yes, I think that’s right. It touches on almost all Nietzsche’s central concerns – on truth, on the nature of philosophy, on morality, on what’s wrong with morality, will to power…in the first chapter of the book…Nietzsche tells us that the great philosophers are basically fakers when they tell you that they arrived at their views because there were good rational arguments in support of them. That’s nonsense, says Nietzsche. Great philosophers, he thinks, are driven by a particular moral or ethical vision. Their philosophy is really a post-hoc rationalisation for the values they want to promote.” Read more...

The Best Nietzsche Books

Brian Leiter,