Untimely Meditations

For the song by Saul Williams, see Amethyst Rock Star.

Cover of the first edition of "Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben" (the second essay of the work), 1874

Untimely Meditations (German: Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen), also translated as Unfashionable Observations[1] and Thoughts Out of Season,[2] consists of four works by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, started in 1873 and completed in 1876.

The work comprises a collection of four (out of a projected 13) essays concerning the contemporary condition of European, especially German, culture. A fifth essay, published posthumously, had the title "We Philologists", and gave as a "Task for philology: disappearance".[3] Nietzsche here began to discuss the limitations of empirical knowledge, and presented what would appear compressed in later aphorisms. It combines the naivete of The Birth of Tragedy with the beginnings of his more mature polemical style. It was Nietzsche's most humorous work, especially for the essay "David Strauss: the confessor and the writer."

  1. ^ Nietzsche (1995)
  2. ^ Nietzsche (1909)
  3. ^ Glenn W. Most, "On the use and abuse of ancient Greece for life" Archived 2007-09-21 at the Wayback Machine, HyperNietzsche, 2003-11-09 (in English)