ABSTRACT
Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil presents perhaps the clearest statement of his mature philosophical views, though most of the ideas it contains appear in earlier publications. In the autobiographical Ecce Homo, Nietzsche writes that Beyond Good and Evil is "in essence a critique of modernity"; this concern with contemporary culture had been a persistent theme since his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, in 1872. The route through which Nietzsche gained his reputation as a great thinker is complex. Though his work was largely ignored during his active lifetime, it would later come to dominate the continental philosophical traditions of the twentieth century. As one of his most widely read books, Beyond Good and Evil has contributed to Nietzsche's acceptance into the Western canon of great philosophers. Written at the peak of his intellectual powers, it gives perhaps the clearest statement of his views on many of the recurrent topics of his work, particularly morality.
