Nietzsche
Nietzsche is widely regarded as one of the greatest prose poets in the German language. He was a master wordsmith who added an extra layer of complexity to the already difficult task of translating German, resulting in a wide range of translations.
There are many translations of his major works, as he is one of the best-studied Western philosophers of the 19th century. His works are usually truncated in English, Spanish, and French, but such an important philosopher deserves literal translations - clear and direct from the original text with little to no interpretation. Fortunately, his works are available in the original German, as he was widely published in the mid-19th century, so there are many clean copies. The unique formatting of the original books is difficult to replicate, but we have done our best. The covers of these editions all reflect central motifs, triads or dichotomies illustrated in the works, usually Greco-Roman myths.
This set of translations is taken from the original manuscripts and contains the most recent edition Nietzsche published of each work, including all prefaces. It is intended to show the full range of Nietzsche's work, from his youthful writings in Basel to his later melodramatic works written before his psychotic break from reality and untimely death.
The Greek, Latin, Hebrew and French phrases he used remain untranslated here. He did not translate them for his German readers because they refer to specific concepts and ideas, so I have not translated them here either. Other phrases and words that don't translate well are rendered literally, such as "Schleiermacher," which is akin to pulling the wool over someone's eyes, or many of the insults he uses, which are better rendered literally because they are so specific and humorous. Other words are obscure or refer to obscure dramas, such as herostratism, which means arsonist but also refers to a specific Greek story. He uses Brahmanic, Buddhist, and Hindu terms such as "Chandala," a Sanskrit word that refers to the lowest caste that disposes of corpses, and assumes that his readers know these words. Words like "jussive" and "thority" are perfectly legitimate English words, they are just obscure. The German equivalents are equally clear. Words like "assertoric" (a positive statement of fact) and "apodeictic" (recognition of a necessary fact) both come from Aristotelian logic, and translating them into simple language for the modern reader would break the connection with the very specific philosophical constructs they refer to. The Latin words "schema" and "atoma" have obvious English equivalents, but the Latin words refer to concepts in Cartesian and Newtonian philosophy. Nietzsche never intended his works to be easily read.
He uses concepts unknown to the modern reader, such as the anguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic natures, based on a "modern" psychological theory of his time - the Four Temperaments theory, which was widely used by Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer. All of this remains untranslated in order to convey the original text as accurately as possible. Words unique to German philosophy are left untranslated because there are no clear equivalents. Interesting words like Lichtwesen, Geistig-Organische Sein or geschichtsphilosophischen I translate literally with hyphens to preserve a feeling of the original text. Words like cultus have a direct literal translation ("cult"), but in this context is closer to "introspective relationship" because it does not have a negative connotation here. Dasein remains untranslated because there is nothing like it in English. It is something like the immediate presence of the essence of being. The imperative of Dasein - to authentically "be" - is in the philosophical continuum of the Delphic Oracle's command to know yourself. Likewise, Gestalt/ Gestalten refers to the form, countenance, design or shape of something in Modern German, but in Philosophic German it has a more unique meaning-it is the reality of something that is greater than the sum of its parts; a "super-nature" if you will. Geist has a broader meaning in German than just "spirit" because it implies agency and intelligence (sometimes it is translated as "mind"). It is closer to the "supernatural essence of the spirit," but for simplicity's sake I have kept it as Geist. As he says in Human, All Too Human, "It is neither the best nor the worst thing about a book that it is untranslatable.
The only title I significantly changed was his work Morgenröthe. "Morgenröthe, or Morgenröte in modern spelling, literally means "morning red," a unique German word that refers to the reddening of the sky in the twilight hours before daybreak. This book title has historically been translated as "dawn" or simply "daybreak," but this misses the connotation of the word. Twilight is "Dämmerung," but Morgenrötheis a specific phenomenon of the eastern sky before dawn. In Roman mythology, there is a goddess associated with the dawn - Aurora. In Greek mythology, Homer called this the "rose-fingered Eos". This has continuity in Christianity as the Red Mass, the beginning of two different antiphons in the Roman Catholic Church's Advent liturgy to celebrate Mary, symbolized by the dawn, traditionally celebrated in the pre-dawn reddening of the sky. While there is no direct equivalent word for the pre-dawn reddening, the closest literal translation would be "The Reddening Dawn", but to capture the dramatic tone I've rendered this as "The Scarlet Daybreak". Nietzsche is speaking here of a hope for his own dawn out of the nihilism into which he was born - "his own morning dawn".
The complete works of Nietzsche
Volume I: 1869 The Birth of Tragedy
Volume II: 1876 Untimely Considerations
Volume III: 1878 The Human, The Universal
Volume IV: 1881 Dawn
Volume V: 1882 Happy Science
Volume VI: 1883 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Volume VII: 1886 Beyond Good and Evil
Volume VIII: 1887 On the Genealogy of Morals
Volume IX: 1889 The Antichrist
Volume X: 1889 Ecce Homo
Volume XI: 1889 Dawn of the Gods
Volume XII: 1861-1889 Letters
Volume XIII: Smaller Works
