Best good & evil philosophy books according to redditors

Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche

This is one of his collections of ruminations. The books are divided into chapters, roughly by subject, each chapter is composed of a couple hundred differenly sized paragraphs and statements.

Don't expect it to read like sonnets or poetry either. It's really showerthoughts put down on paper, but often are much more considered.

As always, don't read to far into things.

PS: you should be able to find this at your local library. Nietzsche's works are part of project gutenberg.

Okay...

I think that things like the Evil Overlord list are humerous as far as picking out common villain tropes, but it's not entirely applicable in Real Life. For example, item 34 is "I will not turn into a snake. It never helps." Which makes sense in video games and The Silver Chair (C.S. Lewis) and Final Fantasy VII, because going into Sephiroth-mode is always the prelude to the protagonist smiting you. But in Real Life, there's no reason whatsoever that becoming a one-winged angel won't help you slay your foes more effectively or whatever.

Similarly, some of the advice here is actually mixed: Murphy's Laws of Combat (I don't know if these even have any practical value) are a bit at odds with some of the things in Art of War.

That said, aside from the advice to not do things just because it rarely works out in fiction, what do you want to accomplish? If the goal is Winning™, what does that entail? Is this advice that Bunny is giving other people, or that she's trying to take? (I assume that you're asking for the purposes of S.I.) War, politics, plague, dealing with sentient computer programs/malignant nanomachines, obtaining eternal life, and the net reduction of entropy in the universe all require different mindsets.

Things on practical philosophy include Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Enchiridon (a condensed version of which is currently on this subreddit) and Rational Man with Shotgun, supposedly based on Rowling's comment that a wizard could be killed by a rational man with a shotgun.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Boese. Bless your ruthlessly pragmatic heart.

I'm no Nietzsche scholar, but my curiosity was whetted, and I tried to work out an answer from what I could find of secondary works. Hopefully, I'll be corrected if I'm way off.

> Is Nietzsche saying certainty leads to nihilism, or is he saying the certainty can possibly lead to nihilism?

> I'm a bit confused. How can being certain lead to nihilism, surely the certainty makes one sure or confident about 'reality'?

What Nietzsche calls 'passive' nihilism is when "faith in values has been lost but the desire for the absolutes that characterised such faith remains in place."(1) I think this is what Nietzsche has in mind in the first passage you quoted. It's not the 'certainty' that leads, or may lead, to (passive) nihilism. The certainty rather is or represents this passive nihilism, since it's grounded in a will to truth: a need for absolutes in the wake of the death of God.

> Which group of people is he referring to?

I think he's still referring to passive nihilists: not the metaphysicians this time, but the skeptics. They are dismissive of naive realism (they're dismissing sensual experience as sole guide to truth) and positivism, but are really doing the same thing as the metaphysicians: looking for absolutes in the wake of the death of God. These skeptics are right about one thing: their dismissal of the positivists.

I was a bit puzzled about the last sentence of the quote (it's a bit different in my Norwegian translation), but thumbing through another book, I found this quote:

> While admiring their skepticism, Nietzsche thinks they do not follow their ideas far enough, namely to the point of questioning the value of truth as the basis of nobility, such as he anticipates possible (...) (2)

Did this help you at all?

*



(1) Sedgwick, Peter R., Nietzsche: The Key Concepts (2009), entry on 'Nihilism', p. 108, which refers to Will to Power § 22, for the categorisation of 'active' and 'passive' nihilism. It's from 1887 (the same year as a year after Beyond Good and Evil), and I'll quote it here for you:

> Nihilism. It is ambiguous:

> A. Nihilism as a sign of increased power of the spirit: as active nihilism.

> B. Nihilism as decline and recession of the power of the spirit: as passive nihilism.

(2)* Acampora, Christa Davis; Keith Ansell Pearson, [Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. A Reader's Guide*](http://www.amazon.com/Nietzsches-Beyond-Good-Evil-Readers/dp/0826473644/) (2011), p. 39.

https://www.amazon.com/Soul-Nietzsches-Beyond-Good-Evil/dp/0521793807/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468641860&sr=8-1&keywords=the+soul+of+beyond+good+and+evil

https://www.amazon.com/Nietzsches-Beyond-Good-Evil-Readers/dp/0826473644/ref=pd_sim_14_12?ie=UTF8&dpID=41fDmPzJHWL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR102%2C160_&psc=1&refRID=YSJS3Q11ZR0KP9PMSVAB

I haven't read these, but look inside and see if they're what you're looking for. I also find Kaufmann's and Hollingdale's (or Tanner's) introductions to Nietzsche's texts useful, along with the footnotes.

Edit: The translation isn't the problem. It's very easy to blame translations but I think people make a much bigger deal about this than they need to. It seems like you're getting lost with two things: 1) keeping track of Nietzsche's train of thought through the winding sentences and 2) the allusions to the history of philosophy. For 1), I'd suggest constantly keeping track of the subjects of the sentence and the referents of the pronouns (that's where I get lost when reading N.). And for 2), just read more history of philosophy. I find intros to anthologies pretty good for getting a working knowledge of the historical developments quickly: the intro to an ancient anthology, than medieval, than modern, that do it again with another set, and again (while reading some core texts, of course).

I'd suggest taking your question over to /r/askphilosophy, it's designed for answering questions. I'm not aware of any "reader's guide" for BGE off the top of my head, though there are a couple dozen for Genealogy of Morality. It looks like Keith Ansell-Pearson has written one, which would probably be not bad. I generally think the best way to understand Nietzsche is to read more Nietzsche--Genealogy of Morality is generally the one I'd recommend.

>I disagree about there being valid safety or mental well-being concerns

Men show a clear pattern of aggression as much as i hate to admit it. There is too high of a testosterone & aggression correlation. It is the duty of the state to provide a safe environment for whatever it builds/sponsors. Just try to get a zoning permit from residential to commercial to see what i mean.

Why did we have to go to the goat argument, you button hooked me. I get your point. The idea is that if we are all equal than we are not equal. As an atheist i am happy to support displays of any faith on private land, but public land is different. I have to pay taxes and therefore i am directly supporting something i don't believe in.

If we displaced ourselves in another country, our beliefs are invalidated. Does this mean that the prevailing party is right/wrong? If you take the socially imposed view of 'right' and 'wrong' out of the conversation, you see how arbitrary people use the words. Your goat theory would hold acceptable to some, while others it would be morally wrong. Do i support the goat? No. It is my decision to say i do not approve of that, but my moral construct is different from others.

A psychopath will have valid self affirmed and clear reasons to kill the goat, and he truly believes it is his duty to do it. It is self justifying behavior. It is group speak as your morals reflect the group/conditions that you were exposed to.

If we moved to another country, and they sacrificed goats for the gym. That is the rule set by that society and yes you either follow it or leave. Or be treated like a heretic and be stoned/beaten/burned etc. Prevailing society wins every time, and as we accept all faiths, we have to accommodate all faiths. Most of all in a 'moral' society, if there is a danger (even the slightest bit like terrorism) than you guard against it, and you have to take it seriously.

Even if you don't agree with Nietzsche, there is a overcoming of 'self' that is inspiring.

Fans of this book and other critiques of modern culture should check out Derrick Jensen's book "The Culture of Make Believe". It's a more historical critique and one that is unrelenting and completely unapologetic. Brutal, intelligent, and well researched, Jensen effectively destroys any argument defending modern civilization and culture.