a book
The Gay Science
Friedrich Nietzsche · 1974 · 396 pages
Walter Kaufmann's commentary, with its many quotations from previously untranslated letters, brings to life Nietzsche as a human being and illuminates his philosophy. The book contains some of Nietzsche's most sustained discussions of art and morality, knowledge and truth, the intellectual conscience and the origin of logic.
Most of the book was written just before Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the last part five years later, after Beyond Good and Evil. We encounter Zarathustra in these pages as well as many of Nietzsche's most interesting philosophical ideas and the largest collection of his own poetry that he himself ever published.
Walter Kaufmann's English versions of Nietzsche represent one of the major translation enterprises of our time. He is the first philosopher to have translated Nietzsche's major works, and never before has a single translator given us so much of Nietzsche.
recommended by 7 people
sourced from public statements
Naval Ravikant
“Vasishta Yoga, The Book of Nothing, Math (Better Explained), Skin in the Game, 12 Rules for Life, The Path to Love, Faraday Maxwell and the Electromagnetic Field, Direct Truth, The Gay Science, Permutation City, The Order of a Time, and many, many others.”↗
PewDiePie
“His life affirming philosophy to me I think is so important. I don't remember if Zarathustra had that much of that idea in it, actually I think it's more in "The Gay Science", I know it's a hilarious title...”
Robert Greene
“The Gay Science is a fantastic book and the reason is it’s early Nietzsche. Later in life things sometimes got a little bit obsessive with him, but this is one of his books that he wrote early on. It’s the book that has one of his most profound ideas of all time, which is the Eternal Recurrence, which is related to the concept of Amor Fati. And Amor Fati was actually created by Nietzsche himself, the idea which I and Ryan Holiday have talked a lot about, so I highly recommend The Gay Science. It’s a collection of aphorisms, of short little excerpts, you can pick and choose.”↗
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