ABSTRACT
Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher, philologist, and classical scholar. His work was mainly concerned with the consequences of secularism and atheism, which had become widespread since the Enlightenment of the mid-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nietzsche spent the following decade—during which all of his major works, including Beyond Good and Evil, were written—living a solitary, nomadic life, travelling around France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy in pursuit of better health. Nietzsche describes his 1886 text Beyond Good and Evil as a critique of modernity—"including modern science, modern art—even modern politics". Its aim was to encourage us to question contemporary values in light of the decline of religion. According to Nietzsche, the values of contemporary Europe are largely Christian in origin. Nietzsche is regarded as one of the finest writers of German prose, and even in translation the text has a striking clarity, immediacy, and elegance, surpassing most other writing on moral philosophy.
