Twilight of the Idols

A short book written quickly in the late summer of 1888 and published in January 1889, in the same month that Nietzsche's mental collapse ended his working life. He meant it as a brief introduction to his philosophy, and its subtitle promises to philosophise with a hammer, sounding out idols to hear whether they are hollow. It opens with 'Maxims and Arrows', a set of epigrams that includes the line that what does not kill him makes him stronger. 'The Problem of Socrates' treats Socrates' faith in reason as a symptom of decline. 'How the "True World" Finally Became a Fable' compresses the history of Western metaphysics into six stages, from Plato to the abolition of both the true and the apparent world. 'Morality as Anti-Nature' and 'The Four Great Errors' attack morality and the ideas of free will, cause and responsibility on which it relies. Later sections criticise German culture and contemporary writers, and close with praise of the ancients.

It is the fastest route into Nietzsche's late thought, and its six-step history of the 'true world' is one of the most quoted passages in modern philosophy.