Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Chapter 1: Background -- Life of Nietzsche -- Nineteenth-century Europe -- Romanticism and German Idealism -- Pessimism -- German Politics -- The Text -- Chapter 2: Explanation and Summary of the Main Arguments -- Introduction -- Preface -- Part One: On the Prejudices of Philosophers -- Part Two: The Free Spirit -- Part Three: The Religious Nature -- Part Four: Maxims and Interludes -- Part Five: On the Natural History of Morals -- Part Six: We Scholars -- Part Seven: Our Virtues -- Part Eight: Peoples and Fatherlands -- Part Nine: What is Noble? -- From High Mountains: Epode -- Chapter 3: Critical Themes -- Introduction -- Reality, Truth and Philosophical Prejudice -- Philosophical Prejudices -- 1 The will to truth -- 2 Faith in antithetical values -- 3 Distinction between appearance and reality -- 4 Atomism -- 5 Teleological explanation -- 6 Immediate certainty -- 7 Causa sui -- 8 Reification -- Nietzsche's Anti-Realism -- God, Religion and the Saint -- The Question of God's Existence -- Religious Neurosis and the Saint -- Beyond Pessimism: the Übermensch and the Eternal Return -- Morality, Ressentiment and the Will to Power -- Ethical Naturalism -- A Natural History of Morality -- Ressentiment -- Will to Power -- Appendix: Overview of Beyond Good and Evil -- Notes -- Glossary -- Bibliography and Suggested Reading -- Index.