Friedrich Nietzsche's Reading List
The 6 books that shaped Friedrich Nietzsche — philosopher.
Radical thinker who challenged morality, religion, and truth itself — and was wildly misunderstood for it.
Influential Books
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Friedrich Nietzsche(1883)
Nietzsche's philosophical novel — the Übermensch, eternal recurrence, and the death of God told as prophecy.
Beyond Good and Evil
Friedrich Nietzsche(1886)
Nietzsche dismantles traditional morality and asks what lies on the other side of good and evil.
The Birth of Tragedy
Friedrich Nietzsche(1872)
Nietzsche's first book — art as the tension between Apollonian order and Dionysian ecstasy.
The World as Will and Representation
Arthur Schopenhauer(1818)
Schopenhauer was Nietzsche's first great philosophical influence — and the thinker he spent his career overcoming.
Essays
Michel de Montaigne(1580)
Nietzsche called Montaigne one of the few thinkers who made the world more livable simply by having existed.
Ecce Homo
Friedrich Nietzsche(1908)
Nietzsche's outrageous autobiography — "Why I Am So Wise," "Why I Write Such Good Books." Philosophy as self-creation.