The Nietzsche Set

Why These Two Books, Together

Thus Spake Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil are usually sold as separate paperbacks, encountered years apart, if at all. Nietzsche did not think of them that way. He described Beyond Good and Evil as saying much the same things as Zarathustra, only differently, and more directly, a second approach to the same mountain rather than a lesser work standing in its shadow. Reading them as siblings, rather than as a major statement and its footnote, changes what each one says.

That is the reasoning behind On the Psychology of Friedrich Nietzsche's Sibling Masterworks, the short third volume written to accompany them. It exists to hold the two masterworks in relation to one another, in the same spirit as the Jungian appendix that closes An History Beside Time: a second reading, offered once the primary texts have had their say.

Presenting all three together, in a matched set rather than as separate purchases, is a statement about how the press thinks these works are best read: side by side, not in isolation.

The Proposed Craftsmanship

Two editions are planned. A hardcover set, printed beautifully and not limited in number, gives every reader access to all three volumes. A Limited Leather Set, capped at fifty numbered copies, is being planned as a finer object in its own right, each volume bound as a large, weighty tome meant to be felt in the hand as well as read.

Each volume of the Limited Leather Set is bound in genuine Franz Hoffman calfskin, color-coded by title: red for Thus Spake Zarathustra, blue for Beyond Good and Evil, and black for On the Psychology of Friedrich Nietzsche's Sibling Masterworks.

Each spine is planned to carry raised ridges, with its lettering stamped in gold foil, and The Thinking Press's own emblem stamped into the front and back covers of every volume. All three books are to be cased together in a single slipcase, built to fit the set precisely.

Pricing

Of the fifty Leather Set copies, a handful are reserved outside of general sale, including copies I and L, held for anonymous collectors, and a deposit copy reserved for the Library of Congress.

Every detail above, the bindings, the colors, the stamping, the slipcase, and the prices, is a proposed specification for a set still in development, and is subject to change before the edition is finalized.