Beyond Good and Evil: The Philosophy Classic
Friedrich Nietzsche
Introduction by Christopher Janaway; Edited by Tom Butler-Bowdon
Capstone, A Wiley Brand (February 2020)
“What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.” Friedrich Nietzsche
As do so many of Nietzsche’s other insights, this observation lends itself to all manner of interpretations by sinners as well as saints…and probably by everyone in between and especially, by those who are both. This diversity of appeal helps to explain his enduring popularity as a philosopher as well as the appeal of this specific work, first published in 1886.
It is one of several dozen volumes in the Classics Series published by Capstone and edited by Tom Butler-Bowdon. The material is based on the edition translated by Helen Zimmern. Nietzsche organized his material within 296 numbered sections split into nine parts. Since its publication, it remains not only Nietzsche’s most popular work but also among the most widely-read in the history of western thought.
I agree with Christopher Janaway: “Nietzsche excites, amuses, provokes, shocks, and questions. We the readers are not just addressed but engaged. The very first line of the book is ‘Supposing truth is a woman — what then?’ We as readers have to make up our own minds what to do with the truths he reveals. What do they mean for society and civilization, and for our own lives?” I am still at work on that question.
Nietzsche is famous for uncompromising criticisms of traditional European morality and religion, as well as of conventional philosophical ideas and what he viewed as social and political pieties associated with modernity. Many of his controversial criticisms rely on psychological diagnoses that expose what he viewed — and condemned — as false consciousness infecting people’s received ideas; for that reason, he is often associated with a group of late modern thinkers (including Marx and Freud) who advanced what has been characterized as a “hermeneutics of suspicion” against traditional values. That is, a balanced recognition and perception between “explanation” and “understanding” that validates expressions of a representation. Presumably Nietzsche was familiar with Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” in The Republic. He constantly questions what is real. I wish I could ask him”: “Is self-delusion?” “Is fantasy?”
Janaway: “For Nietzsche, good and evil are the values that define the morality of [what was for him] modern Europe, and of the Christian religion out of which it has grown. He puts both certainty and morality itself in the judgement dock.”
Later in the Introduction, Janaway adds, “Nietzsche may bemoan the restrictions and leveling down of modern society [in the late-19th century], but never rules it out. He often writes as though only a few can be great, but his idea of unlocking your potential by questioning received values that disempower may appeal to many.”
Indeed, in another of his works (The Gay Science) he introduces an especially interesting concept: Amor Fati, the love of fate. For those who have lost faith in almost everything, including faith in themselves, this concept offers a great deal of solace when they need it most.
To love your fate is to know that everything that has happened in your life; the so-called good, bad, and ugly, has contributed to who you are and what you are doing at this very moment. To embrace any part of life, Nietzsche concludes, this necessitates that you embrace all of it. Trying to create yourself will lead to some failures, but embracing those failures alongside your successes can help re-spark a love of life and can help you see its meaning — its value — in even the worst moments.
Frankly, I did not expect to find this concept among the works of someone so tormented and despondent. It suggests that almost anyone can find a love of life and a love of self beyond society’s definitions of good and evil.