Beyond Good and Evil - really, insanely dense

Nietzsche is dense. Really, insanely dense.

Beyond Good and Evil is often recommended as an introduction to Nietzsche’s work, but boy did it still take me a long time to get through. It earned a 5/5 from me anyway.

Much of the book is in the form of dense single statements, which can’t be just read over like a fiction novel. Some examples of why this book will take you a long time to process:

To be ashamed of one’s immorality is a step on the ladder at the end of which one is ashamed also of ones morality

Not their love of humanity, but the impotence of their love, prevents the christians of today from burning us

He who despises himself, nevertheless esteems himself thereby, as a despiser

ADVICE AS A RIDDLE — “If the band is not to break, bite it first — secure to make!”

“Sympathy for all” would be harshness and tyranny for THEE, my good neighbour

That which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable echo of what was formerly considered good - the atavism of an old ideal

The one that stuck with me most is the sympathy for all line. The hugely helpful trick I found for unpacking these was to take some of Nietzsche’s assertions about how the world is, and discuss them with my friends and my partner. They make for really interesting discussions. Even saying the statements out loud helped me process them, decide if I believed them to be true or not, and check whether I was understanding them as the author intended.

For all that work, the book didn’t overturn any opinion I already held. What it did was give me new opinions, and better ways to express them.

I think it will take more re-reads and life experience to properly understand this work, and I haven’t gone back for that re-read yet. This author certainly isn’t for everyone; I’d only hand this book to someone who wants a real challenge. Nevertheless, anyone who can read this and form their own opinions on it will certainly have grown as a person, and have made sense of the world at least a little bit more by the time they finish their first read through.