On the Genealogy of Morals

Make no mistake: Nietzsche was a nut. Bertrand Russell famously dismissed him as a megalomaniac, and maybe that’s true. People blame the Nazis on him, they say he was a misogynist, and on and on. I don’t really know about all that, one way or another (though the Nazi thing is demonstrably false — Ni......more

Let's try an exercise. It may be a controversial one, but after all, I am talking about Nietzsche here. In this review, I will attempt an exegesis, through the lens of two relevant sociopolitical issues, of an English translation by editor and Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufman of two of Nietzsche's g......more

This book made me sputtering mad when I read it in college. In retrospect, I'm just grateful that it was easy to read. Also, did you know that there's a brand of bread called Ecce Panis? Thus Baked Zarathustra! Try it with Hummus, All Too Hummus and The Dill to Power. The latter tends to rankle puri......more

Here Nietzsche returns to the form of the essay after several complete works largely composed aphoristically. The second essay in the polemic On the Geneology of Morals is excellent and my personal favorite of the three essays that comprise this work. He discusses the historical tossings and turning......more

One of the few books that absolutely changed my life, and filled in as something not unlike a spiritual guide (between a time-gap following my denouncing formal religion, then not knowing how to proceed with philosophy as a "spiritual endeavor," which is how many "Eastern" philosophers define spirit......more