Nietzsche’s own output was massive, and the secondary literature can be overwhelming. In this brief guide, I offer some suggestions for Nietzsche newcomers interested in learning more. Works by and then about Nietzsche are arranged in a suggested reading order. (If you already have a background in Nietzsche’s work, anything on these lists should be intelligible.)
Twilight of the Idols
Written near the end of Nietzsche’s sane life, this short volume distills his key themes into something likely both to provoke and baffle many first-time readers of Nietzsche. My advice: Start here but pass over anything that is initially unclear; if you return to Twilight after reading several other Nietzsche works, it will all (well, mostly) make sense.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Yes, its pastiche of the Bible and self-help exhortations can produce some truly over-ripe prose at times, but there’s a reason this is so popular. Zarathustra remains the closest thing to a novel that Nietzsche ever wrote, and the language throughout is invigorating. I guarantee this is like no philosophy book you have ever read. It contains extended discussions of the übermensch and the “last man,” along with plenty of parables that will be hard to interpret without some kind of annotation or explanation.
On the Genealogy of Morals
Three more traditional essays that show Nietzsche’s “genealogical” method at work. He traces several hallowed concepts—such as pity and asceticism—back to their (imaginatively reconstructed) roots to show that the ground they emerged from was “human, all too human.” It is a provocative read that talks at length about “master” and “slave” morality.
Daybreak. The Gay Science. Human, All Too Human. Beyond Good and Evil
All four of these are “aphoristic” works that cover a wide range of topics. The first three are sometimes known as the “free-spirit” trilogy of Nietzsche’s alleged “middle period,” while Beyond Good and Evil has more links to later works such as On the Genealogy of Morals. Still, any one of these is a fine introduction to Nietzsche’s aphoristic style, though I personally gravitate toward Daybreak and The Gay Science (perhaps the most personal of the four). Because they cover some of the same thematic and stylistic ground, I would pick one of them and move on, returning to the others later if interest remains.
Ecce Homo
A highly idiosyncratic “autobiography” that Nietzsche wrote weeks before his insanity. Though traces of megalomania do appear in the book, it remains a beautifully written testament to what Nietzsche was trying to do with his life and writings.
The Birth of Tragedy. The Anti-Christ. The Will to Power. Untimely Meditations
Best suited for true Nietzsche devotees.
The Birth of Tragedy’s first half is fascinating, though you need to have a taste for arguments about Greek dramatists to get through it.
The Anti-Christ is a nearly hysterical polemic against Christianity—read the last few pages if you doubt this—and represents Nietzsche at his No-saying worst. Provocative, but Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals make many similar points under far greater control.
The Will to Power comes from Nietzsche’s notebooks and contains material explored but never published by him. For that reason, it remains tricky to use as a guide to Nietzsche’s thought.
The Untimely Meditations are four long essays written when Nietzsche was a young professor. All are well crafted, though only the essay on history contains much of interest to nonspecialists today. Unless, that is, you like reading takedowns of David Strauss or puffery about Richard Wagner.
I Am Dynamite! A Life of Nietzsche. Sue Prideaux.
The newest of the Nietzsche biographies, this 2018 entry is also one of the best. It focuses more on Nietzsche’s life than on his ideas, but it brings that life powerfully to life. It is especially good at using a carefully chosen selection of quotes from Nietzsche’s books and letters. For instance, here’s Nietzsche complaining about his illness: “This neuralgia goes to work so thoroughly, so scientifically, that it literally probes me to find how much pain I can endure, and each of its investigations lasts for thirty hours.” Prideaux is a fine writer, and her book is certainly the most compulsively readable of the books on Nietzsche. It is perhaps the best place for Nietzsche newcomers to start.
Nietzsche: Unpublished Letters. Kurt Leidecker, translator and editor.
This 1959 book is well worth picking up at a library or used bookstore. It simply collects 75 letters that span Nietzsche’s life. The first is from the schoolboy Nietzsche to his sister, Elisabeth, recommending to her specific books and some musical pieces by Schumann; the last is from the days after Nietzsche’s insanity, when he wrote, “I had Caiaphas put in chains.” Between those poles you can watch Nietzsche grow to maturity, struggle with his career, express his suffering and loneliness, show a touch of megalomania, and get into fights with this mother and sister. It is an intimate self-portrait of a complex man.
Conversations with Nietzsche: A Life in the Words of His Contemporaries. Sander Gilman, editor; David Parent, translator.
What did the young Professor Nietzsche wear around Basel? (“Light-colored pants, a short jacket, and around his collar fluttered a delicately knotted necktie, also of a lighter color.”)
What was it like to hike with Nietzsche up Mount Boron in 1884? (“There I tasted for the first time the ‘vermouth de Torino,’ poured by Nietzsche, whom the mistral had stirred up into a most excited mood, full of humorous ideas,” remembered one companion.)
What was Nietzsche like 8 years into his insanity? (“When he was told music would be played, he immediately was ecstatic and emitted ugly, unarticulated sounds, a dull, horrible groaning. After the music began his whole face was transfigured and beamed indescribably.”)
This book collects accounts of Nietzsche from those who knew him. It draws from essays and newspaper pieces published largely in German as Nietzsche grew famous during his insanity and then after his death. Endlessly illuminating, this is worth reading if you want to feel Nietzsche as a human being and not just as a “prophet.” Highly recommended.
Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy. R.J. Hollingdale.
This is a classic biography by one of Nietzsche’s best translators. As the subtitle indicates, the book balances Nietzsche’s story with his unfolding philosophical views. If it does not reveal the character and humanity of Nietzsche as well as Prideaux’s book does, it remains a good one-volume overview of Nietzsche’s life and thought—and well worth a read as a second Nietzsche biography.
The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins.
Not a book, this series of 24 half-hour lectures on Nietzsche comes from The Teaching Company and offers a terrific audio overview of Nietzsche’s work. Solomon and Higgins are a pair of married professors at the University of Texas, and they team teach this college-level course. It largely ignores Nietzsche’s biography to concentrate on the ideas, including the übermensch, asceticism, the Greeks, nihilism, amor fati, “immoralism,” and rationality. Perfect for commuters or for gym use, this is a solid introduction to Nietzsche’s thought in audio form.
Hiking with Nietzsche. John Kaag.
An American philosophy professor describes two of his own journeys to Sils Maria, in Switzerland, where he hikes the same walkways and mountain paths that Nietzsche hiked during his most fruitful period. Kaag’s two trips, coming 18 years apart, aim to find out more about Nietzsche—but they end up revealing quite a bit about Kaag. Easy to read, with a nice sense of place, it illuminates both Nietzsche and the physical places he inhabited.
Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist.Walter Kaufmann.
Kaufmann was a longtime philosophy professor at Princeton who had himself left Nazi Germany in 1939. He took great pains to show that Nietzsche was not a proto-Nazi, and with this book Kaufmann played a key role in rehabilitating Nietzsche in the English-speaking world after World War II. It leans perhaps too heavily on the idea of the “gentle” Nietzsche, and it’s much harder going for casual readers than the Hollingdale or Prideaux biographies. But Kaufmann was an incisive thinker, and his long discussions of Nietzsche’s key themes remain worth reading.