How to Read Nietzsche

Sometimes people ask me about Nietzsche, like, What order should you read him in? Here is a very quickly put together guide. My take on Nietzsche is that there are four phases, from his youth to the end of his life: historian/educator; psychological sharpshooter; philosopher; absurdist. To best understand his work, I think you should go in order through the phases.

Historian/Educator

Start with Untimely Meditations, an early book of four essays (from 1873-1876). Skip the first one, and read the middle two, and then skip the last one.

The middle two essays are on history and education, and they are the core of everything that Nietzsche did after. (The essays are “On the Use and Abuse of History for Life” and “Schopenhauer as Educator”).

History and education are generally treated as the most objective pursuits—but Nietzsche developed a perspective on them that included his own dynamic subjectivity. His dialectical engagement with history/education—revealing the deeper objective truth of history through radical engagement with subjectivity—was the style that he brought to all his later work on philosophy, morality, art, and everything else.

If you connect with these two essays, then there’s a good chance you’ll like the rest of Nietzsche. If you don’t love these two essays—which embody all the best things about his writing—then you probably won’t get much out of his other stuff.

Optional: read the short book of education lectures from his early days, it’s available in a little book called Anti-Education. It elaborates further on his philosophy of education. He also has a little book of lectures called Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. Those are little biographies of pre-Socratic philosophers, and how their lives are the best window into their ideas. It’s cool, but not essential. (Also, I recommend skipping The Birth of Tragedy).

Psychological Sharpshooter

The late 1870s to the early 1880s. My personal favorite phase. In two books—Human, All Too Human and Daybreak—Nietzsche uses the full power of his mind on worldly things. He isn’t focused just on history or education anymore, and he hasn’t ventured off too much into morality and philosophy yet—in these books he trains his mind on the larger meaning of bad dinner parties and things like that. He has an almost novelistic eye, and writes with an aesthetic sense that he perfected in this phase. It’s the best combination of literary art and psychological insight that I’ve ever seen, and that is my favorite kind of writing. He can focus on such small things and come up with insights that rattle your soul. It’s the peak of his powers, in my opinion. These two books have a certain lightness of touch combined with heaviness that he never really quite achieved again. His books became increasingly heavier afterwards, and I prefer a lighter Nietzsche who does armchair psychology. He’s at his best as a psychological sharpshooter—just sniping minor things here and there that nobody else could see, rather than grandiosely sweeping away entire things, as he does in his heavier philosophy phase. So I would read both of these for sure.

Philosopher

Then comes The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. This is the beginning of the philosophy phase. These books are good, especially Gay Science. Zarathustra has its moments, but was never my favorite. The Gay Science is one of the best overall books on his philosophy, but it was written so early that he hadn’t really developed his philosophy yet. So there are more questions than answers in it. Beyond Good and Evil (1886) came after Zarathustra, and is probably a better guide to his philosophy than Gay Science. But it isn’t written with the early energy and flair that Gay Science has. Still, BGE is, pound for pound, probably Nietzsche’s best book. It’s written with panache but also heaviness, and offers the widest, deepest discussion on his main ideas. Twilight of the Idols (1887) also offers a good overview of his philosophy, but it lacks the power and punch of Beyond Good and Evil. Then after Twilight comes Genealogy of Morals, probably Nietzsche’s most conventional text, the most academic and the hardest to read. So for this phase, covering Gay Science to Genealogy, if you have to pick only one, I would say Beyond Good and Evil. Gay Science is a close second.

Absurdist

Then things get kind of absurd. He got a little megalomaniacal and unhinged. He wrote The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, and two books about how he hated Richard Wagner. They’re all about himself (he is the anti-Christ in the book by that name). These are all kind of weird and self-aggrandizing, but Ecce Homo is amazing. It’s his intellectual autobiography. He evaluates his own career—and he happens to be his own biggest fan! But the cool thing about Ecce Homo is that his bragging about himself is totally deserved. He earned the right to brag, as much as anyone ever has. Nothing is more fun than talking shit and backing it up. It makes me laugh more than probably any other book. I love it. Definitely read that one.

Okay so to summarize: start with the essays on history and education in Untimely Meditations; move on to Human, All Too Human and Daybreak; then Beyond Good and Evil and Ecce Homo. You’re welcome!