Beyond Good & Evil - Summary

Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, is a book by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche that covers ideas in his previous work Thus Spoke Zarathustra but with a more polemical approach. It was first published in 1886 under the publishing house C. G. Naumann of Leipzig at the author's own expense and first translated into English by Helen Zimmern, who was two years younger than Nietzsche and knew the author.

The topics covered are as followed:

Part 1 - On The Prejudices Of Philosophers

Will To Truth

Faith In Antithetical Values

Appearance And Reality

Atomism

Immediate Certainties

Self-preservation As A Cardinal Drive

Causa Sui (Free Will)

Part 2 - The Free Spirit

The New Philosophers

Dangers These Philosophers Will Face

Stages Of Morality

Part 3 - The Religious Nature

The Inversion Of The Moral Values

Master-slave Morality

The Religious Instinct

Potential Of Religion

Part 4 - Maxims And Interludes

Philosophical And Moral Prejudices

The Free Spirit

Religion

Part 5 - On The Natural History Of Morals

Morality As A Science

Morality As Being Tyrannical

Morality As A Creative Act

Instinct Versus Reason

Desire For Power And Possession

Herd Morality

The Role Of Fear

The Role Of The New Philosopher

Part 6 - We Scholars

Science And Philosophy

Problem Of Specialization

Problem Of Objectivity

Scepticism

The New Philosopher

Part 7 – Our Virtues

The Nature Of Virtue

Immanuel Kant’s ‘starry Skies’

The Herd, Morality And Moralization

Disinterestedness

Unconditional Morality

Pity And Suffering

Fundamental Will Of The Spirit

Women

Part 8 – Peoples And Fatherlands

Major Themes

Wagner

The German Soul

The Challenge Of ‘becoming What One Is’

Democracy And ‘spiritual Flattening’

Tyranny Over Democracy

Jews And Anti-semitism

Masculine Genius And Feminine Genius

The English And The French

Part 9 – What Is Noble?

The Aristocracy

Nobility Vs. The Slave

Language And Morality

Pity And Suffering

The Wanderer And The Importance Of Masks

Immanence Vs. Transcendence

Philosophy Has No End

Man As Manifold

Dionysus

Limitations Of Language

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, cultural critic and philologist whose work has exerted a profound influence on modern intellectual history. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24. Nietzsche resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 45, he suffered a collapse and afterwards a complete loss of his mental faculties, with paralysis and probably vascular dementia. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900, after many strokes and pneumonia.