Beyond Good and Evil – If you can get there

I attempted to read Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche. It was a disaster. The book is written for students of philosophy, and even more specifically for students of philosophy studying and philosophizing during his time. That means that in order to follow his arguments (and understand his satire and jokes), you need to be well-versed in the history of philosophy and understand what thought processes were popular during the late 1800s. I have studied broad overviews of philosophical history, but I’ve never gone into it very deep, so most of what Nietzche mocked was beyond me before I ever got to the good and evil part.

For a while, I kept reading the book, thinking that perhaps if I could take it as a class later, that would help. I intended to suggest that if you’re interested in reading his works, you might want to consider trying to find a class to attend that will cover them. But then I got to his section on why women aren’t capable of thought. Apparently, it’s because we can have children. Men are capable of thought because they can’t have kids. Barren women are apparently also capable of thought. Anytime there’s a woman thinking logically, she probably can’t have kids. And that’s where he lost me.

Is Nietzsche worth reading? Probably? But, personally, I can’t tell you why.

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