Just Finished Reading: Aphorisms on Love and Hate by Fredrich Nietzsche (FP: 1878) [55pp] 

Reading the way I do, it’s hard to avoid Nietzsche. I’ve certainly come across him numerous times in my Philosophy reading and have read several books about his ideas. I only studied him more intently during my Masters degree course some years ago where we focused on his 1887 work ‘On the Genealogy of Morality’. It was funny when, as we were about to start the seminar that the Head of Studies popped in and said that she was always wary of teaching Nietzsche to undergraduates because of its explosive nature. I understand her trepidation. I described reading his work as like breathing pure oxygen. 

Reading Nietzsche is, however, far from easy. He’s not a philosopher you can skim read or casually dip into. He’s the kind of thinker that requires a paragraph or more to unpack a single sentence. It’s almost as if he has compressed, zipped, his ideas inside the words he uses and some effort – and sometimes a great deal of effort – is required to unfold them into ideas your brain can process. I guess it's like the difference between eating simple carbohydrates which the body can easily convert to useful energy compared to complex proteins that take time and effort to absorb but provide vital elements that the body needs. Fortunately, the course tutor was excellent – and probably one of the smartest people I’ve ever known – so he managed to get his point across without completely frying our brains. This certainly helped with reading this slim volume. 

Containing extracts from Human, All Too Human (published in 1878), this covered a fairly wide area – not just Love and Hate – to do with ideas like Good and Evil, Suffering, Pity, Morality, Revenge, Justice and much else besides. Being typically Nietzschean the booklet positively drips with often razor sharp one liner’s. Here’s a few examples: 

Most men are much too concerned with themselves to be malicious. 

There will be but few people who, when at a loss for topics of conversation, will not reveal the most secret affairs of their friends. 

It is much more agreeable to offend and later ask forgiveness than to be offended and grant forgiveness.  

The best friend will probably get the best wife, because a good marriage is based on a talent for friendship. 

This was a fun little read and a reminder (as if I needed one) to get back into reading Philosophy again. I have (I think) most of Nietzsche’s works on my (mostly) Philosophy bookshelf so there’s no excuse. Expect one or two next year. Part of the Penguin Little Black Classics series. 

Translated from the German by Marion Faber and Stephen Lehmann.