About the Author
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was born in Prussia in 1844. After the death of his father, a Lutheran minister, Nietzsche was raised from the age of five by his mother in a household of women. In 1869 he was appointed Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Basel, where he taught until 1879 when poor health forced him to retire. He never recovered from a nervous breakdown in 1889 and died eleven years later. Known for saying that “god is dead,” Nietzsche propounded his metaphysical construct of the superiority of the disciplined individual (superman) living in the present over traditional values derived from Christianity and its emphasis on heavenly rewards. His ideas were appropriated by the Fascists, who turned his theories into social realities that he had never intended.
R. J. Hollingdale has translated eleven of Nietzsche’s books and published two books about him. He has also translated works by, among others, Schopenhauer, Goethe, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Lichtenberg and Theodor Fontane, many of these for the Penguin Classics. He is Honorary President of the British Nietzsche Society, and was for the Australian academic year 1991 Visiting Fellow at Trinity College, Melbourne.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Note on the Text
Chronology of Nietzsche's Life
ECCE HOMO: How One Becomes What One Is
Foreword
On this perfect day...
Why I am So Wise
Why I am So Clever
Why I Write Such Good Books
The Birth of Tragedy
The Untimely Essays
Human, All Too Human
Daybreak
The Gay Science
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Beyond Good and Evil
Genealogy of Morals
Twilight of the Idols
The Wagner Case
Why I Am a Destiny
Notes