Twilight of the Idols

The notebooks where Nietzsche faces nihilism head on. Book One describes European nihilism, why the highest values devalue themselves, and the rest sketches his revaluation of all values. Edited after his death, it is the core text on the subject.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Three essays on where our ideas of good and evil, guilt and ascetic ideals come from. Nietzsche ends with his famous warning that humanity would rather will nothingness than not will at all, the clearest statement of how morality itself breeds nihilism.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche questions the prejudices of philosophers and the morality they take for granted, from the will to truth to the contrast between master and slave values. It shows what replaces the old values once their foundation is gone.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche's all-out attack on Christianity, which he calls a nihilistic religion that turned values against life itself. Short and fierce, it shows why he saw the faith of his age, not its loss, as the deeper source of nihilism.

Friedrich Nietzsche

A focused study of what Nietzsche actually meant by nihilism. It separates the belief that life is meaningless from nihilism as the negation of life, and explains why he treated Christianity as both the cure and the cause.

Dominic Yates