Unfashionable Observations: Volume 2

This new translation is the first to be published in a twenty-volume English-language edition of The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, the first complete, critical, and annotated translation of all of Nietzsche s work. The Stanford edition is based on the Colli-Montinari edition, which has received universal praise: It has revolutionized our understanding of one of the greatest German thinkers; Scholars can be confident for the first time of having a trustworthy text. Under the title UnzeitgemSsse Betrachtungen, Nietzsche collected four essays published separately between 1873 and 1876: David Strauss the Confessor and the Writer, On the Utility and Liability of History for Life, Schopenhauer as Educator, and Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. The title, newly translated as Unfashionable Observations, spells out the common impulse linking these essays: Nietzsche s inimical attitude toward his time, understood broadly as all the mainstream and popular movements that constituted contemporary European, but especially German, culture in the wake of the Prussian military victory over the French in 1871.