The Gay Science

A collection of aphorisms and short reflections first published in 1882 and reissued in 1887 with a new preface, a fifth book and an appendix of songs. The title recalls the Provençal troubadours' 'gay science' of poetry, and the book is lighter in tone than much of Nietzsche's work. Its themes include the value of knowledge for life, the origins of morality and logic, art, and the task of becoming who one is. Section 125, 'The Madman', has a man with a lantern announce in the marketplace that God is dead and that we have killed him, while the crowd laughs. Section 290 advises giving style to one's character, and section 276 embraces amor fati, the love of one's fate. Section 341 first presents eternal recurrence as a demon's question about living one's life again, and section 342 introduces Zarathustra. Book Five, 'We Fearless Ones', asks what the death of God means for Europe.

It contains the famous 'death of God' passage and the first statement of eternal recurrence, and it shows Nietzsche at his most cheerful, asking how to live well without old certainties.