If you’re looking for a thoughtful and balanced introductory documentary on the life and writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, here’s a good one. This video was produced by the BBC for television in 1999 and it’s entitled Human All Too Human. You’ll find a lot of information carefully packed into one hour.

Given the complexity of Nietzsche’s writings, this video can only serve only as an introduction. As an introduction, though, it does a good job.

When I was an philosophy undergrad in 1977, I took a course on Nietzsche and it turned me inside out. That course focused on one of Nietzsche’s later works: The Gay Science (1882), translated by Walter Kaufmann. Since that time, there has been at least one additional excellent translation of The Gay Science.

Nietzsche was a prolific writer, though, and there are numerous other Nietzsche works to explore.  To beginners, they will seem to be written by a man who was, in equal parts, severely emotionally scarred and an absolute genius. To a veteran reader they will still seem this way.   Highly recommended for anyone who is not afraid to risk wiping out many of assumptions that you currently rely upon as existential salve.

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