Twilight of the Idols and the Anti Christ (Penguin Classics)

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote these two short but disturbing books during 1888, his last sane year. Though unfairly assaulting individuals, they accurately outline contemporary culture. While recognizing human mean-spiritedness and self-deception, they do not destroy Nietzsche’s fundamental optimism. Twilight of the Idols wages war on his age’s common ideas, breathlessly cutting across his entire philosophy, paving the way for Nietzsche’s next work, The Anti-Christ, an attack on institutional Christianity. Nietzsche argues convincingly for the Dionysian artist, praising two of his heroes, Goethe and Cesare Borgia, yet he also offers a poignant, rapturous description of his only commendable adversary: Jesus Christ. 208 pages.