Indeed, what is the Dionysian? This book offers an answer to that question: a "knowledgeable person" speaks there, the initiate and disciple of his own god. Perhaps I would now speak with more care and less eloquently about such a difficult psychological question as the origin of tragedy among the Greeks. A basic issue is the relationship of the Greeks to pain, the degree of their sensitivity. Did this relationship remain constant? Or did it turn itself around? That question whether their constantly strong desire for beauty, feasts, festivities, and new cults arose out of some lack, deprivation, melancholy, or pain....

Human, All Too Human (1878) is often considered the start of Friedrich Nietzsche's mature period. A complex work that explores many themes to which Nietzsche later returned, it marks a significant departure from his previous thinking. Here Nietzsche breaks with his early allegiance to Schopenhauer and Wagner, and establishes the overall framework of his later philosophy. In contrast to his previous disdain for science, now Nietzsche views science as key to undercutting traditional metaphysics. This he sees as a crucial step in the emergence of free spirits who will be the avant-garde of culture.

In summing up the crucial change of perspective expressed in Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche used the following words in his later work Ecce Homo:

"Human, All Too Human' is a memorial of a crisis.... [W]ith this book I liberated myself from that in my nature which did not belong to me. Idealism does not belong to me...realities were altogether lacking in my knowledge, and the idealities were worth damn all! A downright burning thirst seized hold of me: thenceforward I pursued in fact nothing other than physiology, medicine, and natural science."

This is an essential work for anyone who wishes to understand Nietzsche's incisive critique of Western culture and values.
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Friedrich Nietzsche’s most prophetic, futuristic and apocalyptic philosophies are traced against modern upheavals and our post-millennial anxiety. Integrating texts from all of Nietzsche's major writings, this is an exciting new and radical re-interpretation of Nietzsche's writings, suggesting that Nietzsche is the only guide to the madness in our society, which he prophesied a century ago. Includes, among many other essays and writings: • Ecstacy • War • Deicide Nihlism • Übermensch Amnesia • Chaos • Suicide Sociopathy • The Gay Science (1882) • Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-85) • Beyond Good And Evil (1886) • On The Genealogy Of Morals (1887) • Posthumously published fragments and notebooks (1880s) • Letters...