Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good And Evil

During the reading of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, I was often shocked by how misogynistic Nietzsche appeared. His declarations and defamations of women caused a great amount of discomfort while reading as I am a strong feminist and Nietzsche was apparently my nemesis. Throughout Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche offers several witty aphorisms pertaining to women such as “compare man and woman on the whole, one may say: woman would not have the genius for finery if she did not have an instinct for a secondary role” and “are you visiting women? Don’t forget your whip!” (Nietzsche). These quotations are, on the surface, a disgusting representation of the binary set up between men and women in a patriarchal society. I was appalled …show more content…
However, upon conducting a general Nietzsche search for this project, I was shocked to find an article that suggested that Nietzsche has been merely misinterpreted over the years and that his work was actually that of an early post-modern feminist. With great curiosity, I perused the article. Then another. And then another. I realized with every article I read that I was building a new respect for Nietzsche and was thoroughly interested in pursuing this theory that Nietzsche was in fact a misunderstood feminist. I feel it is not only important, but necessary for Nietzsche to be examined and reread through a feminist lens in order to fully appreciate the lengths Nietzsche went to establish a discussion of the clear inequalities within society between the sexes. His approach now appears to me to be sarcasm and a commentary on the disdain which he felt for the treatment of women in his era and beyond. I feel very strongly that when teaching the works of Nietzsche, a discourse and disclaimer needs to be discussed in order for a much fuller, broader, and deeper understanding of Nietzsche to take