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Anti-Education: On the Future of Our Educational Institutions

Friedrich Nietzsche, Paul ReitterAN NYRB Classics Original

In 1869, at the age of twenty-four, the precociously brilliant Friedrich Nietzsche was appointed to a professorship of classical philology at the University of Basel. He seemed marked for a successful and conventional academic career. Then the philosophy of Schopenhauer and the music of Wagner transformed his ambitions. The genius of such thinkers and makers—the kind of genius that had emerged in ancient Greece—this alone was the touchstone for true understanding. But how was education to serve genius, especially in a modern society marked more and more by an unholy alliance between academic specialization, mass-market journalism, and the militarized state? Something more than sturdy scholarship was called for. A new way of teaching and questioning, a new philosophy . . .

What that new way might be was the question Nietzsche broached in five vivid, popular public lectures in Basel in 1872. Anti-Education presents a provocative and timely reckoning with what remains one of the central challenges of the modern world.

God Is Dead. God Remains Dead. And We Have Killed Him.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Great Ideas Man Alone With Himself

Friedrich NietzscheFriedrich Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary thinkers in Western philosophy. Here he sets out his subversive views in a series of aphorisms on subjects ranging from art to arrogance, boredom to passion, science to vanity, rejecting conventional notions of morality to celebrate the individual’s ‘will to power’. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves – and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives – and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

The Portable Nietzsche

Friedrich NietzscheThe works of Friedrich Nietzsche have fascinated readers around the world ever since the publication of his first book more than a hundred years ago. As Walter Kaufmann, one of the world’s leading authorities on Nietzsche, notes in his introduction, “Few writers in any age were so full of ideas,” and few writers have been so consistently misinterpreted. The Portable Nietzsche includes Kaufmann’s definitive translations of the complete and unabridged texts of Nietzsche’s four major works: Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, Nietzsche Contra Wagner and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In addition, Kaufmann brings together selections from his other books, notes, and letters, to give a full picture of Nietzsche’s development, versatility, and inexhaustibility. “In this volume, one may very conveniently have a rich review of one of the most sensitive, passionate, and misunderstood writers in Western, or any, literature.” —Newsweek

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Friedrich NietzscheThus Spoke Zarathustra, by Friedrich Nietzsche, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

Considered by many to be the most important philosopher of modern times, Friedrich Nietzsche influenced twentieth-century ideas and culture more than almost any other thinker. His best-known book, Thus Spoke Zarathustrapublished in four parts in the last two decades of the nineteenth centuryis also his masterpiece, and represents the fullest expression of his ideas up to that time.

A unique combination of biblical oratory and playfulness, Thus Spoke Zarathustra chronicles the wanderings and teachings of the prophet Zarathustra, who descends from his mountain retreat to awaken the world to its new salvation. Do not accept, he counsels, what almost two thousand years of history have taught you to call evil. The Greeks knew better: Goodness for them was nobility, pride, and victory, not the Christian virtues of humility, meekness, poverty, and altruism. The existence of the human race is justified only by the exceptional among usthe superman,” whose self-mastery and strong will to power” frees him from the common prejudices and assumptions of the day.

These and other concepts in Zarathustra were later perverted by Nazi propagandists, but Nietzsche, a despiser of mass movements both political and religious, did not ask his readers for faith and obedience, but rather for critical reflection, courage, and independence.

Kathleen M. Higgins and Robert C. Solomon are both professors of philosophy at the University Texas at Austin. Together, they have written What Nietzsche Really Said and A Short History of Philosophy and co-edited Reading Nietzsche.