Friedrich Nietzsche

Beyond Good and Evil

Name: Beyond Good and Evil
Author: Friedrich Nietzsche

Philosophy and Wisdom

Start reading

Free to read. No account needed.

Language: English
First published: 1907
Reading time: 269 minutes
Chapters: 10 chapters
Translator: Helen Zimmern (1846–1934)

About this book

Nietzsche's sharpest attack on the philosophers who came before him.

He accuses them of dressing up their own prejudices as eternal truths, asks why we value truth at all, and traces our ideas of good and evil back to the outlooks of rulers and the ruled. Written in 1886 in numbered sections, from long arguments to one-line jokes, it is often recommended as the best way into his mature thought. This is the 1907 translation by Helen Zimmern, a writer who knew Nietzsche personally. Expect to be provoked; that is the point.

Original work: Written in German, published 1886

SUPPOSING that Truth is a woman--what then? Is there not ground for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they have been dogmatists, have failed to understand women--that the terrible seriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usually…

Preface

About this edition

Source
Project Gutenberg (eBook #4363)
Text version
Helen Zimmern's translation (first published 1907), as reprinted in The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (1909–1913), from Project Gutenberg eBook #4363 (updated 2 October 2026), downloaded 7 November 2026. The title page, the transcriber's note, the contents list, seven footnotes of the English edition and the closing poem "From the Heights" (translated by L. A. Magnus, not by Zimmern) were not imported. Two transcriber's placeholders for Greek words were replaced by the Greek that Nietzsche printed there. The e-text shows italics as capitals. The preface and the nine chapters are otherwise unchanged.
Category
Philosophy and Wisdom
Report a problem with this book