Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Beyond Good and Evil, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Good and Evil
Knowledge, Truth, and Untruth
The Individual and the Crowd
The Dark Side of Modernity
Women and Men
Summary
Analysis
Asking the reader to imagine that truth is a woman, Nietzsche accuses all philosophers throughout history of having been “very inexpert about women,” which is to say they were dogmatic. This dogmatism has prevented philosophers from making true discoveries, he argues, instead largely revealing their narrow, personal experiences. The most significant dogmatic error was Plato’s invention of the pure spirit, or “the good” as such, which Nietzsche sees as a denial of perspective, “the basic condition of all life.” Nietzsche believes that this ancient error has been carried forward by Christianity, which is “Platonism for ‘the people,’” and then by Enlightenment values of democracy. To solve this problem will require the intervention of new, free spirits, like Nietzsche himself.
When Nietzsche compares truth to a woman, he is speaking metaphorically, although he touches on his idiosyncratic and often deeply misogynistic views on woman in detail later on. Here, though, Nietzsche is arguing that the awkwardness with which a philosopher might approach a woman approximates the awkwardness with which they have approached the truth, an inaccuracy they have been blind to because of their sense of moral righteousness. Nietzsche locates the origin of this moral flaw of philosophy in Plato’s thought. He lays out the book’s basic argument, suggesting that there is a common—and deeply flawed—idea running through the philosophy of Plato, Christianity, and the Enlightenment.
Themes
