Beyond Good and Evil (German: Jenseits von Gut und B�se; subtitled 'Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future' (German: Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft)) is a book by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, first published in 1886.


It takes up and expands on the ideas of his previous work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but approached from a more critical, polemical direction.


In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche accuses past philosophers of lacking critical sense and blindly accepting Judeo-Christian premises in their consideration of morality. The work moves into the realm 'beyond good and evil' in the sense of leaving behind the traditional morality which Nietzsche subjects to a destructive critique in favour of what he regards as an affirmative approach that fearlessly confronts the perspectival nature of knowledge and the perilous condition of the modern individual.