Where to start with Nietzsche

Ten books by Nietzsche, from the easiest to the hardest by ReadingRate’s difficulty score: from The Antichrist, his plainest polemic, to Beyond Good and Evil.

10 books · 66 hours at an average pace · difficulty 57 to 76

Challenging

  1. The Antichrist by Friedrich Nietzsche (1895): difficulty 57 of 100, Challenging, about 1.9 hours. His shortest polemic: Christianity as a revolt of the weak against the strong. His views at their plainest.
  2. Ecce Homo by Friedrich Nietzsche (1908): difficulty 59 of 100, Challenging, about 2.9 hours. His own account of his life and of each of his books, written weeks before his collapse. A map of the rest.
  3. Daybreak by Friedrich Nietzsche (1881): difficulty 63 of 100, Challenging, about 8.1 hours. Aphorisms on the prejudices behind morality: where his campaign against morals begins.
  4. Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche (1883): difficulty 64 of 100, Challenging, about 10 hours. A prophet comes down from his mountain to teach the overman and eternal return. Read it as poetry first.
  5. Human, All Too Human by Friedrich Nietzsche (1878): difficulty 67 of 100, Challenging, about 8.9 hours. His break with Wagner and with metaphysics, in short numbered aphorisms on morals, art and religion.
  6. On the Genealogy of Morality by Friedrich Nietzsche (1887): difficulty 68 of 100, Challenging, about 6.7 hours. Three essays on where good and evil, guilt and self-denial came from. His most sustained argument.
  7. Twilight of the Idols by Friedrich Nietzsche (1889): difficulty 68 of 100, Challenging, about 3 hours. Written as a quick tour of his thought, in short chapters that each take aim at one target.

Difficult

  1. The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche (1872): difficulty 71 of 100, Difficult, about 6.1 hours. His first book: Greek tragedy as the meeting of Apollo and Dionysus. Easier once you know the Greek plays.
  2. The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche (1882): difficulty 75 of 100, Difficult, about 10 hours. Aphorisms and songs, and the book where the death of God is announced and eternal return first appears.
  3. Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche (1886): difficulty 76 of 100, Difficult, about 8 hours, free to read on ReadingRate. The summit: his case against the philosophers’ faith in truth, in nine parts of numbered sections.

Questions

Where should a beginner start?
With The Antichrist by Friedrich Nietzsche, the easiest book on this list at difficulty 57 out of 100: about 1.9 hours at an average pace. Then Ecce Homo by Friedrich Nietzsche (59) and Daybreak by Friedrich Nietzsche (63).
What is the hardest book on the list?
Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche, at 76 out of 100 and about 8 hours at an average pace. It comes last, after the books that prepare for it.
How long does the whole list take?
About 66 hours at an average pace of 250 words a minute. The three longest books take 29 hours of them: Thus Spake Zarathustra (10 hours), The Gay Science (10 hours) and Human, All Too Human (8.9 hours).
How is difficulty measured?
ReadingRate scores every book from 0 to 100 on how hard it is to read, from its prose and from what it asks of a reader. For a book of argument the score weighs how complex the argument is, what it assumes you already know, how opaque its terms are, how indirectly it makes its case and how much it tries to hold at once.

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