This chapter will discuss the works of Nietzsche's so-called ‘positivist’ period: Human, All-too-Human, Assorted Opinions and Maxims, The Wanderer and His Shadow, and finally Daybreak.

HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN: A BOOK FOR FREE SPIRITS

Human, All-too-Human (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches) was first published in 1878, Assorted Opinions and Maxims in 1879 and The Wanderer and His Shadow in 1880. They were all republished under the title Human, All-too-Human in 1886, with the original work of that title as volume i and the remaining two works, together with a new preface, as volume ii. In what follows I shall treat the three works as the unity Nietzsche presented them as being in 1886.

Human appeared after Nietzsche's break with Wagner and covers the time of his abandonment of the life of a university professor (he resigned from Basle with a small pension in 1879). It also marks his break with Schopenhauer whom he now treats as his ‘antipode’. In at least three ways, therefore, Human is the work of a ‘free[d] spirit’.

Here is Nietzsche's own description, in the final days of his creative life, of the circumstances in which he began to write it: