Human, All Too Human
Title page of first edition.
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| Author | Friedrich Nietzsche |
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| Original title | Menschliches, Allzumenschliches: Ein Buch für freie Geister |
| Translator | Alexander Harvey (first edition, 1908) |
| Country | Germany |
| Language | German |
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| LC Class | B3313.M53 |
| Preceded by | Untimely Meditations (1873–1876) |
| Followed by | The Dawn (1881) |
| Text | at |
Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits (German: Menschliches, Allzumenschliches: Ein Buch für freie Geister) is a book by 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, originally published in 1878. A second part, Assorted Opinions and Maxims (Vermischte Meinungen und Sprüche), was published in 1879, and a third part, The Wanderer and his Shadow (Der Wanderer und sein Schatten), followed in 1880.
The book is Nietzsche's first in the aphoristic style that would come to dominate his writings, discussing a variety of concepts in short paragraphs or sayings. Reflecting an admiration of Voltaire as a free thinker, but also a break in his friendship with composer Richard Wagner two years earlier, Nietzsche dedicated the original 1878 edition of Human, All Too Human “to the memory of Voltaire on the celebration of the anniversary of his death, May 30, 1778.” Instead of a preface, the first part originally included a quotation from Descartes's Discourse on the Method. Nietzsche later republished all three parts as a two-volume edition in 1886, adding a preface to each volume, and removing the Descartes quote as well as the dedication to Voltaire.
In 1876 Nietzsche broke with Wagner, and in the same year his increasingly bad health (possibly the early effects of a brain tumor) compelled him to request a leave of absence from his academic duties at the University of Basel. In the autumn of 1876 he joined his friend Paul Rée in Sorrento, at the home of a wealthy patron of the arts, Malwida von Meysenbug, and began work on Human, All Too Human.
Unlike his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, which was written in essay style, Human, All Too Human is a collection of aphorisms, a style which he would use in many of his subsequent works. The aphorisms of Human, All Too Human range from a few words to a few pages, but most are short paragraphs. The first installment’s 638 aphorisms are divided into nine sections by subject, and a short poem as an epilogue. The phrase itself appears in Aphorism 35 (originally conceived as the first aphorism) "when Nietzsche observes that maxims about human nature can help in overcoming life's hard moments." Implicit also, is a drive to overcome what is human, all too human through understanding it, through philosophy. The second and third installments are an additional 408 and 350 aphorisms respectively.
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