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.