Beyond Good and Evil

First published in 1886, 'Beyond Good and Evil' is a collection of essays and aphorisms by Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher, cultural critic and philologist whose work has exerted a deep impact on modern intellectual history. It presents a harsh critique of traditional morality and attacks previous philosophers for their blind acceptance of Christian ideals of virtue. Nietzsche argues that no human values are absolute and that all value distinctions are hypocritical. As a recourse to what he viewed as the illogical and irrelevant philosophy of the nineteenth century, Nietzsche argues for the importance of imagination, self-assertion, danger, and originality for genuine philosophy. He furthermore denies the existence of a universal system of morality and instead offers a framework in which social roles and power dynamics dictate what is relevant. A fulfilment of Nietzsche's mature philosophy, it is a classic of moral thought and one of the foundations of existentialism.