Can someone walk me through Nietzsche's catalog of work and give a brief explanation of what each one has in it so I...

Can someone walk me through Nietzsche's catalog of work and give a brief explanation of what each one has in it so I can decide which one I want to buy? I already have Thus Spoke zarathustra, but I don't really like the whole story metaphor set up. I was thinking about getting Beyond Good and Evil just because the title seems to both something interesting, but I really have no idea.

bump

>not your personal wiki

humor me

Birth of Tragedy: Sets up Nietzsche's aesthetics, understanding of Apollonian and Dionysian through a new interpretation of Greek civilization. This is the first of Nietzsche's forays into historical deconstruction. His one and only major work as a philologist, though his education obviously echoes throughout his work. Was one of his most popular books but was panned by the philology community of the time. Over time people came to respect Nietzsche's viewpoint though most modern philologists disagree with his account for different reasons

On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense: Sets up Nietzsche's approach towards epistemology, it's a very short work. Many people credit this work as the founding document of postmodernism.

Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks: Nietzsche trying to psychoanalyze Greek philosophers through the lens of their work. He abandoned this before finishing it to start writing Untimely Meditations.

Untimely Meditations: Another unfinished work, he intended to produce 13 essays but produced only four. The ones on Strauss, Schopenhauer and Wagner are interesting bits that require some historical background to appreciate but the true gem is On the Use and Abuse of History for Life which expounds on the ideas presented in On Truth and Lies. This was the essay that inspired much of Foucault's philosophy.

Human, all too Human: This is the first work of 'middle Nietzsche', the period immediately after Nietzsche abandoned Wagner and Schopenhauer's philosophy, quit his job at the university and became a wandering NEET. In this period Nietzsche is a little less bombastic than the late period and much more optimistic towards the merits of science and skepticism. Nietzsche begins to write in aphorism in part due to his poor health and eye problems (which contributed to his failure to finish his prior two works). This work explores a lot of questions of what it means to be an artist or a thinker (he also trashes the idea of 'genius' and 'divine inspiration' here) and the early portions spend a lot of time talking about dreams. This book was a major inspiration to Freud. He develops the idea of the Free Spirit in this book which is in some ways a prototype for the Ubermensch.

The Dawn: A short, odd work where Nietzsche presents many ideas that are completely antithetical to what he posits elsewhere. He writes antagonistically, almost reminiscent of his later works.

The Gay Science: Nietzsche claimed this was his most personal book. This is where the Eternal Recurrence of the same and the death of god emerge in Nietzsche's thought. He also includes poems and songs that make no sense if you don't read it in German.

>I already have Thus Spoke zarathustra, but I don't really like the whole story metaphor set up.
just read it you faggot

Come on, just get BGE, it's not a long read.

I don't like his philosophy, but he writes damn well.
Just read it.

To be fair, I started out with Zarathustra also, and it almost turned me off Nietzsche altogether. The whole Bible parody he's going for just feels tacky, and is probably best enjoyed if you're already acquainted with his work a little more.

Then Antichrist.

Yeah I don't like feeling like I'm reading bible verses, even though I know it's nietzsche who I believe was anti religious.
thank you very much for writing this, I read the whole thing.

Just fucking read it. You need to know your basic Bible and a little bit of the Greeks. That's all

>Many people credit this work as the founding document of postmodernism.

the geneology method of historical analysis is absolutely integral to postmodern and poststructural theory. foucault is nietzsche's most prolific and famous heir.

nietzsche's 'perspectivism' is also prescient of postmodernism's nihilistic mode. other scholars feel free to chime in with other examples

Zarathustra: This is his masterwork, challenging Ulysses for the most memetastic piece of literature in terms of incorporating massive portions of the western canon in parody. Very few people actually 'get' this book though very many read it. All of his ideas are present in this book if you know where to look for them. Interestingly he distances himself from the Ubermensch idea and doesn't mention it much after Zarathustra.

BGE: Zarathustra without the pomp, the key here is that this book challenges the notion that we ought to be afraid of accepting that there is no truth, instead we should move beyond good and evil and accept the world as it is, a mess of perspectives. In this book he attacks all past philosophers, even his favorites. This is the first of the Late Nietzsche books, as his health improves a bit he is more able to return to a longer form style of writing.

Genealogy of Morality: Considered by most scholars to be his most powerful and influential work. This book lays out a history of the development of morality, telling a compelling story of how power politics shaped the development of our understanding of right and wrong, good and evil.

Twilight of the Idols: Produced in part as a primer to Nietzsche's philosophy, this work contains some of his most famous quotations including "what does not destroy me makes me stronger". This work presents a distillation of many of the points he makes in his late works

The Case of Wagner: Much of this work is repackaged aphorisms with some exposition explaining how Nietzsche had been led astray on Wagner but how he fundamentally always should have been at odds with him, even knowing only what he knew in his younger period

The Antichrist: An absolutely scathing at times attack on Christianity and its spiritual kin, Judaism and Buddhism (but mostly Christianity because Nietzsche punched up). At times one begins to wonder if his insanity hadn't already begun in secret while writing this work.

Ecce Homo: One of the most interesting works in the history of philosophy, this is Nietzsche's autobiography. Let me preface this by saying that Nietzsche is clearly mad by the time he finishes writing this book. It reads almost as if he was putting himself on trial, aggrandizing himself, ironically at times, and making a parody of his whole life. He wrote this book in part because he, in this period, was afraid future people would worship him as a prophet as they had done to Christ. He signs the book Dionysus.

Will to Power: A collection of notes compiled by his sister mostly concerning the Will to Power, Nietzsche's idea of how the whole world worked. This work should be approached very carefully for that reason. Heidegger viewed it as the best of Nietzsche though.

>Zarathustra: This is his masterwork, challenging Ulysses for the most memetastic piece of literature in terms of incorporating massive portions of the western canon in parody. Very few people actually 'get' this book though very many read it. All of his ideas are present in this book if you know where to look for them. Interestingly he distances himself from the Ubermensch idea and doesn't mention it much after Zarathustra.

People who recommend this book to noobs are retarded. Thousands of intelligent people are probably memed into reading this as their first philosophy book. Those people then think Nietzsche/philosophy is bullshit and give it up forever.

Even some high school English classes teach it. How fucked is that.

Btw it is a great book, but I am just saying it is too difficult.

the birth of tragedy
genealogy of morality
zarathustra

thats all you really need desu

Replace Zarathustra with BGE and add On Truth and Lies. Truth and Lies is so short that there is no reason to not read it as an introduction. If you want the abridged Nietzsche, do the sparknotes on BOT and be sure you know the bible and the Greeks fairly well, read T&L in its entirety, read Twilight of the Idols, then BGE, then GM.

Zarathustra is an amazing book but it's basically the final boss of German literature (and you should read it in German if at all possible).

I wholeheartedly agree. I can not understand how anybody in his right mind and who understood the book in the smallest sense could recommend it for starting with Nietzsche.

To start with Nietzsche, you must start with the greeks. Thoroughly. and then go chronological. Birth of Tragedy and Untimely Meditations are perfect introductions to him and you will be able to observe his evolution of ideas as you progress further on

Start with Birth of Tragedy, read chronologically

>mfw all I read before beginning with Zarathustra was a short biography and a summary of his core arguments/contributions to philosophy
>all in German

I know it's flowery and granted, I already knew my basic Greeks. But it really didn't seem too difficult to me.
The part with the Hedonists was one of the most straight forward philosophical pieces I know.