Jenseits von Gut und Böse

Jenseits von Gut und Böse, a philosophical work by Friedrich Nietzsche, written in 1885, and published in 1886. It bears the subtitle Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft, and consists of 296 numbered paragraphs, arranged in nine main sections (Hauptstücke) with the following headings: I. Von den Vorurteilen der Philosophen; II. Der freie Geist; III. Das religiöse Wesen; IV. Sprüche und Zwischenspiele; V. Zur Naturgeschichte der Moral; VI. Wir Gelehrten; VII. Unsere Tugenden; VIII. Völker und Vaterländer; IX. Was ist vornehm? The book, which followed Also sprach Zarathustra, is written in an aphoristic and ironical style.

Jenseits von Gut und Böse derides the levelling tendencies of the modern world, and attacks existing morality which bolsters the weak and restricts the strong. To ‘Herdenmoral’ Nietzsche opposes a ‘Herrenmoral’ asserting a scale of human beings, ‘eine Rangordnung zwischen Mensch und Mensch’. He has no good words for the new nationalistic Germany and castigates anti-Semitism. The book is a preparation for his intended but uncompleted masterpiece, Der Wille zur Macht. It concludes with an epilogue (Nachgesang), a poem entitled ‘Aus hohen Bergen’, written in 1884, which expresses a longing for friendship; the last two stanzas, written later, convey deep disillusionment.