A Beginner's Guide to Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil

List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgements viii Introduction x Chapter 1: Background 1 Life of Nietzsche 1 Nineteenth-century Europe 8 Romanticism and German Idealism 9 Pessimism 9 German Politics 11 The Text 12 Chapter 2: Explanation and Summary of the Main Arguments 14 Introduction 14 Preface 14 Part One: On the Prejudices of Philosophers 16 Part Two: The Free Spirit 34 Part Three: The Religious Nature 44 Part Four: Maxims and Interludes 52 Part Five: On the Natural History of Morals 55 Part Six: We Scholars 63 Part Seven: Our Virtues 68 Part Eight: Peoples and Fatherlands 81 Part Nine: What is Noble? 88 From High Mountains: Epode 103 Chapter 3: Critical Themes 105 Introduction 105 Reality, Truth and Philosophical Prejudice 106 Philosophical prejudices 106 1. The will to truth 108 2. Faith in antithetical values 110 3. Distinction between appearance and reality 112 4. Atomism 115 5. Teleological explanation 120 6. Immediate certainty 124 7. Causa sui 129 8. Reification 133 Nietzsche’s anti-realism 135 God, Religion and the Saint 137 The question of God’s existence 137 Religious neurosis and the saint 142 Beyond pessimism: the Übermensch and the eternal return 144 Morality, Ressentiment and the Will to Power 149 Ethical naturalism 149 A natural history of morality 151 Ressentiment 152 Will to power 155 Appendix: Overview of Beyond Good and Evil 161 Notes 169 Glossary 181 Bibliography and Suggested Reading 206 Index 210