Books Should Be Free
Loyal Books
Free Public Domain Audiobooks & eBook Downloads
Search by: Title, Author or Keyword

The Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophise with the Hammer

The Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophise with the Hammer by Friedrich Nietzsche
By: (1844-1900)

Of The Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche says in Ecce Homo: “If anyone should desire to obtain a rapid sketch of how everything before my time was standing on its head, he should begin reading me in this book. That which is called ‘Idols’ on the title-page is simply the old truth that has been believed in hitherto. In plain English, The Twilight of the Idols means that the old truth is on its last legs.”

Certain it is that, for a rapid survey of the whole of Nietzsche’s doctrine, no book, save perhaps the section entitled “Of Old and New Tables” in Thus Spake Zarathustra, could be of more real value than The Twilight of the Idols. Here Nietzsche is quite at his best. He is ripe for the marvellous feat of the transvaluation of all values. Nowhere is his language – that marvellous weapon which in his hand became at once so supple and so murderous – more forcible and more condensed. Nowhere are his thoughts more profound. But all this does not by any means imply that this book is the easiest of Nietzsche’s works. On the contrary, I very much fear that unless the reader is well prepared, not only in Nietzscheism, but also in the habit of grappling with uncommon and elusive problems, a good deal of the contents of this work will tend rather to confuse than to enlighten him in regard to what Nietzsche actually wishes to make clear in these pages.

(Excerpt from A. Ludovici’s Preface)


Stream audiobook and download chapters




Reviews (Rated: 5 Stars - 1 review)

Reviewer: - June 24, 2016
Subject: Walter Kaufman
Look, I'm just saying from experience, that the translator of Freddy Neitzche makes all the diffference. Unless you have a Walter Kaufman translation - for reasons too many to list here - it is often difficult if not impossible to understand him. FN is difficult under any circumstances, but I had a Penguin translation a long time ago, can't remember now which Neitzche book it was, and I had to abandon it and go back to Kaufman. Just saying.


Popular Genres
More Genres
Languages
Paid Books