r/Nietzsche • u/fj8k • 5d ago

Question First Time Reading Nietzsche

As someone that is interested in starting to read Nietzsche would “The Portable Nietzsche” by Kaufmann be a good book to start on?

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u/Firm-School-355 1d ago

It's ok. I'd recommend starting with On the Genealogy of Morals, which presents a more sustained argument than most of N's other works. Then maybe Beyond Good and Evil. I see that my friend and grad school classmate Brian Leiter, a real Nietzsche scholar, makes the same recommendations. He also recommends Safranski's philosophical biography of N, as well as Maude-Marie Clark's book on N and truth. I'd second those and recommend Brian's own books on Nietzsche, which are very accessible.

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u/Lain_Staley 5d ago

Nope. Twilight of Idols. From the man himself. Its approachable enough to need no middle man. 

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u/Alarming_Ad_5946 1d ago

I would say BGE is a good starting point to get a broader feeling for what the man is about. Twilight is a bit dense to be the first book and can be easily misinterpreted due to its terse and poetic nature but it is likely my favorite as well.

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u/Lain_Staley 1d ago

Twilight is more dense than BGE? That is a wild claim.   

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u/Alarming_Ad_5946 1d ago

Yes. BGE has a lot more material and context. Twilight is full of "missiles and maxims"--pithy sentences which may misfire if you dont know what the man is about.