Product Description

This remarkable collection of almost 1,400 aphorisms was originally published in three instalments. The first (now Volume I) appeared in 1878, just before Nietzsche abandoned academic life, with a first supplement entitled The Assorted Opinions and Maxims following in 1879, and a second entitled The Wanderer and his Shadow a year later. In 1886 Nietzsche republished them together in a two-volume edition, with new prefaces to each volume. Both volumes are presented here in R. J. Hollingdale’s distinguished translation (originally published in the series Cambridge Texts in German Philosophy) with a new introduction by Richard Schacht. In this wide-ranging work Nietzsche first employed his celebrated aphoristic style, so perfectly suited to his iconoclastic, penetrating and multi-faceted thought. Many themes of his later work make their initial appearance here, expressed with unforgettable liveliness and subtlety. Human, All Too Human well deserves its subtitle ‘A Book for Free Spirits’, and its original dedication to Voltaire, whose project of radical enlightenment here found a new champion.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #157359 in Books
• Published on: 1996-11-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 430 pages

Customer Reviews

Nietzsche at his best
This is Nietzsche at his best. Dangerous, ferocious , cunning and ultimately devastating. Here Nietzsche bares his teeth at the world and rips apart covention but always, always with a demonic grin on his satirical face. 'Human all to Human - can any man create a title more apt? His criticism of humanity is so incisive and decisive that many may quail on reading this text. Yet let all you faint hearted people be assured that Nietzsche's intention was not ridicule, per se. He challenges all our concepts and forces us to question our behaviour and thoughts - both as individuals and as a society.
Nieztsche is, in this work, inherently contradictory but this is , as always, his aim. His view is that there are no such things as absolutes yet he openly asks us to question his own statement on the grounds that if this is the case then his ideas are themselves doubtfull.
Thus 'Human all to Human' is a book of tremendous power and one that gives a novice, as well as the expert, more than a litte to dwell on.

Nietzsche's Coming Of Age
In order to give form to his Overman, Nietzsche had to call to account many human failings and weaknesses, and then reveal their baseness to the world. Nietzsche identified so much that had to be rejected in human life and affairs, (and so much that constituted greatness), which is the reason for the sheer scope of "Human, All Too Human". In 638 short aphorisms it covers politics, warfare, ascetics, morals, art, poetry, marriage, crime & punishment, the soul, and the gamut of human feeling, emotion, motive, instinct, will to power, habit and need.

In Human, All Too Human", Nietzsche outlines the basis of his later, more focused works. It is distinguished from these by its lack of arrogance, lack of aggression and its lack of real direction. Chapters are harnessed together by titles such as "A Look At The State", "Man Alone With Himself", "Signs Of Higher And Lower Culture", Man In Society", and "Woman And Child".

The book was written just after Nietzsche gave up his professors chair at Basel in Switzerland, and around the time of his break from his erstwhile father-figure, Richard Wagner. Nietzsche had now lost the shackles of youth and employment and was at his most free-spirited and this book is testimony to that fact: "Human, All Too Human" is dedicated to deliciously-malicious free-spirits everywhere.

Less intense than some of his later work, this book evokes a walk in the mountains enjoying pleasant conversation with one of the most penetrating and enlightened minds in history. Less intense perhaps, but no less compelling or unsettling.

This is only the 'first edition'
Subsequent to the original publication of 'Human All Too Human', Nietzsche published two fairly lengthy supplements, 'Assorted Opinions and Maxims' and 'The Wanderer and His Shadow'. All three were combined in 1886 to produce the second edition of 'Human All Too Human'. This (Penguin) edition is only the first edition. Look instead on Amazon for the Cambridge edition, also translated by Hollingdale, which is the second edition and is much longer (and not much more expensive either).