Beyond Good and Evil is probably his most important work, but Thus Spoke Zarathustra is more readable.

I'd love to send Douglas a copy of Beyond Good and Evil.

http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Good-Evil-Friedrich-Nietzsche/d...

A decent summary, but I'd still suggest anyone who relates to this answer to read Nietzsche (specifically, The Gay Science and probably Beyond Good and Evil).

> gave birth to the notion of "facts."

Somewhat ironically, around the same time (+/- 40 yrs) that it gave birth to the notion there is no ultimate truth.

Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886)

Carnap, The Logical Structure of the World (1928)

Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche. No single book has changed my view of reality, specifically ethical reality, more.

“Beyond Good and Evil” by Nietzsche. Will completely transform the way you look at morality and its role in culture.

Yeah, that's probably a better summary of his attitude towards Nietzsche. Thanks for the recommendations. I have read most of Beyond Good and Evil, but am not too familiar with his thought except secondhand.

What about Beyond Good and Evil made such a big impact on you? I read it and enjoyed it a lot as well but struggle to put it into words how it has impacted me.

It is what Nietzsche was talking about when he referred to "superfluous teleological principles" in Beyond Good and Evil, published in 1886.

You're correct that this isn't really new territory in philosophy - but "lay" people are actually starting to see it play out at scale in society which is making them perk their ears up.

I doubt we'll see Beyond Good and Evil become a NYT bestseller unfortunately.

Beyond Good and Evil, by Nietzsche.

A short history of nearly everything, by Bill Bryson.

When I was 17 years old I read "Beyond Good and Evil", by Nietzsche.

( http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4363 )

That book truly changed the way I lived and the way I thought.

Different books for different ages:

- Discourse on the Method [1], to become a healthy criticist of everything (perfect for your 15's-20's development)

- Beyond Good and Evil [2], a definition of the 20th century craziness by the crazy genius Nietzsche (perfect for your 30's burnout)

- The Praise of Folly [3], to realize that life is just a game (perfect for your 40's post-burnout rehab)

- Propaganda [4], because you want to play the game too (perfect for your 50's meteoric rise to fame & success :).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_the_Method

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Good_and_Evil

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Praise_of_Folly

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book)

Hopefully you never fall into the habit of trying to judge good and evil. Hopefully you also never fall into the habit of adopting for yourself the view that others have of you. It’s entirely possible (and I encourage you to seek out the numerous writings of the philosophers that discovered this before us) to live a life and conduct oneself without a notion of good and evil. One of my favorites is Beyond Good and Evil.

Fiction and philosophical nonfiction has far more potential to affect one's life than a pop-science book, at least in my experience.

Some of my favorites:

- Moby Dick. Probably the single greatest work of American literature, in my opinion of course.

- Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche. An excellent primer to his thought. Any of his books are worth reading, though.

- The Ego and Its Own, Stirner. An under-appreciated philosopher who can really shake up your foundations.

- Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, Borges. His favorite short story of mine. It serves as a very effective metaphor for the power of fiction.

- Anything by Joseph Conrad, although I particularly recommend The Secret Sharer.

They're excellent. You should read both, critically. You should likely throw in the Fountainhead as well....and for good measure should likely also read Exodus, 1914, The Service: The Memoirs of General Reinhard Gehlen, and likely more fun stuff like the Federalist and Anti-federalist papers. The history, passion, and often hypocrisy found are enlightening. Ayn R. had wonderful insights into the human condition...as a previous author had said, the solutions were often a bit twisted. If you want really interesting, dig into Beyond Good and Evil. I read all of Nietzsche while I was in officer basic a long time ago. Very interesting stuff. I guess my point is, don't discount literature because you disagree with it.

Having standards doesn't mean a good/evil dichotomy. Do hunter-gatherers have fullblown Western moralizing because they like competent hunters & story-tellers better than incompetent ones?

> but don't take my word for it, read Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil.

I have, and I'm sure you can come up with a better source than that...

It's amazing how many good historical works are out of copyright and free. I got an Amazon Kindle as a gift, and it's been really wonderful for me.

If you like Roman history, you've got to check out Gibbons' History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It's just a masterpiece. I flip through my copy of Meditations from time to time (actually, now I look at it on my Kindle, but I used to flip through my paper copy) and just pick out random quotes. A great work. "It is not the thing itself that disturbs a man, but the man's perception of and reaction to the thing. The thing may not be able to be changed, but a man's perception and reaction may be changed." I'm butchering that quote, but it's incredibly meaningful to me, and I try to reflect on it when things seem to be going wrong or I get inconvenienced.

While talking about classics, there's a lot of good philosophy out of copyright. Beyond Good and Evil and Thus Spoke Zarathustra aren't perfect works and I disagree with a fair bit of it, but there's some absolute jewels in them too.

Lately I've been looking for a decent electronic copy of Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents and Kierkegaard's Either/Or, but I've been having a hard time finding copies that are decently formatted and readable.

Also, got any other recommendations Staunch? I'm going to get Gallic Wars, and it seems like you and I have similar taste if you have other recommendations.

I think The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil, and A Genealogy of Morality are very readable and thought-provoking without going into esoteric ism or experimental style like Thus Spake Zarathustra. I prefer the Kaufman translations, but I understand there are many new, possibly better translations available now. Translation can make-or-break Nietzsche - he was one of the best German prose writers and makes use of a lot of wordplay and neologisms.

The first quote was from Gay Science - I grabbed the second of Wikipedia, but I was sure it, or something to the same effect, was also in Gay Science. I don't have a searchable copy of my favorite translation, unfortunately, but Nietzsche talks a lot of psychology in Gay Science.

Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche has been the most influential single text I’ve read in my life. Over the years, with each reread, it’s changed the way I look at the world. Before I read this book, I took the definitions for the words good and evil as givens and for granted.

It’s a book that I read, or read about, every time that I’m not convinced with my current beliefs. Out of every book Nietzsche wrote, this is the text that best sums up what I think he thought about in his spare time throughout his entire life in a physically detached but still coherent manner.

IMO (4) is a fatal and clumsy misstep for the entire article, and betrays a profound lack of contact with Nietzsche's own writing on the part of the author.

Nietzsche never would have uncritically claimed mainstream culture does our best thinking any more than he would have given such an honor to academia. So it's bizarre to see his thought appropriated to that end. He was, in fact, extremely concerned with the difference between culture that is merely popular and a genuine, healthy, thriving culture. He saw academics and journalists as frequent accomplices in the destruction of a thriving, healthy culture by their appeals to popular taste and public opinion. By their spinning rigorous sounding tales that merely served to comfort (or discomfort) individuals and reinforce their existing opinions no matter how deleterious or suspect such opinions were (eg. about morality, the nobility of the common man, the goodness/badness of state institutions, etc). Additionally, he was just as concerned about the influence exerted by nation states on thought as he was about the similar influence exerted by public opinion, common sense, and mainstream culture.

To simplify the formula down to "mainstream culture" vs. "the state influenced academics" is to be overly reductionist and to overlook the part every segment of society plays in producing uncritical thought.

For more clarity here I would read Nietzsche's "Untimely Meditation" on 'cultural philistinism' - "David Strauss: the confessor and the writer", and "Beyond Good and Evil" namely the section "Peoples and Fatherlands" for an idea of his approach to critique of mainstream culture in his time.

There seem to be two questions here. First: 'what are some eye-opening reads'? Second: 'what are some good philosophy books?'

The fact is, "eye-opening reads" really depends on the eye, and without much context, it's very difficult to give recommendations.

So I'll name two books that were 'eye-opening' for me AND are good philosophy and another that is just 'good philosophy.'

J. S. Mill's On Liberty. Read it. It's short. It's poignant. Don't not read this book.

Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche is required reading. if you like it, check out the viking collection of works by him and read his wikipedia page. You'll get a sense of what else you'd like to read from these two sources.

The groundwork for a metaphysics of morals by Kant is a great introduction to his way of thinking/reasoning and deals with an important matter--the possibility of a moral system. This book is a good introduction to a way of philosophizing very different from the others--Kant aims to be deeply systematic and specific. While not eye-opening, 'sexy philosophy' or quite 'enjoyable,' GMM is a relatively short read and a worthwhile thought-journey.

Yes (ok) he talks about the concept of master/slave morality in Beyond Good and Evil but he talks about a lot of other stuff in that book. He also talks about it in Human, All Too Human and probably other places. I don't remember off the top of my head. But where he explores it at length is in On the Genealogy of Morals. The title's a bit of a giveaway. I've read Beyond Good and Evil a number of times, and I'm sure I'll read it many more times before my number is up, I don't need you to tell me that :-)

The only bit of Heidegger I'm going to read is his where he talks about technology. Other than that I'm going to give him a wide enough berth because I don't like his writing style. He can be as profound as he likes and he can destruct whatever ontologies he's into but after having flipped through a bit of Being and Time I have to say no thanks.

And in fairness destruktion is not de_construction_. You still haven't told me where to look it up though. Chapter and verse and all that, no?

edit: ok, so FreakLegion[1] hereabouts has some pointers and I used my Google-fu and got this[2] which looks helpful. But even that says that Derrida got inspiration but that the terms are not used in the same sense.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6390545

[2] http://www.iep.utm.edu/deconst/

In Beyond Good and Evil he talks about how the slave morality of Judeo-Christianity brilliantly overthrew its masters. Go look it up.

Derrida read a lot of Heidegger, even wrote some essays on him before Gramma-whatever. Heidegger used the german phrase "destruktion" of the basic ontology of western society. Go look that up too.

Reading Nietzsche is like breathing in cold mountain air. Some people can handle the cold, others can't. He's not for everyone, as he makes it intentionally clear.

He was a stark individualist that put into question a lot of the building blocks of liberal democracy, such as the notion that all men are equal. I don't agree with all of what he puts forth but he is without a doubt one of the most dynamic and influential thinkers of the 19th century and still relevant to read even today.

If you're interested in reading him, start with Twilight of the Idols and Beyond Good and Evil. If you like those two then you can delve into some of his other work such as the Antichrist, On the Geneaology of Morals, Human, All Too Human, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra

1. Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham
2. Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker

3. Tribes by Seth Godin

4. Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche

5. The Industries of the Future by Alex Ross

6. Bigger, Leaner, Stronger by Michael Matthews

7. The Science of Getting Rich: Financial Success Through Creative Thought by WALLACE D. WATTLES (The Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reads)

8. Money: Master the Game by Tony Robbins

9. Principles by Ray Dalio

10. Como Ganar Amigas e Influir Sobre las Personas by Dale Carnegie

11. Without Their Permission by Alexis Ohanian

12. Tribe by Sebastian Junger

13. Sapiens A Brief History of Humanity by Yuval Noah Harari

14. This is Water by David Foster Wallace

15. How Not to Be Wrong. The Power of Mathematical Thinking by Jordan Ellenberg

16. Walt Disney By Neal Gabler

17. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley

18. Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger

19. The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason

20. A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine

Out of all these, I would recommend only a few:

- Sapiens

- The Rational Optimist

- Walt Disney By Neal Gabler

- How Not to Be Wrong. The Power of Mathematical Thinking.

- A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

> enabling the explosion of post-Enlightenment technical progress is built.

The same metaphysical view you're describing also enabled utopian totalitarian visions like Nazism and Communism. Communism famously proposes a view of the world that sees everything through the lens of materialism. This discussion is much deeper than what a thread on HN can really do justice to. I would just strongly urge you to consider reading Beyond Good and Evil for a different perspective and study of this question by a great thinker.

> to the “postmodern” left and cite as a key reason for rejecting the left.)

Postmodernism hinges on whether or not there is an objective set of values. Conservatives believe there is (the Bible, natural law, God, etc) whereas Postmodernists believe there isn't.

Everything I've said holds true regardless of where you come down on that. Personally yes I believe there is an objective set of values.

You're missing the forest for the trees. I don't care if you like or dislike Christian morality. The Norse themselves had their own moral standards (nine virtues, as I mention). If you were courageous, for example, you were "good" -- if you were a coward, you were "bad." That standard (the good/evil dichotomy) has always existed -- but don't take my word for it, read Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil.

I agree that Nietzsche is trolling here. This passage I believe occurs early in the book, in the section titled ‘On Philosophers’. In this section, Nietzsche attacks literally every philosophy he can think of with as much vehemence and irony as possible. This passage is rather a structural component towards the revelation of his agenda in the work.

He does this in order to support the central thesis of Beyond Good and Evil that emerges later in the work - that the men of the next generations should rather re-examine moral value itself, and then be the maker of new value systems. The ubermensch idea, though not mentioned in Beyond Good and Evil, is a direct descendent of this idea.

It's probably not universal for all people but I can tell you what changed things for me: what I'd call a "critical mass of unfortunate events". At one point in my life(early 20's) I ended up alone, far from my parents, lost my closest friend, the economic crisis was at it's peak, close relatives stabbed me in the back multiple times and overall I was left to deal with life on my own.

So in that aspect - it was necessity over anything else. I guess it pushed me into a slightly stoicistic way of thinking about life in general. Two books (which contradict each other a lot) helped me to tweak my thinking by finding a path somewhere between them: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche. I find myself re-reading them once a year as a matter of fact. Finding the sweet spot between them is what made me go forward - on one hand don't stress too much about the outcome and simply try to do the best to your abilities and on the other look for the collective gains from every idea/aim(product). With the appropriate amount of dedication, it's worked for me even with the largest challenges(of which I've had a lot in recent years as well). Not as I would have hoped but better than the alternatives.

The fact that this was part of a particularly crazy episode on /r/The_Donald/ should surely at least be taking into account before sentencing is determined.

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you" - Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146

Very interesting article; although here's what I think gets missed when folks teach and talk about Philosophy since Russell: anything that smells even vaguely religious just doesn't count -- don't read it -- too spooky, too irrational. The only reason Greeks get away with it is, I think, because nobody takes the Greek gods seriously anymore (or at least no one is worried about too many people doing so, and causing trouble in the name of Zeus!)

So no King Solomon, no Vedas and probably no Confucius either, as secular as he tended to be.

You mentioned at the end of the article that"...philosophy was hopelessly intermingled with religion. It didn't shake itself free till a couple hundred years ago..." I'd have to counter that philosophy without religion is generally new, hollow and unworthy of much study -- which in some ways I think is your point.

I'm genuinely curious: Why (or if) you think that this decoupling is a good thing? So few other disciplines (only Religious Studies, and perhaps The Arts) ever touch upon the idea of spirit at all -- which I think is at the core of Philosophy -- the nexus of Sapience and Sentience. If one is not a fan of religion on principle (its over-adherence to both dogma, and dominance are two criticisms that I have), then certainly this is a strength of Philosophy -- the decoupling of religion from matters of the spirit/soul. Spinoza's The Ethics; and Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil are two interesting books for students of Philosophy to consider.

Apparently, back in the 19th century people credited Berthold Schwarz [0] with the inventiom of gunpowder. I remember reading Beyond Good and Evil and reading in the preface that "the Germans invented gunpowder" and being rather puzzled, but it turns out that that was considered a fact at the time.

Though I wouldn't be surprised if gunpowder was discovered independently in Europe, or at least partly so because nobody walked out of China with a recipe for it.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berthold_Schwarz

I've been into literature and philosophy for some time now. I'm following the "Masterpieces of World Literature" course [1] and have finished "Beyond Good and Evil" last month, currently reading Kierkegaard's Either/Or.

Aside from that, I'm also participating in Leetcode 30 days of code challenge [2]

[1] https://www.edx.org/course/masterpieces-of-world-literature
[2] https://leetcode.com/explore/featured/card/30-day-leetcoding...