Untimely Meditations

What it is

This is the title page of Nietzsche's Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, published by E. W. Fritzsch in Leipzig in 1874, when Nietzsche was a professor of classical philology at Basel. The work gathers four essays written between 1873 and 1876, out of a much larger project he abandoned.

Why it matters

The essays attack figures and ideas Nietzsche saw as symptoms of a shallow German culture, including theologian David Strauss, while praising the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and the composer Richard Wagner—whom Nietzsche would later break with. The collection shows Nietzsche's early combination of youthful polemic with ideas he would develop more fully later, and his position as a critical voice within the newly unified German Reich.

Look closer

• Why might Nietzsche describe his own essays as 'untimely'?
• What does his attack on Strauss suggest about how Nietzsche saw his role as a thinker?
• How might Nietzsche's later break with Wagner change how we read his early praise of him here?