Beyond Good and Evil

By: Friedrich Nietzsche

Narrated by: Steven Crossley

Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's Summary

Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, first published in 1886, presents a scathing critique of traditional morality and attacks previous philosophers for their blind acceptance of Christian ideals of virtue. As an alternative to what he viewed as the illogical and irrelevant philosophy of the nineteenth century, Nietzsche argues for the importance of imagination, self-assertion, danger, and originality for genuine philosophy. He furthermore denies the existence of a universal system of morality and instead offers a framework in which social roles and power dynamics dictate what is appropriate. A culmination of Nietzsche's mature philosophy, Beyond Good and Evil is a classic of moral thought and one of the foundations of existentialism. This edition is the translation by Helen Zimmern.

Public Domain (P)2011 Tantor

Steven Crossley Nails It!

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

One of Nietzsche's best works.

What about Steven Crossley’s performance did you like?

The narrator Steven Crossley did a superb job of capturing all of the nuances of Nietzcshe's writing. It was almost as if he was channeling Nietzsche. Great job. His voice is very easy to listen to as well. I could listen to him for hours.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

yes.

10 of 11 people found this review helpful

Difficult to understand

I admittedly listened to only a little of this book (somewhat into the first chapter) but that is because the narrator spoke very dramatically with, annoyingly, a strong modulation in volume. Some words would be loud but then some would be inaudible. This is a particular problem with Nietzsche since he often looks at subtle concepts where hearing even the prepositions is important to grasping his point. Therefore, I switched to the narration by Alex Jennings which is better (and which uses a translation that also includes brief notes before each chapter).

8 of 9 people found this review helpful

best book I have read this year

only one word can describe this book. amazing. it takes you through a journey of the soul and the different avenues one might take on this crazy ride called life.

3 of 4 people found this review helpful

Very deep thoughts

This was my first encounter with Nietzsche's writings. His ideas, even though in manny cases differ from my own way of thinking, are definitely worth the time to think about.
In that sence, I felt I dint have enough time to think during the narration. There was not enough time, in my opinion, between different themes that are usually separated by paragraphs, and in many cases I needed that extra second to conclude one idea and go to the next. Part from that, the narration was very vivid and I truly enjoyed it.

3 of 4 people found this review helpful

Nietzsche has something to say and says it

Nietzsche's best book.

What is it to be human? What does the question even mean. Nietzsche understands the question and he knows the problem of human being. Kierkegaard reveals Christian being, Heidegger gets at being and Nietzsche bridges the two. Nietzsche despises the atomization, the 'present-at-hand', that is almost all philosophy from Plato to Descartes to Spinoza to Kant. He knows there is a problem. He knows that to understand at the level of the monads ('monads have no windows') of Leibniz or the interior self reflection of Descartes is to only lead to an objectivization of the world, a partial picture. It won't get the world itself. It won't make us understand the 'ready-at-hand' and how that needs a whole (with a 'dasein') in order to understand what it means to be a coke bottle instead of a gift from the Gods as portrayed in the movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy".

He'll say "every philosophy is a foreground philosophy". In his time period, he can't yet say 'ready-at-hand' (because Heidegger had yet to write "Being and Time"), but he knows the background explains us while we are thrown-into-the-world and we are always falling towards something and our care for the world gives us our human being through our primal nature. He'll say that "it is the noble man who confers honor on things". It us up to the individual to determine, one must never outsource truth. All of our values have gotten inverted and he is trying his best to bring us back and out of the clutches of the 'moralic acid' that has eroded our values.

Feelings are not facts, but all of our facts are based on our feelings. Nietzsche knows this. He knows there is a difference between the word and the thing. There's an ontological difference, the thoughts between the thoughts. It's what gives us the awe of being human and he wants us to bring it back and return to our instinctual selves, back to our will to power. What is will to power? Partly the will to truth but mostly the opposite of will to deny oneself. This book is one of the few times were Nietzsche actually defines it consistently. In addition, almost all of Nietzsche's greatest concepts are within this book except he only makes a passing remark for his 'eternal recurrence'. The aesthetic (the 'either' of Kierkegaard) is how we are to be human.

All of these thoughts are laid out in this book. He does assume the reader is familiar with philosophy and philosophers (and history and psychology), but I think this would be the perfect book for a neophyte to read, because of the way he writes and he actually wants to give the fish a bait worth biting and he's doing everything in his power to have them nibble. In his 'autobiography', "Ecce Homo', he says the world was at fault for not nibbling at this book, but, of course, time has shown him to be wrong.

Once again it's so clear to me that Republicans, fascist and followers of Donald Trump would be rewarded by reading Nietzsche. They just don't seem to get that their anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian, and anti-modernist stances completely overlap and Nietzsche provides a coherence that they are unable to provide for themselves but yet would give them a foundation for their hate. This book, of all of his books, could have easily been reworked by the Nazis and modern day Trump supporters.

I"m not a fascist or a follower of Donald Trump, but I can appreciate a good writer and I can ignore the parts that irritate me (including his needlessly and even anachronistic for its time period put downs on women), and I see this book for the masterpiece that it is because he understand human being better than anyone.

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

a masterpiece of all humanity brilliant in all

I'm not sure how much praise that I can give this work. life changing brilliance and elegant profundity and the highest order of Man 's thought hitherto

Great for cleaning

So I put this on with the goal of NOT bingewatching season 2 of The Crown until I finished it. My house is pretty clean now. The narrator sounded just pompous enough that I'm sure Nietzsche would have approved.

Hmm interesting listen from legacy thinkers

There are times when listening to the "great thinkers" of bye gone times is difficult. Not sentence structure but the thought of what came after.

interesting with poor sound quality

Its Nietzsche so it's interesting. It's a random thrashing of ideas coupled in a poor sound quality audiobook. Had some interesting ideas though. I abandoned at the last hour

Interesting content. Good vocal performace.

I enjoyed this book, abd the vocal performance was outstanding. I stuggled a little bit with some of the content, but as a whole, it was interesting.

good book

very good book. i enjoyed his ideas on God and most people misquote the man

2 of 2 people found this review helpful