'We have left dry land and put out to sea! We have burned the bridge behind us - what is more, we have burned the land behind us!' Nietzsche's devastating demolition of religion would have seismic consequences for future generations. With God dead, he envisages a brilliant future for humanity: one in which individuals would at last be responsible for their destinies. One of twenty new books in the bestselling Penguin Great Ideas series. This new selection showcases a diverse list of thinkers who have helped shape our world today, from anarchists to stoics, feminists to prophets, satirists to Zen Buddhists.

The companion book to Beyond Good and Evil, the three essays included here offer vital insights into Nietzsche's theories of morality and human psychology. Nietzsche claimed that the purpose of The Genealogy of Morals was to call attention to his previous writings. But in fact the book does much more than that, elucidating and expanding on the cryptic aphorisms of Beyond Good and Evil and signalling a return to the essay form. In these three essays, Nietzsche considers the development of ideas of 'good' and 'evil'; explores notions of guilt and bad consience; and discusses ascetic ideals and the purpose of the philosopher. Together, they form a coherent and complex discussion of morality in a work that is more accessible than some of Nietzsche's previous writings. Friedrich Nietzsche was born near Leipzig in 1844. When he was only twenty-four he was appointed to the chair of classical philology at Basel University. From 1880, however, he divorced himself from everyday life and lived mainly abroad. Works published in the 1880s include The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist. In January 1889, Nietzsche collapsed on a street in Turin and was subsequently institutionalized, spending the rest of his life in a condition of mental and physical paralysis. Works published after his death in 1900 include Will to Power, based on his notebooks, and Ecce Homo, his autobiography. Michael A. Scarpitti is an independent scholar of philosophy whose principal interests include English and German thought of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as exegesis and translation theory. Robert C. Holub is currently Ohio Eminent Scholar and Professor of German at the Ohio State University. Among his published works are monographs on Heinrich Heine, German realism, Friedrich Nietzsche, literary and aesthetic theory, and Jurgen Habermas.

'This world is the will to power - and nothing besides!' One of the great minds of modernity, Friedrich Nietzsche smashed through the beliefs of his age. These writings, which did much to establish his reputation as a philosopher, offer some of his most powerful and troubling thoughts: on how the values of a new, aggressive elite will save a nihilistic, mediocre Europe, and, most famously, on the 'will to power' - ideas that were seized upon and twisted by later readers. Taken from Nietzsche's unpublished notebooks and assembled by his sister after his death, The Will to Power now appears with previous errors corrected. Translated by R. Kevin Hill and Michael A. Scarpitti with an Introduction and Notes by R. Kevin Hill