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Nietzsche called this short book a great declaration of war, and its subtitle, 'how to philosophize with the hammer', means sounding out the 'idols', the…
Nietzsche called this short book a great declaration of war, and its subtitle, 'how to philosophize with the hammer', means sounding out the 'idols', the great ideals of Western culture, to hear whether they ring hollow. In sharp chapters he attacks Socrates, the 'improvers' of mankind, German culture, free will and the idea of a 'true world' beyond this one, which he sums up in a famous page, 'How the True World Finally Became a Fable'. 'What does not kill me makes me stronger' comes from its opening maxims.
Context and significance
Written in 1888, the last year of Nietzsche's working life, it was published at the beginning of 1889, just after his mental collapse. This volume of the Oscar Levy edition, translated by Anthony M. Ludovici, also contains The Antichrist. See Nietzsche's life.
About the author
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), the son of a Lutheran pastor, was appointed professor of classical philology at Basel at only twenty-four. His friendship with the composer Richard Wagner shaped his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, and its bitter end shaped much of what followed. Ill health forced him to resign in 1879, and he spent ten restless years in Swiss and Italian lodgings, writing book after book.
In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil and his later works he questioned morality, religion and truth itself. He collapsed in Turin in 1889 and never recovered; his sister later bent his work toward nationalist causes he had despised. Few philosophers have been so influential, or so often misread.