The usual Nietzsche website is orientated towards scholars and university philosophers. This website is intended for everyone and specifically towards creative spirits of any kind. Another phrase for what I mean by creative spirits is "life experimenters".

University philosophers, especially from England and America, have always been bewildered and irritated by Nietzsche. His influence has been elsewhere, among artists, dancers, poets, writers, novelists, psychologists, playwrights. Some of the most famous who publicly acknowledged being strongly influenced by Nietzsche were Picasso, Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, William Butler Yeats, Rainer Rilke, Allen Ginsberg, Khalil Gibran, Martin Buber, H.L. Mencken, Emma Goldman, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Jack London, Franz Kafka, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Karl Jaspers, Alfred Adler, Fritz Perls, Eugene O'Neill and George Bernard Shaw.

But creative spirits can be found anywhere, in any job, profession or way of life. The spirit of a fisherman, letter carrier or parent could easily be more creative than that of a fad-chasing, "successful" commercial artist, writer or filmmaker. Modern-day specialized professions can be a trap - they are often so narrow, hectic and business-like that they may even sabotage or crush a deeper creativity. Nietzsche himself found his prestigious job as a professor to be very oppressive. "Ten years lay behind me in which the nourishment of my spirit had really come to a stop, in which I had not learned anything new that was useful, in which I had forgotten an absurd amount for the sake of dusty scholarly odds and ends. " (Ecce Homo, p6 s3) Nietzsche suggested for "strong, independent spirits...a voluntary obscurity perhaps;... a dislike of noise, admiration, newspapers, influence; a modest job, an everyday job, something which hides more than it brings to light; ..." (Genealogy of Morals, e3 s8)

Nietzsche is here explored through a careful selection of excerpts. Clicking on the excerpt will quickly bring up the full selection with the excerpt underlined. The excerpts are often edited and spliced to make them more compact. There are three dots ... between splices. Deviations from the original wording are rare and indicated by brackets [ ]. A determined effort has been made to keep the spliced excerpts faithful to the full selections and can be verified by reading the full unbroken selection.

Most of the selections are from The Cheerful Science (1881), Zarathustra (1883-5) and Ecce Homo (1888), which I consider to be Nietzsche's best books by far. The books before Daybreak (1880) are less mature, a bit verbose and weighed down by his struggles with the university culture. In Beyond Good and Evil (1886) and the Genealogy of Morals (1887) Nietzsche modified his style to "fish" for kindred spirits among the university culture but, "there were no fish..." (Ecce Homo, p10 s1) Among his last burst of mature creative writings in 1888 he produced his autobiography and self-commentary, Ecce Homo, a jewel of wit, insight and practical wisdom. The Will to Power is really a collection of tentative notes which he didn't deem fit enough to publish. The Nietzsche scholar, Mazzino Montinari has harshly criticized the book, calling it a "forgery".

There is a page of comments by the website author but they are included as a diversion and change of pace from reading excerpts. They can be skipped over and are not essential to this website.

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