Beyond Good and Evil

Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future is a book by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche that expands the ideas of his previous work Thus Spoke Zarathustra with a more critical and polemical approach. It was first published in 1886.

    In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche accuses past philosophers of lacking critical sense and blindly accepting dogmatic premises in their consideration of morality. Specifically, he accuses them of founding grand metaphysical systems upon the faith that the good man is the opposite of the evil man, rather than just a different expression of the same basic impulses that find more direct expression in the evil man. The work moves into the realm "beyond good and evil" in the sense of leaving behind the traditional morality which Nietzsche subjects to a destructive critique in favor of what he regards as an affirmative approach that fearlessly confronts the perspectival nature of knowledge and the perilous condition of the modern individual.

In this work Nietzsche comments on everything in his contemporary world, centering around the sciences, politics, and the arts. He makes numerous points about the way people think about themselves and how we need to think as people in order to grow and change. My favorite point he makes is about common sense and how anyone who prescribes to common sense is simply common themselves because everyone should challenge themselves to question their own preconceived thoughts and thoughts stemming from their situations, experiences, and worlds.