In what order should you read Nietzsche? There’s no one answer to...
Left Nietzschean@DevinGoure
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Nov 13, 2026
~2 min read
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In what order should you read Nietzsche? There’s no one answer to this question, but here are my suggestions if, like the OP, you have only read the Genealogy.
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Colin is tormented by the nothingness@musicalcolin
@DevinGoure Hey Devin the only nietzche I’ve read is the genealogy in grad school (which eh was not my favorite thing). But some of the passages you’ve posted are really compelling. What should I read next?
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Start with the 2nd and 3rd Untimely Meditations, “The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” and “Schopenhauer as Educator.” These give you an early example of themes that Nietzsche will develop throughout his work.
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Then read The Gay Science. If you want selections, focus on Book I, Book III aphorisms 108-152, Book IV aphorisms 276-292, 335-342, and Book V. Note that Book V was written in 1887, 5 years after Books 1-IV. So, middle period + some of his late work.
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Next, read Twilight of the Idols, written in 1888, Nietzsche’s final year of productivity and lucidity. It gives the best overall summary of his mature philosophy. If you haven’t read On the Genealogy of Morals, I’d put that just ahead of Twilight.
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Now if you want to keep going, I’d go back to where it all began and read The Birth of Tragedy. Also read “Homer’s Contest,” “The Greek State,” and “On Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense.” This will familiarize you with N’s early Wagnerian/Schopenhauerian period.
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Next, Human All Too Human is nice to juxtapose to The Birth, as it embodies Nietzsche’s turn to natural science and rejection of his earlier metaphysics and idealism. After this, try Nietzsche’s “dangerous” book, Beyond Good and Evil, to deepen the themes of the Genealogy.
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If you’ve made it this far, only now are you reasonably well prepared to attempt Thus Spoke Zarathustra. You can finish your Nietzsche studies with what he considered to be his most important book, or you can keep going to fill in the gaps.
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If the latter, be sure to start with Ecce Homo to get advice on interpretation from the man himself. Also, don’t forget to read Nietzsche’s prefaces, most of which were written when he reissued his books in 1886 and include vital clues for how to interpret them.
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If you want to read the Nachlass, DO NOT (I repeat, *DO NOT*) read The Will to Power. Cambridge University Press has two volumes of Nietzsche’s unpublished fragments that provide a nice selection, but Stanford will soon finish the first complete English translation.
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The Stanford editions nicely provide you with the option of reading the Nachlass fragments alongside the published work as you go. This is much better than the controversial WTP, because it goes in the order of the development of N’s thought to give you a complete picture.
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As for translations, I would again suggest the Stanford editions as the most up-to-date and philosophically sensitive. Kaufmann’s probably remain the best from an aesthetic standpoint.
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