Human, All Too Human

In 1878, Nietzsche dedicated his new book to the memory of Voltaire. It was a declaration of independence — from Schopenhauer, from Wagner, and from the Romantic idealism that had dominated his early thought. Human, All Too Human was the beginning of the Nietzsche the world would come to know: unsentimental, psychologically ruthless, and constitutionally unable to leave a comfortable belief untouched.

Written in the aphoristic form he would use for the rest of his career, this book turns the tools of psychological analysis on the foundations of morality, religion, and art — and finds in each of them not transcendent values but human, all too human motivations: vanity, fear, the will to power, and the deep desire to avoid the discomfort of genuine thinking. The analysis is bracingly honest. The style is brilliant.

Essential for understanding the arc of Nietzsche’s thought and for grasping what makes him the most important philosopher of the nineteenth century. Marion Faber’s translation captures the wit and precision of the original. Published by Penguin Classics.