Friedrich Nietzsche

During his early years in Basel, as professor of classical philology, Nietzsche develops an original understanding of ancient Greek poetry, philosophy, and culture, alongside a biting critique of contemporary German society and a call for its reform. These years see him publish his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, where tragic drama is understood as the harmonizing of Apollonian and Dionysian drives. In it, Nietzsche traces the rise of tragedy as an art form, diagnoses its demise at the hands of Socratic rationalism, and champions its revival in Wagnerian music drama, as part of a larger project of German national renewal. The unpublished texts gathered here allow us to see The Birth of Tragedy within the larger context of Nietzsche's concerns at this time and chart the compositional and interpretive development of that first book while revealing some roads not taken. Included also are three book-length projects: On the Future of Our Educational Institutions, a literary presentation of a program for sweeping educational reform in the name of producing the genius; Five Prefaces to Five Unwritten Books, a set of short philosophical, cultural, and historical interventions; and Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, an investigation of early Greek philosophy in its cultural context. The celebrated essay "On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense," and two short pro-Wagner pieces, "Exhortation to the Germans" and "A New Year's Word for the Editor of the Weekly Im neuen Reich," round out this essential collection of early writings. Extensive translators' annotations supply critical background information and context for Nietzsche's comments on ancient Greek and contemporary German culture.

''I am not a man, I am dynamite.''Ecce Homo is an autobiography like no other. Deliberately provocative, Nietzsche subverts the conventions of the genre and pushes his philosophical positions to combative extremes, constructing a genius-hero whose life is a chronicle of incessant self-overcoming. Written in 1888, a few weeks before his descent into madness, the book sub-titled ''How To Become What You Are'' passes under review all Nietzsche''s previous works so that we, his ''posthumous'' readers, can finally understand him aright, on his own terms. He reaches final reckonings with his many enemies - Richard Wagner, German nationalism, ''modern men'' in general - and above all Christianity, proclaiming himself the Antichrist. Ecce Homo is the summation of an extraordinary philosophical career, a last great testament to Nietzsche''s will. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche will publish in its entirety, for the first time, an English translation of the full contents of the Kritische Studienausgabe. This volume of the Complete Works provides the first English translation of Nietzsche's unpublished notes from Summer 1886 through Fall 1887. In these writings we find drafts of new prefaces for the second editions of his earlier works, notes for the soon-to-appear On the Genealogy of Morality, and crucially, fragments and plans for an anticipated "master work" under the title "The Will to Power." This projected work, as is now well-known, was never written by Nietzsche; instead, it was fraudulently assembled by his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and his friend Heinrich Köselitz (a.k.a. Peter Gast) and published under Nietzsche's name after his death. Only now, with the publication of this volume and the ones that precede and follow it, are English readers able to examine for themselves the full set of unpublished writings of the last creative period of Nietzsche's life. Taking into account the latest editorial work on his final notebooks, and including a detailed account by Mazzino Montinari of Nietzsche's decision not to complete a "master work," this volume documents the evolution of Nietzsche's thinking on such important themes as nihilism, eternal recurrence, and the revaluation of all values as it presents his late Nachlass free from the distortions perpetrated against it over a century ago.