Double purpose animated Nietzsche in his writing of "Beyond Good and Evil" _("Jenseits von Gut und Böse")._ It is at once an explanation and an elucidation of "Thus Spake Zarathustra," and a preparatory book for his greatest and most important work, "The Will to Power." In it Nietzsche attempts to define the relative terms of "good" and "evil," and to draw a line of distinction between immorality and unmorality. He saw the inconsistencies evolved in the attempt to harmonise an ancient moral code with the needs of modern life, and recognised the compromises which were constantly being made between moral theory and social practice. His object was to establish a relationship between morality and necessity, and to formulate a workable basis for human conduct. Consequently "Beyond Good and Evil" is one of his most important contributions to a new system of ethics, and touches on many of the deepest principles of his philosophy. As it stands, it is by no means a complete expression of Nietzsche's doctrines, but it is sufficiently profound and suggestive to be of valuable service in an understanding of his later works. The book was begun in the summer of 1885 and finished the following winter. Again there was difficulty with publishers, and finally the book was issued at the author's own expense in the autumn of 1886.
Nietzsche opens "Beyond Good and Evil" with a long chapter headed "Prejudices of Philosophers," in which he outlines the course to be taken by his dialectic. The exposition is accomplished by two methods: first, by an analysis and a refutation of the systems of thinking made use of by antecedent doctrinaires, and secondly, by defining the hypotheses on which his own philosophy is built. This chapter is a most important one, setting forth, as it does, the _rationale_ of his doctrine of the will to power. It has been impossible to make extracts of any unified sequence from this chapter because of its intricate and compact reasoning, and the student would do well to read it in its entirety. It establishes Nietzsche's philosophic position and presents a closely knit explanation of the course pursued in the following chapters. The relativity of all truth--the hypothesis so often assumed in his previous work--Nietzsche here defends by analogy and argument. Using other leading forms of philosophy as a ground for exploration, he questions the absolutism of truth and shows wherein lies the difficulty of a final definition. Here we become conscious of that plasticity of mind which was the dominating quality of his thinking. It is not, however, that form of plasticity which on inspection resolves itself into amorphic and unstable reasoning, but a logical, almost scientific, method of valuing. The mercurial habits of the metaphysicians who deny absolutism are nowhere discernible in Nietzsche's thought. His mind is definite without being static. The basis of his argumentation is what one might call floating. It rises and falls with the human tide of causation; yet the structure built upon it remains at all times upright and unchanged.