Beyond Good and Evil

A book of nine parts made of numbered sections, published in 1886 and subtitled a prelude to a philosophy of the future. It opens by asking why philosophers want truth at all, and argues that every great philosophy has been a confession of its author, an unconscious memoir. Part One attacks the 'prejudices of philosophers', including belief in immediate certainties such as 'I think', in free will and in opposite values. Nietzsche suggests instead that life is will to power and that all knowing is from a perspective. Later parts treat the free spirits he hopes for, religion, scholars, and the 'natural history of morals', where modern European morality is described as herd morality. The final part, 'What Is Noble', distinguishes master morality, which calls the noble and strong good, from slave morality, which calls the meek and harmless good. Aphorisms and a closing poem break up the argument.

It is the best single overview of Nietzsche's mature thought, and its challenges to the value of truth, to moral certainty and to philosophers' own motives remain hard to answer.