The title

The full title of Nietzsche's book is Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. As with most book titles, what is being referred to will not become clear until we are into the main text, but a few brief observations are in order.

First of all, the title is deliberately provocative. There is something sinister looking about going “beyond good”, even if the title also says “beyond evil”. Moreover, so much of philosophy, theology and political, social and psychological thought concerned itself with the nature of Good and Evil, that to sweep it all aside with this “beyond” must have seemed a staggeringly broad and high-handed gesture. It is as if Nietzsche is saying: you have all simply been asking the wrong question. In fact, this is exactly what Nietzsche is saying. Finally, the “beyond” and “future” introduces an element of history to subjects (good and evil) about which the reader might not be accustomed, or willing, to think in historical terms.

The first part of Nietzsche's book is on the “Prejudices of the Philosophers”, and above all Nietzsche is criticizing the late-eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Therefore, it is not surprising to find in Nietzsche's subtitle a subtle and joking reference to the title of a famous little book by Kant. Kant's title is Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Step Forward as a Science.